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LINGUISTIC DISCOVERY
Conceived by Dartmouth College linguists Lindsay Whaley and Lenore Grenoble, Linguistic Discovery is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the world's least-studied and endangered languages. Its first issue debuted last winter, offering articles in searchable HTML text as well as PDF format. Linguistic Discovery was "born digital," says John James, associate librarian and leader of the DPP. "Probably ninety-nine percent of digital journals are created as extensions of their print versions," says James. "We are very interested in increasing the number of peer-reviewed journals that are entirely new creations."
Concern over dying languages has been growing in recent years. Current estimates suggest that as many as forty percent of the world's sixty-eight hundred living languages are in danger of becoming extinct, with another fifty percent having fewer than ten thousand speakers. Some experts estimate that the world is losing two languages a month.
Whaley and Grenoble, who are experts in the Tungusic languages of northern China and Siberia, have long realized the limitations of linguistic print journals.
"Studying language without getting to hear actual dialogue is like being a leaf specialist who never sees actual leaves. You can get a lot of information from books and other sources, but if you don't eventually look at real leaves, you're missing a dimension," says Whaley.
Linguistic Discovery could create opportunities for research that were previously difficult or impossible. For example, intonation, interaction, and dialogue studies are common in English and other widely spoken languages. However, linguists have found it more difficult to investigate these areas in endangered languages. "There simply aren't enough opportunities to hear conversations," says Grenoble.
She also believes Linguistic Discovery could expand the way people look at scholarly publishing by encouraging the inclusion of new kinds of data, like sound and video, as standard parts of a submission.
"Reading is just one aspect of language. No matter how good the phonetic transcription, it's still not the same as hearing it," she says. "This could reinvent the way we think about publishing research."
Initial plans are for the journal to be published twice a year. In addition to scholarly articles and opinion pieces, Linguistic Discovery will also include downloadable problem sets that linguistics teachers can use. Future projects for the journal might include online conferences or other types of interactive scholarship.
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