Documenting Endangered Languages: Toward a Distributed Global Agenda

世界语言的消失使语言文献成为新世纪最紧迫的科学任务之一。尽管在语言文档方面的研究数量有所增加，但其中一些资金即将结束，没有明确的替代方案。了解最近资金的激增取得了什么成就或没有取得什么成就，对于我们规划今后十年在这一领域的努力至关重要。为支持濒危语言的工作制定一个长期计划，对于目前正在进行或等待开始的工作至关重要。美国国家科学基金会将赞助一个研讨会，汇集主要的语言研究人员以及语言工作的现有和潜在资助者。研究人员将检查过去记录工作的结果，以评估当前工作的成功，并描述未来需要的工作。资助机构的代表将开始讨论他们的组织如何在仍然存在联系的情况下为世界范围内记录这些语言的努力作出贡献。研讨会将在新罕布什尔大学校园内的新英格兰中心举行。

The disappearance of the world's languages makes language documentation one of the most urgent scientific tasks in this new century. Although there has been an increase in the amount of research in language documentation, some of that funding is coming to an end without a clear replacement. Understanding what the recent upsurge in funding has accomplished or failed to accomplish is essential to our planning for the next decade's worth of effort in this area. Having a long-range plan for supporting work on endangered languages is essential to the efforts currently in place or waiting to begin.The National Science Foundation will sponsor a workshop to bring together leading language researchers and current and potential funders of language work. The researchers will examine the results of past documentation efforts, both to assess the success of current efforts and to describe that is needed for the future. The representatives of funding agencies will begin to address how their organizations can contribute to the world-wide effort at documenting these languages while there is still tie. The workshop will be held at the New England Center, on the campus of the University of New Hampshire.