Methods
Typical steps involve recording, transcribing (often using the International Phonetic Alphabet and/or a "practical orthography" made up for that language), annotation and analysis, translation into a language of wider communication, archiving and dissemination. Critical to the project of Language Documentation is the creation of good records in the course of doing language description. These materials can be archived, though not all archives are equally adept at handling language materials preserved in varying technological formats, nor are they all equally accessible to potential users.
Language documentation complements language description which aims to describe a language's abstract system of structures and rules in the form of a grammar or dictionary. By preparing good documentation in the form of recordings with transcripts and then collections of texts and a dictionary, the linguist can do their own work better, and can also provide materials for use by speakers of the language. New technologies permit better recordings, with better descriptions, all of which can be housed in digital archives, like AILLA or PARADISEC, and made available to the speakers with little effort.
Language documentation has also given birth to new specialized publications, such as the online journal Language Documentation & Conservation and the yearbook series Language Documentation and Description.
Read more about this topic: Language Documentation
Famous quotes containing the word methods:
“We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—”Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.””
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)
“If men got pregnant, there would be safe, reliable methods of birth control. They’d be inexpensive, too.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)