How many hours of recorded speech?

[Dawn McInnes]

Be sure to video record so as to capture the body language and facial
expressions that accompany a wide range of discourse, so as to capture
the emotive context of language.

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
[mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Lindsay Marean
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2012 3:38 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: [ILAT] How many hours of recorded speech?

I'm helping to document a language with few first-language speakers
living.  We want to record them speaking naturally (and transcribe and
translate the recordings), and we hope to use this documentation as the
basis for more language description in the future.

I'm looking for people's opinions, experiences, and citations - how many
hours of recorded speech are minimally "enough" to most likely represent
the grammar of the language?  Are there particular discourse types that
we should be certain to record, besides narratives and conversations?

Best regards,
Lindsay