Keynote

Keynote speaker: Professor Peter Austin (SOAS)

Professor Peter Austin is Märit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics and Director of the Academic Project on Endangered Languages, Department of Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He came to SOAS in 2002 after having held a Humboldt Prize at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt. He was previously Foundation Professor of Linguistics at the University of Melbourne (1996-2002) and has held visiting appointments at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, University of Hong Kong, and Stanford University.

Peter is perhaps best-known for his work on endangered languages and language documentation, which will be the subject of his keynote speech, but his research interests also cover the full range of descriptive, theoretical and applied linguistics. His theoretical research focuses on Lexical Functional Grammar, morpho-syntactic typology, computer-aided lexicography and multi-media for endangered languages and he has also published on historical and comparative linguistics, typology, and Aboriginal history and biography.

Keynote speech: Endangered Languages and Language Documentation

"Across the world, minority languages are under threat from larger languages and cultures and it is estimated that by the end of this century perhaps 50% of the world's 7,000 languages will have disappeared (Austin 2007). Language Documentation is a newly emerging field of linguistics that is "concerned with the methods, tools, and theoretical underpinnings for compiling a representative and lasting multipurpose record of a natural language or one of its varieties" (Gippert, Himmelmann and Mosel 2006:v). Language Documentation has developed over the last decade in large part in response to the urgent need to make an enduring record of the world's many endangered languages and to support speakers of these languages in their desire to maintain them, fuelled also by developments in information and communication technologies which make documentation and the preservation and dissemination of language data possible in ways which could not previously be envisioned. But, essentially, it also concerns itself with role of language speakers and their rights and needs in ways not previously considered within linguistics.

In this talk I will discuss some current trends in endangered languages research and present some examples of the kinds of language documentation now being carried out."

Austin, Peter K. 2007 'Survival of Languages' in Emily F. Shuckburgh (ed.) Survival: The Survival of the Human Race, 72-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gippert, Jost, Nikolaus Himmelmann and Ulrike Mosel (eds.) 2006 Essentials of Language Documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.