Local Languages, Third Spaces, and other High-Resource Scenarios

AbstractHow can language technology address the diverse situations of the world’s languages? In one view, languages exist on a resource continuum and the challenge is to scale existing solutions, bringing under-resourced languages into the high-resource world. In another view, presented here, the world’s language ecology includes standardised languages, local languages, and contact languages. These are often subsumed under the label of “under-resourced languages” even though they have distinct functions and prospects. I explore this position and propose some ecologically-aware language technology agendas.