3. But a new conception has been emerging
Nevertheless, these antecedent areas of concern have become aligned and focused in a
fundamentally new way in a very short time—perhaps as short as a decade—into a field
that has come to be known as documentary linguistics.
4. Elements of the shift
Perhaps it’s best to start by looking at what has been happening around the emergence of a
documentary linguistics. What new things have become possible? What ideas have been
“in the air”? What is the value of linguistic documentation? To whom? And what do they
want from it? In short, what changes in the general scene surrounding linguistic
documentation in the last decade and a half have set the stage for its reconceptualization?
4.1 Technology
Let’s start with technology because it, more than anything, has changed our thinking about
the physical possibilities for linguistic documentation. Suddenly, with powerful laptops,
digital audio, video, and the worldwide web, it at least seems that we should be able to
capture and store enormous amounts of information; we should be able to search through
this information with unprecedented speed and precision; we should be able to link
transcriptions with audio- and videotapes, and entries and dictionaries or statements in
grammars with large databases of illustrative examples; we should be able to disseminate
around the globe the material now collecting dust in attics or rotting in basements; and we
should be able to keep huge amounts of information safe in perpetuity. While reality has
turned out to be more complex—it’s clear we need to agree on and coordinate our practices
before this can happen—this revolution in both the magnitude and the quality of linguistic
documentation has brought about permanent changes in what people plan and hope for.
4.2 Diversity
A second change in the general scene surrounding documentation is an increasing
emphasis on diversity as a central, organizing question in linguistics. To be sure, the study
of universal grammar has also shed light on the ways languages can differ, but
assomething of a side issue. More recently, work on universal grammar has taken increasing
responsibility for charting and explaining typological patterns; Bruce Hayes’ (1995) book
Metrical stress theory would be just one nice example; the work of Paul Hopper and others
on functional relationships among grammatical categories would be another (Hopper and
Thompson 1980). More radically still, work such as Johanna Nichols’ (1992) book
Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time has placed diversity on center stage by asking how
typological and genetic diversity can be measured, how it can be that world regions differ
markedly in the amount of diversity they show, how areal influence, genetic relatedness,
and universal grammar all affect patterns of linguistic difference, and how different
geographic, social, and population patterns affect linguistic diversity. Naturally, all such
theorizing calls for documentation of the world’s languages.
Tony Woodbury