Language documentation in Indonesia. Directions, approaches and few case studies in Kalimantan and beyond

This paper is a general reflection on language documentation in Indonesia drawing on three case studies in Kalimantan and Sulawesi. In the wake of Himmelmann’s (1998) seminal work on language documentation, much activity ensued on Indonesian languages, both in Indonesia and abroad, seeking to locate language documentation in its proper place within linguistic studies and, as a consequence, expand the backing of funding agencies to such research. Now, looking at the distribution of individual projects across the Indonesian territory, it is possible to see that much has been done in terms of studies and publications, yet, more remains in terms of achieving a genuine coverage of territory and impact on national policy towards local languages. Drawing on the limited case studies on language documentation in the province of North Kalimantan, mainly the documentation on Kenyah and Punan languages (see Soriente 2006 and Césard, Guerreiro & Soriente 2015) and the general state of language documentation on the island of Kalimantan, I will address the points most relevant to making language documentation approaches and the related research in Indonesia more fascinating and, hopefully, fruitful. I will then reflect on possibilities for making language documentation part of broader interdisciplinary projects such as one very recently conducted in South Sulawesi on ‘Indonesian Boatbuilding Traditions’, where a team of archaeologists, ethnographers and linguists collaborated to make documentation outcomes more accessible to a wider public.