What Can Language Technologies Do for Endangered Languages, and Vice-Versa?

This theoretical paper addresses two complementary perspectives of the interaction between natural language technologies and endangered languages. It examines the role that computational approaches to speech and text processing are playing-or could play-for endangered languages. For example, one of the questions that it raises is if and how language technologies can contribute to enhancing the documentation and presence of endangered language. Taking the other perspective, the paper also examines what endangered languages can do for computational linguistics. In particular, it asks how endangered languages can advance language technologies and concurs that increased interdisciplinary collaboration is desirable.