Tools and Technology for Language Documentation and Revitalization

A defining feature of new methods of documenting languages is the advance in technologies for recording, transcribing, annotating, managing, and analyzing language records, which then facilitates delivering that documentation for use in various forms, in particular for language revitalization efforts. It is the affordances offered by these new methods that have expanded the possibilities of language documentation to create richer records and enabling collaboration over distance, both between linguists and between linguists and speakers. Digital materials can serve multiple purposes, often unforeseen by the original recorder. Analog recordings had limited availability in single locations and access to timepoints within a recording was labor intensive and slow. Digital media on the other hand can be instantly accessed in many locations, and permits citation to the level of a word or even a phoneme and thus offers verification of analyses with reference to the primary recordings.