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Language documentation is increasingly seen as a collaborative process, engaging community members as active participants. Collaborative research produces better documentation that is valuable for both the academic community and the speakers. However, in many communities, speakers and language advocates lack the skills necessary to fully engage in collaborative projects. One way to overcome this barrier is to provide language documentation training to community members. Such training should teach participants how to ethically and comprehensively complete every stage of the documentation process while offering opportunity for theoretical discussion and practical application. In this paper, we offer one possible model for community-based training in language documentation and conservation that focuses on bidirectional learning and capacity building. We describe a training workshop that was held in 2018 in Kupang, the capital of Indonesia’s Nusa Tenggara Timur (NTT) province. A collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i, Leiden University, and Artha Wacana Christian University, this workshop implemented a model based on the practices of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC), an organization devoted to training speakers to document their own languages. We detail the NTT workshop itself, summarize post-workshop feedback, and offer suggestions to others looking to provide similar training in speaker communities. 

Abstract Absolute spatial orientation systems are pervasive and diverse among Austronesian languages, and decades of research has suggested that such systems are motivated at least in part by environmental and cultural factors. In this paper, we take a quantitative approach to the study of orientation systems by presenting the results of an exploratory multifactorial analysis of spatial orientation systems across 131 Austronesian languages, representing nearly all available data on orientation systems for the family. We analyze these data using multinomial logistic regression to uncover correlations between orientation type and four predictor variables representing cultural and environmental factors: geographic distribution, economy, geography (proximity to the sea), and ruggedness of terrain. Our model suggests that while not entirely predictive of the type of orientation system, the factors geography and economy alone account for much of the variation among spatial orientation systems in our sample, supporting a “weak” form of the Sociotopographic Model (Palmer, Bill, Jonathon Lum, Jonathan Schlossberg & Alice Gaby. 2017. How does the environment shape spatial language? Evidence for sociotopography. Linguistic Typology 21(3). 457–491). Additionally, this study demonstrates the potential of quantitative analytical methods for exploring the relationship between culture, environment, and spatial orientation systems. 

Over the past three decades the field of linguistics has refocused attention on endangered languages, and enormous strides have been made to document these languages and develop archive infrastructure for language data. Although the potential for language archives to support language renewal efforts has often been tacitly assumed, much greater attention has been given to the preservation of data than to access and utilization. Documentation activities are imagined as a race against time to get language data into a lasting form before the last speakers pass away. Here I describe three examples of efforts which are working to engage with language communities and increase the accessibility and usability of language resources. Though not necessarily representative, these efforts suggest ways in which linguists, archivists, and communities can collaborate to support digital return. 

Lack of adequate descriptive metadata remains a major barrier to accessing and reusing language documentation. A collection management tool could facilitate management of linguistic data from the point of creation to the archive deposit, greatly reducing the archiving backlog and ensuring more robust and reliable data. 

This article describes findings from a workshop that initiated a dialogue between the fields of user-centered design (UCD) and language archives. One of the challenges facing language archives is the fact that they typically have multiple user groups with significantly different information needs, as well as varying cultural practices of data sharing, access and use. UCD, informed by design anthropology, can help developers of language archives identify the main user groups of a particular archive; work with those user groups to map their needs and cultural practices; and translate those insights into archive design. The article describes findings from the workshop on User-Centered Design of Language Archives in February 2016. It reviews relevant aspects of language archiving and user-centered design to construct the rationale for the workshop, relates key insights produced during the workshop, and outlines next steps in the larger research trajectory initiated by this workshop. One major insight from the workshop was the discovery that at present, most language archives are not meeting the needs of most users. Representatives from all user groups expressed frustration at the current design of most language archives. This discovery points to the value of introducing a user-centered approach, so that the design of language archives can be better informed by the needs of users. 

Western Pantar (ISO 639-3 code lev) is spoken by an estimated 10,804 people on the southwestern portion of Pantar, west of the Sirung volcanic massif. The dry region of western Pantar is separated from the northern peninsula of the island by a physical barrier consisting of a number of steep-walled canyons. No road yet connects the northern peninsula with the western part of the island. In most of the academic literature the language is referred to as Lamma, though that name more properly refers to only a single dialect of the language. This description is based on first-hand field work by the author between 2004 and 2010. 

This chapter compares kinship terminologies and kinship practices in eight Alor-Pantar languages forming a broad geographic and typological sample of the family. In spite of the close genealogical relationship between the languages, there is surprisingly little evidence of shared (cognate) kinship vocabulary, and the kinship systems exhibit great variation. The westernmost languages distinguish both maternal and paternal cross-cousins (children of opposite-sex siblings) as ideal marriage partners, while at the opposite extreme in the highlands of Alor are found languages which expressly forbid cross-cousin marriage. Even among languages whose kinship systems are roughly similar, the terms themselves are often not cognate. Likewise, cognate terms often have varying semantics across the languages. The current distribution of kinship terminologies suggests a recent drift toward symmetric exchange systems which distinguish both maternal and paternal cross-cousins, perhaps under the influence of neighboring Austronesian languages. 

Bridging the gap between access and usage requires that archive resources be MEDIATED so that they become not only accessible to user communities but also relevant. The concept of mediation as discussed here is in some ways similar to what Nathan (2006) describes as mobilization. However, unlike mobilization, mediation does not require that archive resources be transformed but only that they be presented in a way that they become more relevant. While mobilization involves the creation of derivative products, mediation can be as simple as enriching metadata descriptions with relevant fields or highlighting particularly useful resources within large collections. In particular, mediation requires that the archive knows and works closely with its user community. 

Abstract This paper is a position statement on reproducible research in linguistics, including data citation and attribution, that represents the collective views of some 41 colleagues. Reproducibility can play a key role in increasing verification and accountability in linguistic research, and is a hallmark of social science research that is currently under-represented in our field. We believe that we need to take time as a discipline to clearly articulate our expectations for how linguistic data are managed, cited, and maintained for long-term access.