Endangered Languages and Digital Humanities -- between support and tension

Watch a video recording of this lecture.

The documentation of endangered languages is a sub-field of linguistics that began to form some 20 years ago. It has as its main objective the creation of lasting digital corpora of annotated naturalistic language use. As such, it may be counted as an early contribution to the digital humanities. In some respect, such as the establishment of living data archives, metadata, and other components of modern digital research infrastructures, it has even been a forerunner. These activities have fostered new fields of research in linguistics and neighboring areas.

In the other direction, what have the digital humanities brought to the speaker communities of endangered languages? In this talk I will examine the support that DH results and methodology have given, but also the tensions which inevitable arise between cutting edge digital technology and remote vulnerable societies.