News from Saami documentary linguistics

Documentary linguistics is a relatively new and evolving field primarily concerned with language documentation as a comprehensive, multi-faceted and multi-purpose record of linguistic practices characteristic of the investigated speech community. Although documentary linguistics evolved from traditional field linguistic methodology with the primary aim of providing more and better data on the world’s linguistic diversity for future research in theoretical linguistics, the field is currently developing into a linguistic sub-discipline of its own. Among the most important purposes of language documentation is the provision of data for further research on and for endangered languages. 

Beside methodologies and techniques related to archiving language data and building digital language corpora, which belong to applied research per se, documentary linguistics interfaces with different aspects of language planning and language technology. The presentation focuses on the interfaces of documentary linguistics and language technology specifically from the perspective of endangered Saami languages.