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:
“It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I believe in women; and in their right to their own best possibilities in every department of life. I believe that the methods of dress practiced among women are a marked hindrance to the realization of these possibilities, and should be scorned or persuaded out of society.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“In inner-party politics, these methods lead, as we shall yet see, to this: the party organization substitutes itself for the party, the central committee substitutes itself for the organization, and, finally, a “dictator” substitutes himself for the central committee.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)