This paper will propose a model of the ‘ecology’ of documentary and descriptive linguistic research. I use the term ecology, here, as a designation for the set of individuals, resources, tools, and actions that are involved in creating, archiving, and using documentary and descriptive resources. The primary goal of developing this model will be to facilitate the characterization of tools and standards for digital linguistic resources with respect to the entire documentary and descriptive process in order to (i) help researchers avoid duplicating the work of others unnecessarily and (ii) ensure that linguistics, as a discipline, does not accidentally focus on particularly salient domains (e.g. interlinear glossed text curation) at the expense of others (e.g. transmission of resources to an archive) which are equally important to the overall health of the ecology. A secondary goal of developing this model will be to lay out in one place a number of the concepts that are crucial to understanding the state-of-the-art in digital linguistic resources and tools but which are sometimes difficult to obtain detailed information on.

Language Documentation and Description, Vol. 4 (2007)