Endangered language documentation and sociolinguistics: the case of Bolivia

Muysken, Pieter

Radboud Universiteit, Netherlands, The

Plenary

In the last ten years we have witnessed a rapidly growing international research effort in the field of the documentation of endangered languages, following reports in the 1990s which sounded the alarm bell. There are the large funding programs of the Volkswagen Stiftung and the Rausing Foundation, as well as a number of smaller foundations and national research agencies. This research has profound implications for, and is triggering major innovations in, the fields of language typology, historical linguistics and geollinguistics. However, much of this work touches upon concerns that traditionally have been the research focus of sociolinguists. In this talk I will outline some of these points of contact, the ensuing dilemma's and further research issues. I will illustrate my talk with a number of vignettes, small case studies, drawn from ongoing research on the Amerindian languages of Bolivia.

Session: Pieter Muysken
Thursday, April 3, 2008, 09:00-10:00
room: aula