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。虽然语言文献研究的数量有所增加，但其中一些资金即将结束，没有明确的替代方案。了解最近资金激增的成就或失败对于我们规划未来十年在这一领域的努力至关重要。 制定一个支持濒危语言工作的长期计划，对于目前正在进行或等待开始的工作至关重要。国家科学基金会将主办一个研讨会，汇集领先的语言研究人员和语言工作的现有和潜在资助者。 研究人员将检查过去的文件工作的结果，既评估当前努力的成功，也描述未来所需的。 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做出贡献。研讨会将在新罕布什尔州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.