Workshop on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation, University of California, Santa Barbara, Summer 2008

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

This grant provides funding for critical portions of a six-week Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation, to be held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the summer of 2008. Since many of the world's languages are facing imminent extinction due to socioeconomic pressures that favor large national languages, there is now a critical need to document the rich cultural legacies of human knowledge embedded in the world's many languages. The institute will provide an opportunity for graduate students, professional linguists, and speakers of endangered languages to become trained in a wide range of technologies and methods that are now available for the documentation of languages. A significant emphasis will be how trained field linguists can work productively with speech communities and provide them with the tools and training necessary to document, preserve, or revitalize their own linguistic and cultural heritage.