The 2019 International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation: Connecting Languages, Communities, and Technology

目前，世界上7000种语言中有一半以上面临消失的危险——仅在美国就至少有170种语言——迫切需要为濒危语言创建一个持久的文献记录，并支持这些语言的教学。技术为加速濒危语言的记录和复兴提供了巨大的希望，因为为主要语言开发的工具理论上可以重新用于支持小型濒危语言。然而，这项技术的前景尚未产生重大成果。语言学家仍在使用一些1980年代开发的临时和过时的工具。语言学习应用程序很受欢迎，但往往没有语言习得的研究基础。此外，软件开发以自顶向下的方式进行，很少有涉众的投入。为了解决这种脱节问题，该项目将在语言学家、语言社区成员和软件开发人员之间展开对话，为支持语言文档和保存制定健全可靠的解决方案。这将通过一系列有针对性的研讨会和圆桌讨论来实现，这些研讨会和圆桌讨论致力于将利益相关者聚集在一起，讨论语言技术的各个方面。会议还将以参展商博览会为特色，其目的是将语言社区与感兴趣的软件开发人员联系起来，从而促进与社区目标密切相关的新合作和新科学。更广泛的影响包括开发新技术工具和语言基础设施的潜力，供公民科学家和语言学家使用；透过参展商展与业界建立关系；以及在网上公开会议报告。此外，会议与会者通常包括大量来自历史上在科学领域代表性不足的群体的公民科学家，如美国原住民、阿拉斯加原住民、夏威夷原住民和其他太平洋岛民，这为扩大参与语言科学提供了机会，作为另一种更广泛的影响。作为由夏威夷大学马诺阿分校主办的2019年语言文献与保护国际会议（ICLDC）的一部分，该项目将汇集来自世界各地的顶尖学者，探索语言与技术之间的联系。自2009年成立以来，国际语言发展中心已成为推动濒危语言文献、维护和振兴奖学金的旗舰场所。参与者包括来自语言学、人类学、生物学、计算机科学和其他学科的本科生、研究生和教师。ICLDC为其高度多样化的受众提供了非正式科学教育和培训的机会，这些教育和培训包括前沿语言文档中的新方法和最佳实践，并且跨越了传统的学科界限。语言学家公认的需求是更好地整合和扩展这些工具，并为数据管理开发新的工具，而这次会议有可能增加对语言科学、存档和更广泛开放获取的数字支持。此外，该会议是传播语言文献和保护及相关学科研究成果的重要场所之一。

With more than half of the world's 7000 languages currently at risk of disappearing -- at least 170 of them in the United States alone -- there is an urgent need both to create an enduring documentary record of endangered languages and to support teaching and learning of those languages. Technology offers great promise to accelerate both the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages, since tools developed for major languages can in theory be repurposed to support small, endangered languages. However, this promise of technology has yet to yield significant results. Linguists continue to use ad-hoc and antiquated tools, some developed in the 1980's. Apps for language learning are popular but too often have no grounding in research on language acquisition. Additionally, software development proceeds in a top-down fashion, with little input from stakeholders. To address this disconnect, this project will open a dialogue between linguists, language community members, and software developers to forge robust and reliable solutions for supporting language documentation and conservation. This will be done through a series of targeted workshops and roundtable discussions devoted to bringing stakeholders together around various aspects of language technology. The conference will also feature an Exhibitor Fair with the express purpose of connecting language communities to interested software developers, leading to new collaborations and new science that closely aligns with community goals. Broader impacts include the potential to develop new technology tools and language infrastructure for use by both citizen scientists and linguists; the fostering of relationships with industry through the Exhibitor Fair; and the public online availability of the conference presentations. In addition, conference attendees typically include a large number of citizen scientists from historically underrepresented groups in the sciences, such as Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, offering opportunities for broadening participation in the language sciences as another broader impact.This project will bring together leading scholars from across the world to explore connections between language and technology as part of the 2019 International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC), hosted by the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Since its inception in 2009, ICLDC has become the flagship venue driving scholarship in the documentation, maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages. Participants include undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty from linguistics, anthropology, biology, computer science, and other academic disciplines. ICLDC offers its highly diverse audience opportunities for informal science education and training that includes new methodologies and best practices in cutting edge language documentation and that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. A recognized need among linguists is to better integrate and extend these tools as well as develop new ones for data management, and this conference has the potential to increase digital support for the language sciences, for archiving and for open access more generally. In addition, this conference serves as one of the foremost venues for the dissemination of research findings in language documentation and conservation and related disciplines.