Scholars whose primary contribution is fieldwork describing previously undescribed languages, usually in connection with anthropology. Belongs here: Franz Boas, founder of the four-field approach and of descriptive Native American linguistics; Edward Sapir, extensive descriptive fieldwork across several Native American language families; and Benjamin Lee Whorf, grammatical fieldwork on Hopi. Does not belong here: a scholar working chiefly from already-recorded texts rather than fieldwork on a living, previously undescribed language.
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1. Wikipedia: Language Documentation
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While various linguists had already been practising language documentation during the 20th century, the discipline was established as a specific field within linguistics following a 1998 publication by Nikolaus Himmelmann, which many understand as foundational.
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