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In:The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations
Edited by Sonja Riesberg, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig
[Studies in Language Companion Series 240] 2026
► pp. 1–26

Chapter 1
Nikolaus Himmelmann and the documentarist turn

ORCiD logo with link | University of Cologne
ORCiD logo with link | University of Freiburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Cologne | CNRS — LaCiTO
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Setting the scene: Language documentation
  • 3.The Cologne academic biotope
  • 4.Building structures
    • 4.1Putting language documentation on the agenda: The role of science foundations
    • 4.2Growing up: Language documentation and the university system
    • 4.3Diversifying the field
    • 4.4Archiving infrastructures
    • 4.5Beyond academia
  • 5.Structure of this book
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
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