8 - What next?: What is needed in endangered language research?

Summary

Introduction

In this chapter I address in general the expectations and demands of language documentation with its need for fieldwork as we move into the future. My personal future work is, I think, easy to see—it will be, inshallah, much like a continuation of the present. I have the recordings and documentation of several languages and the results of quite a lot of fieldwork to get processed and archived. I have databases, including vocabularies and dictionaries, to get online and made accessible to scholars, communities of speakers of the languages involved, and the public. I need to analyze and publish more of the results of the fieldwork on several languages. I will do my best to get copies of all these things into the hands of those whose languages are involved, and will help them with programs to make the materials useful for language revitalization where possible. I also intend to examine the results for implications they have for linguistic typology and for what they can contribute to understanding of the history of the languages and of the people who speak them. But this chapter is not about my plans; rather, it's about the status of languages themselves and the need for future fieldwork.

Historical backdrop

Let's begin by putting some things into historical context. Understanding the past and how we got to where we are now will help clarify the current state of the field, the status of the world's languages, and will point in the direction of what needs to be done in the future.

Endangered languages and early American linguists

There has been concern for describing endangered languages from the beginning in American linguistics. Franz Boas (1858–1942), founder of American linguistics and of American anthropology, emphasized the urgency of describing American Indian languages and cultures before they disappeared. The theme of “the vanishing Redman” had already been around for a long time in Boas's day. Boas himself provided the last and in several cases the only significant data on a number of languages that no longer have speakers and have ceased to be spoken: Cathlamet, Chemakum, Lower Chinook, Pentlach, Pochuteco, and Tsetsaut. He instilled this sense of urgency for fieldwork into his students, the need to collect accurate information while it was still possible.