This project provides funding for students to attend the 3L International Summer School in Language Documentation and Description (3LSS) from June 23 - July 3, 2009 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. It also provides support for American Sign Language interpretation so that Deaf students may attend and fully participate in the school. 3LSS 2009 offers a range of lectures, tutorials and courses on topics including areal linguistics, sociolinguistics of language endangerment, technology for language documentation, sign language documentation, and audio and video recording. 3LSS will train the next generation of field linguists in how to produce language documentation materials. These materials will help to counteract the cultural and scientific loss resulting from the rapid disappearance of many of the world's languages.
Affordable technology combined with a climate of awareness and concern for the rights and interests of indigenous peoples around the world has brought the field of linguistics to the point where large scale collaborative language documentation efforts are particularly timely. Many known languages are in danger of disappearing soon, and other languages - including rural sign languages - remain to be identified and classified. The use and structure of these languages may provide important insight into the human language faculty, and may also embed significant social and cultural knowledge that might otherwise be lost. By providing training in language documentation and description, 3LSS is directly responding to these scientific and cultural challenges.
