The State of Description of the Languages of the World with a Focus on Africa and the Rift Valley

Of the 7 000 languages on our planet, some are described in great detail in extensive grammatical descriptions (such as Kiswahili or English), some in a smaller number of shorter publications (e.g., Betoi --- an extinct language of Venezuela), and yet others hardly at all (e.g., Mor --- a minority language of Papua, Indonesia). At the same time, the languages of the world are endangered to various degrees (see, e.g., Moseley 2010). In order to best prioritize language documentation, knowledge of the extant documentation for every single language is obviously crucial (Hauk & Heaton 2018). Perhaps surprisingly, until now there has never been a full survey, but thanks to Glottolog (glottolog.org) there is now a sufficiently comprehensive bibliography for lesser-known languages. We will present the empirical results on language description so far worldwide, in Africa and the Rift Valley especially. Finally, we will look at some concrete suggestions for languages in need of description prioritizable from the perspectives of diversity and endangerment.