legacy materials

[phil cash cash]

My apologies for the delay.  And, I just want to add that I appreciate your
response.

What you have just outlined in relation to the creation of legacy materials
is perhaps an ethical though practical solution to the broader problem of
documenting a dying language.  Certainly, it is a linguist’s practical
solution given that there is an emphasis on “gathering data” and besides
there may not be a more practical way.

After having gained some varied experience in linguistic fieldwork, I can
readily agree with everything you propose.  However, there is one unique
element that can be additionally considered in the long term and that is
the aspirations of the endangered language community.  It is certainly true
that endangered language communities and linguists share the same concerns
over preserving a dying language.  What needs to be recognized, however, is
that the aspirations of the endangered language community are sometimes
expressed differently than those of professional linguists.

Linguists (perhaps mostly field linguists) must make an effort to re-examine
their privileged status by taking into account the aspirations of endangered
language communities and the concerns they have towards their heritage
language.  For example, it is not uncommon for endangered language
communities to express distrust of linguists over the control of language
materials.  Lack of access creates inequity.  While this situation may be a
thing of the past, this sentiment was expressed to me quite frequently
during my own fieldwork.  A common question posed to me was “how do we get
our elder’s words back?”  The solution seems easy enough.  If they want
everything back then we, as linguists, should be able to assist them in
this goal.  If they do not want their language recorded then we should be
prepared to offer alternatives.  If they want language materials destroyed
or restricted due to certain taboos then we should be prepared to do so.
Just to identify a few.  Too, it might be a good idea if we do not insist
that the practice of linguistic field research, including the linguistic
standards they pose, somehow predominates over other interests.  For
example, in the eyes of a linguist, one community intellectuals life-work
can be dismissed outright as “sub-standard” in much the same way as other
historical works.  As I have learned in my graduate seminars, linguists
crush other linguists over research.  But going into an endangered language
community its just not the same.  Power differentials (or simple uncaring)
between a linguist and endangered language speakers is not a good thing.

My own experience confirms that documenting a dying language can’t be done
in isolation.  This is certainly not a new idea nor should I be regarded as
being any more thoughtful when I say this.  It’s just that every speech
community, every speaker, semi-speaker, dialect, and language is truly
unique and so goes one’s work there.  But certainly linguists just can’t be
“parachuting in” (as I heard in Australia recently in regard to the media
surge of late) to collect data.  Careful collaborative field work between
linguists and community speakers/intellectuals can powerfully resonate with
community aspirations and endangered language communities stand to benefit
far more than any linguist or discipline can imagine.

Just a few more thoughts here,
Phil Cash Cash


Quoting William J Poser :

> Phil Cash Cash writes:
>
>> I should add that the recent trends in the linguistics field are
>> focused almost exclusively on the creation of legacy materials
>> and less so on current archived materials despite their relatively
>> equal status.
>
> Two comments:
>
> First, there is a very good reason for this: when we're dealing with dying
> languages, it is important to gather data now, while they are still
> alive. Analysis of legacy materials can be done in the future, when
> there are no more native speakers; gathering of new material cannot.
> In a world with infinite resources, we could do both, but in the real
> world, with very limited resources, time spent studying legacy materials
> is time not spent gathering new material.
>
> Indeed, for this reason some of us have made conscious decisions about
> where to place our priorities. In my case, while I am quite interested
> in historical linguistics, some time ago I made the decision not to
> spend very much of my time on it because it is something that someone
> else can do in the future.
>
> Second, generally speaking legacy materials and new material do not
> have "relatively equal status". Of course, the relationship depends
> on exactly what legacy materials are available and what the current
> state of the language is. If the language is still in sufficiently
> good condition to yield copious new data, it is very likely that
> legacy materials will be inferior to new material for reasons
> including the following:
>
> (a) legacy material is often poorly transcribed. Relatively recent
>     material recorded by professional linguists is likely to be accurate,
>     but material recorded by non-professionals, such as missionaries,
>     fur traders, and, often, anthropologists, is often poor. Earlier
>     materials recorded by professional linguists, insofar as there
>     were such things, is often not very good, or, even if the linguist
>     heard well, may be very difficult to interpret due to the lack of
>     a standard notation at the time. (Harrington's work is a major
>     exception - he had an unusually good ear and his transcription
>     was very accurate, though it does pose difficulties of interpretation
>     since he was known to do such things as switch notation in the
>     middle of a page of notes.)
>
> (b) legacy material is often restricted in genre. For example, in
>     one major anthropological tradition, the principal activity
>     was to collect texts, where the texts usually consist primarily
>     if not exclusively of legends and/or oral history. Such texts
>     are often of great cultural and historical interest, and they
>     do yield insight into the language, but they are also quite
>     defective as a source of information. For one thing, such texts
>     are often in a form of the language different from the ordinary
>     spoken variety. In many cultures there are special conventions
>     for telling such stories and the language is often archaic.
>     One misses the language of ordinary conversation, of speeches,
>     of prayer, etc. One may even miss common grammatical forms.
>     For example, narratives may contain few or no 1st and 2nd person
>     forms since everything is told in the third person.
>
> (c) linguists of earlier times tended to focus on lexicon and morphology
>     but to have very little to say about syntax, semantics, and
>     discourse.
>
> On the other hand, if the language is in poor shape, the material
> that can be obtained from the last few speakers may itself be
> limited. The last "fluent" speakers often have a narrower range
> of genres than their parents or grandparents and may also have
> a narrower range of vocabulary due to the decreasing range of
> circumstances in which they use the language. Their language
> may even be "degenerate" (no moral judgment intended here) in
> exhibiting such effects of language death as simplification of
> morphology and loss of phonological distinctions.
>
> In sum, where the language is still in sufficiently good shape
> as to provide good data, it generally  makes sense to devote
> limited resources to gathering new material at the expense of
> analyzing legacy material.
>
> Bill