Chapter: Linguistic Vitality.

 Indicators of Language Vitality:

 Number of current language users

 Average age of users
 Youngest group of fluent users
 Domains where the language is used
 Prevalent attitudes toward the language

 Importance of Intergenerational Transfer:

 Effective intergenerational transfer is crucial for language survival.

 Languages used only by older generations or in limited domains are at greater risk of
extinction.

 Challenges in Assessing Language Vitality:

 Community Awareness: Communities may not realize when intergenerational

transmission is weak, as they might perceive the language as alive based on their
interactions.
 Survey Complexity: Gathering accurate data is challenging due to varied language use
contexts and individual reporting biases.
 Language Definition: Determining what constitutes a language user or fluent speaker is
complex, involving fluency levels and usage across different domains.

 Implications for Language Documentation and Revitalization:

 Surveys are vital for identifying the status of a language and for planning revitalization
efforts.
 Language documentation and revitalization strategies should focus on the specific needs
revealed by surveys.
 Survey Limitations:

 Survey responses can be influenced by personal and political factors, making it difficult
to obtain accurate data.
 Definitions of fluency and language use need to be tailored to specific community
contexts and the vitality of the language.

 Role of Surveys in Language Revitalization:

 Surveys help communities understand their language’s current state and can guide the
development of effective revitalization programs.
 They serve as a tool for communities to assess their situation and take steps toward
language preservation and revival.

Language catalogue and data base:

 Overview: Ethnologue.

 A catalog of the world’s lesser-known languages, established in 1961.

 Initially published in paper form; now primarily accessed digitally.

 Information Provided:

 Unique three-letter ISO code for languages.

 Demographic information.
 Language classification.
 Domains of use.
 Rates of bilingualism.
 Dialect varieties.
 Literacy rates.
 Religious affiliations.
  Language prestige.
 Bibliographic resources.

 Updates in the 2020 Edition (23rd edition):

 Total languages listed increased from 7,111 to 7,117.

 10 newly identified languages with new ISO codes.
 Re-categorization of some dialects as languages.
 Correction of some “extinct” languages as still spoken or revived.
 Dropped 6 languages due to extinction or reclassification.
 Corrections and additions to language names.

 Data Collection and Accuracy:

 Information from field linguists, surveys, Bible translators, and other contributors.
 Data is corrected through gradual crowdsourcing.
 Categories are complex and can be subjects of advanced research.

 Impact and Use:

 Declared as a highly authoritative resource by ethnologue.com.

 Used by 40% of the world’s top 50 schools.
 Funders like the National Science Foundation use it to assess language endangerment
and fund documentation efforts.
 ISO codes inform metadata in language archives such as the University of Hawaii
Kaipuleohone.
 Integrated into academic classes and research in linguistics and social sciences.
 Influences fields such as political science for analyzing linguistic and religious data.

 Comparison:

 Ethnologue is behind a paywall.

  Similar but free resource: Glottolog.

Glottolog:

 Glottolog is funded and run by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in
Jena, Germany.
 Glottolog specializes in lesser-known world languages.
 It aims to improve language classification issues using original linguistic materials for names
and genetic/areal relationships.
 Key differences between Glottolog and Ethnologue:

 Price of usage: Ethnologue is behind a paywall, while Glottolog is free.

 Language classification methods.

 Language identifying codes:

 Uses ISO codes (International Organization for Standards) as unique identifiers.

 Issues with ISO codes: difficult to change, can reinforce colonial names (e.g., Lushai to
Mizo still uses 'lus' code).
 Complexity in distinguishing languages from dialects or varieties (e.g., British English vs.
American English).

 Glottolog's unique identifiers:

 Uses glottocodes for each language variety.

 Includes ISO codes for cross-referencing.
 Organizes varieties in genetic trees.

 Additional features:

 Advisory experts for individual language families ensure accuracy.

  Comprehensive bibliography created through crowdsourcing.
 Confirmation through reputable linguistic resources, often linguistic grammars from
language documentation and description.

Catalogue of Endangered Languages (ELCat)

 Ambitious project maintained by linguists at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

 Website developed by Google in partnership with the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity.
 Purpose:
o Support language documentation.
o Assist communities interested in language revitalization and conservation.
 Unique Activities:
o Extraction of variables from grammars and publications to quantify and
characterize language vitality (Campbell and Okura 2018).
 Features Analyzed:
o Intergenerational transmission.
o Rate of loss or stability of language use.
o Domains of use (Belew and Simpson 2018).
 Verification Process:
o Responsibility placed on experts of linguistic regions to verify accuracy and
completeness of information on languages.
 Association:
o Part of the larger project, The Endangered Languages Project.
 Online Platform:
o Provides a space for communities and researchers to share resources and discuss
revitalization and conservation efforts.
o
 Examples of Endangered Languages:

●-Ainu language in Japan

●-Aka language in India

●-Kallawaya language in Bolivia

Role of ELCat:

●-Helps researchers and advocates prioritize preservation efforts

●-Raises awareness about the need to protect linguistic diversity

●-Supports documentation and revitalization projects for endangered languages

Conclusion:

 Importance of Language Documentation

 Catalogs like the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger and the Linguist
List’s digital libraries serve as critical resources for social scientists.
 These catalogs are assumed to contain vetted facts and usable data for further
theorizing.
 Language documentation significantly contributes to the creation and quality control of
these catalogs.

 Effort and Expertise Required

  Maintaining these catalogs requires enormous effort and expertise.
 Contributions needed from:
o Documentary linguists who provide insights on language relatedness and
domains of use.
o Community members.
o Information scientists.
o Website developers.
o Researchers who mine publications by experts.

 Sustainability Challenges

 Sustaining the infrastructure and maintaining the databases that feed these catalogs is
an ongoing challenge.
 Examples:
o ELCat: Created with funding from the NSF, private foundations, and Google.
 Continued funding is a constant need and is not guaranteed.
o Ethnologue: Had a free online portal for many years but moved to a pay-for-use
model in 2015 (Matacic 2020).
 The current subscription rates are prohibitive for some researchers and
institutions, despite their contributions to the resource.
o Glottolog: Moved from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
in Leipzig to the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena in
2015 after the closure of the Max Planck Department of Linguistics in Leipzig.
 Despite finding continuity in its new home, this move highlights the
difficulties in maintaining sustainability.

 Digital Language Archives

  Long-term preservation and access of documentary materials is a core goal of
Documentary Linguistics.
 Digital language archiving has become a core activity for documentary linguists, leading
to the creation of language archives.
 Data management plans for major funders of language documentation require archiving
data in open-access digital archives (Chelliah 2014).
 As Documentary Linguistics has matured, the number, quality, and theorizing behind
digital archives for language deposits have also grown.
 Major language archives can be found on the website of The Digital Endangered
Languages and Musics Archives Network (DELAMAN).

 New Addition to DELAMAN (2020): Computational Resource for South Asian Languages
Archive (CoRSAL)

 CoRSAL addresses the need in South Asia for collections by community members
documenting their mother tongues.
 Example: Northeast Indian Linguistics Society Meeting featuring young linguists from
Boro, Dimasa, Assamese, KokBorok, Meitei, Baite, Uipo, and Lamkang communities.
 Local and national governmental organizations, such as the Forum for Language
Initiatives in Islamabad and the Central Institute of Indian Languages in Mysore, support
language documentation.
 Archival efforts in South Asia are underway to support language documentation.
 The Sikkim-Darjeeling Himalayas Endangered Language Archive (SiDHELA) was
inaugurated, made possible through access to D-Space by Indian Universities.
 SiDHELA, created by the Center for Endangered Languages, Sikkim University, is hosted
in the Central Library of the University, serving as a model for other language archiving
ventures in India.
 Infrastructure requirements: stable electricity, temperature-controlled rooms, and
cultural change championing open access data.
  CoRSAL staff continue to curate documentary materials, especially legacy materials at
risk of being lost.
 The archive is accessible through the CoRSAL website or the University of North Texas
Digital Library portal.

 Data Management Practices and Metadata

 Documentary linguists and archivists have developed data management practices to

make deposits more efficient.
 Depositors must create file naming and foldering conventions and metadata in sync with
the archive.
 Digital language data require local instructions for using Dublin Core elements.
 Example: CoRSAL metadata guide provides specific examples for field linguistics
elements like CREATOR and CONTRIBUTOR.
 Metadata must be narrowly defined for language data, e.g., "speaker" for the
CONTRIBUTOR element.
 Flexibility needed for Asian naming styles in metadata to avoid replicating colonial
practices (Chelliah 2005; Burke 2020a; Burke et al. 2019).

 Challenges and Improvements

 Ensuring materials are findable and usable by the communities that need them (Wasson
et al. 2016, 2018; Henderson 2013).
 Improving metadata, simplifying depositing processes, creating guides to collections,
and ensuring community authority in determining archive content and access (Burke
2020b; Burke and Zavalina 2020; Kung 2016; Woodbury 2014; Henderson 2013;
Genovese 2016; Roeschley and Kim 2019).
 Avoiding colonial-era motivations for archiving, especially in non-industrialized worlds.
 Empowering linguistic research and language revitalization activities by facilitating
desired archiving efforts.
 Impact and Collaboration

 The collaboration between documentary linguists and archivists impacts information

science and documentary linguistics.
 Collaboration also affects typological linguistics and computational linguistics.
 Linguists and computational linguists can aim for comparative analysis within and across
corpora using adequate metadata (Finkel and Kaufman 2016).
 Other goals include completion of interlinear glossing and using machine translation
methods (Moller 2020; Palmer et al. 2010).
 Optical character recognition methods are stimulated by scanned texts and handwritten
notes in language archives (Garrette 2016; Austin 2017; Santos 2019).

 Features of Language Archives (Reviewed by Barwick and Thieberger 2018 for Paradisec
language archive)

 Findability: Items are easily located from a browser with keyword searches.
 Accessibility: Items are free for download or can be viewed online; accessible via tablet
and phone.
 Ethical Preservation: Access to items is given in collaboration with rights holders and
community members.
 Ease of Deposit: Metadata creation and data management needed for archiving are not
burdensome.
 Longevity: Materials are preserved for the long term.
 Sustainability: Long-term funding and infrastructure for the archive are available.

Funding Research and Training

 Over the past 40 years:
o Numerous conferences, symposia, interest groups, and declarations by
professional societies dedicated to language documentation.
o Coverage in the popular press on language documentation and related concerns.
 Funding initiatives for the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages
have emerged.
o US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and US National Science
Foundation (NSF):
 Offer a dedicated line of funding for documenting endangered languages.
o Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP):
 Founded in 2002 through funding from the Arcadia Fund to the School of
Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
 Influence of NSF/NEH and ELDP:
o Set standards for Documentary Linguistics.
o Series of workshops and instructional website, the Electronic Metastructure for
Endangered Language Data (EMELD), set best practice standards from 2001-2010
(Aristar-Dry for UNT College of Information 2017).
o Promoted cross-linguistic comparison through comparable data formats for
language data.
 ELDP Training:
o Focused on data collection and archiving for awardees.
o Training in video documentation and data management.
o Required deposits of funded projects to the Endangered Languages Archive
(ELAR).
 NSF Video Series (DEL Video 2017):
o Created to assist communities in applying for funding.
o Reflects a move towards community-driven language documentation.
 NSF and Others:
o Committed funds for training institutes to empower communities in
documenting and revitalizing their languages.
o Main Institutes:
 American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI):
 Provides training to strengthen efforts to revitalize and promote
Indigenous languages across generations.
 Focuses on community researchers and teachers.
 Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute
(CILLDI):
 Provides training in linguistics, language documentation, language
revitalization, and methods and policies for language learning.
 Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang, formerly InField):
 Provides training in all aspects of language documentation.
 Classes often facilitated by or in partnership with Indigenous
language community members.
 Goals and methods refined to suit both scientific and humanistic
goals.
 Documenting and Revitalising Indigenous Languages Program (DRIL):
 Supports maintenance of Australian Aboriginal languages through
training workshops, programs, and certifications.
 University of Texas at Austin (UT) Training Institutes:
 Set up in Mexico, Guatemala, and Bolivia.
 Linguistics Summer School in Bolivia:
 Coordinated by Gladys Camacho Ríos, a UT PhD candidate.
 Provides linguistic and language teaching training to
Indigenous language users in Bolivia since 2016.
 Collaboration by UT Professors Nora England and Anthony
Woodbury:
  Worked with students from Guatemala and Mexico on
language teaching and linguistic scholarship.
 Cross-Community Learning:
 Non-Indigenous and Indigenous linguists, and Indigenous
language community participants, learn from each other.
 Develops partnerships to advance documentation in new
ways and for new uses.
 These training institutes support high-quality language documentation for learners of all
ages and levels of education.
o They increase the documentary record of under-resourced languages, many of
which are highly endangered.
o Empower language users, in collaboration with community groups, to decide:
 What examples of language use should be prioritized for future access.
 From whom and under what circumstances these should be collected.
 Where and with what access the collected materials should be archived.

Language Revitalization:

Language revitalization efforts create and use the products of language documentation.
Documentation must fill the needs of many types of revitalization programs, ranging from
learning language as asubject in the classroom to informal learning for adults and cultural
activities for children and families that include a large language component.

 Revitalization Programs

 Short list of language revitalization programs initiated worldwide in the past 30 years
(based on Hinton et al. 2018):
o Master-apprentice:
 Elders act as language teachers (masters) forming long-term relationships
with learners (apprentices).
 Communication solely in the target language in day-to-day situations.
  Needed when there are no young language users and no users available
to teach in schools or informal contexts.
o Full-immersion traditional classroom:
 Backed by government policy, funding, well-developed materials, and
community pride in language.
 Children become fluent language users through full-immersion
classrooms.
 Examples:
 Rakaumangamanga Māori-medium school in New Zealand.
 Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u Laboratory School in Hilo, Hawaii.
 Primary language of instruction for all subjects is Māori or Hawaiian.
 Importance of content: Teaching subjects like Science through the native
language.
 Example: Traditional soap-making demonstration by Kaytetye Arrernte
women recorded in the Kaytetye language (Pama-Nyungan) for
Questacon’s Science in First Languages project video series.
o Language nests:
 Similar to daycare or preschool with immersion in the target language.
 Estimated 300-350 language nests in the world, mostly in New Zealand.
 Use the Montessori Method of instruction, including cultural activities
like singing traditional songs and prayer chants.
o Learning at home:
 Encourages use of the target language at home and in everyday contexts.
 Learners post flashcards around the house, labeling items in the target
language.
 Establish language zones where only the target language is spoken.
 Encourage other traditions at home for language use.
o Language and culture workshops:
  Events such as poetry readings, storytelling, cultural demonstrations
(e.g., cooking, basket-making), and display and discussion of fishing
implements.
o Capacity Development Programs:
 Organize and provide professional training for practitioners of language
maintenance and revitalization.
 Examples: CoLang and CILLDI.

 Challenges for Language Documenters

 Language documentation must be presented in a way that can be unpacked and reused
in revitalization efforts.
 Academic focus of documentation makes information inaccessible for language learning
or teaching (Poel and Swanepoel 2003).
 Culture is only marginally covered in documentation, limiting its inclusion in language
teaching curricula (Hermes et al. 2012: 382).
 New trends in Documentary Linguistics aim to bridge materials produced for language
science and language revitalization.
o Same materials, but different framing and meta language.

New Media and Technologies for Revitalization

 Language Content through Movies, TV Shows, and Other Media

o Used to spark interest among young learners.
 Flashcards, Textbooks, T-shirts, and Swag
o A large variety of resources available online.
o Includes books of folktales, flashcards, textbooks, and t-shirts.
o Example: Online bookstore of the nonprofit organization The Language
Conservancy.
 Dubbed Movies
o Bambi (1994): Dubbed in Arapaho.
o Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (2013): Dubbed in Navajo.
 Project initiated by Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation
Museum, to promote Navajo language and culture.
o Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019): Features Dora using Quechua, an
Indigenous language of Peru.
o Frozen II: Sámi version available.
 Radio
o Used to provide news and current events in native languages.
o Example: Cherokee radio (Hauk 2012).
 Television
o Example: Online media center Maamuitaau for Cree (Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation).
 Social Media
o Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp groups, mostly private.
 Teaching Games
o New tools and games using virtual reality (e.g., for Blackfoot - Condon 2019).
o Traditional computer games (e.g., for Lakota - Rausch 2019).
 Mobile Apps
o Available for language learning in a number of low-resource languages (Petersen
2013; Koole and Lewis 2018).
 Need for a Solid Documentary Base
o Understanding the sound and structures of a language is crucial.
o Necessary for creating words and sentences needed for translations and
voiceovers.
o Example: Creating a new word (e.g., for lightsaber) requires knowledge of the
phonotactics of the language.
 Revitalization through activism:

 The Linguistic Society of America’s Committee on Endangered Languages and their

Preservation has a special subcommittee for Activism.
 The subcommittee tracks pending legislation proposals related to language preservation.
 The committee believes lobbying is essential to emphasize the importance of language to
policymakers.
 Activism led to the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Programs Reauthorization
Act, introduced by US Senators Lisa Murkowski (Republican from Alaska) and Tom Udall
(Democrat from New Mexico).
 The act reauthorizes the Native American Languages Preservation Act through 2024.
 This act is a grant program that supports language-learning activities, including teacher
training and class curricula.
 As of February 2019, several Alaskan communities have received grants under this program
(Senator Murkowski Press Office 2019).
 Florey et al. (2009) see activism training as a necessary part of language documentation
training.
 Activism in the Florey et al. framework includes:

 Community outreach to generate interest in language-learning activities.

 Planning and financing language-learning activities.
 Outreach to students and the general public through curricula that teach the
importance of language documentation.
 Building community and public knowledge to support low-resource languages
(Hildebrandt 2018; Linn 2018).

 Language documentation and description are not magic bullets for reviving language use.
 Language loss often results from a general loss of community control.
 Self-determination in other life aspects could address many pressures causing language loss.
 Language activism relates to communities' rights to save their languages and seek supportive
policies and measures.
 Effective activism leading to lasting change usually comes from within the community.

 Examples of successful Indigenous activism include Hawaii and New Zealand, where full
immersion preschools and subsequent educational programs in Hawaiian and Māori have been
established (McCarty 2018).

Conclusion:

 This chapter reviewed various initiatives related to language documentation.

 Language documentation both contributes to and benefits from these activities.
 Language documentation, alongside cataloging, archiving, and revitalization, facilitates these
activities and their outcomes.
 Language catalogs, archives, and revitalization programs, in turn, enhance language
documentation.

 These initiatives enrich academic pursuits and community life.