The disappearance of the world's languages makes language documentation one of the most urgent scientific tasks in this new century. Although there has been an increase in the amount of research in language documentation, some of that funding is coming to an end without a clear replacement. Understanding what the recent upsurge in funding has accomplished or failed to accomplish is essential to our planning for the next decade's worth of effort in this area. Having a long-range plan for supporting work on endangered languages is essential to the efforts currently in place or waiting to begin.
The National Science Foundation will sponsor a workshop to bring together leading language researchers and current and potential funders of language work. The researchers will examine the results of past documentation efforts, both to assess the success of current efforts and to describe that is needed for the future. The representatives of funding agencies will begin to address how their organizations can contribute to the world-wide effort at documenting these languages while there is still tie. The workshop will be held at the New England Center, on the campus of the University of New Hampshire.
