Beyond the trilogy: a vision for expanded Boasian documentary outcomes

Ten years after the publication of Gippert, Himmelmann, and Mosel's (2008) 'Essentials of Language Documentation', many of their criticisms of traditional products of descriptive endeavours remain.  This talk will focus on the two they bring up which are most closely related to what has been referred to as the Boasian trilogy - specifically, that i) "provided with a grammar and a dictionary it is still impossible to know how the language is spoken [e.g.] how everyday conversational routines look like [...] or how one linguistically interacts when building a house or negotiating a marriage", and ii) "grammars and [...] dictionaries provide little that is of direct use to non-linguists [especially for this talk] researchers in other disciplines (history, anthropology, etc.) (p.19).  Beginning with an examination of the traditional trilogy and the problems inherent in trying to incorporate all aspects of language therein, we will look at a broader body of descriptive products, including grammars of language use, paralinguistic repertoires, ethnographies of communication, and ethno-thesauruses.  The talk will conclude by returning to the concept of 'texts' as the unifying body for these descriptive products, and what this expanded body of products means for language documentation.