It's in the Science section of today's online version of The New York Times.
I hope these folks will remember to record the language's poems. Usually, in nonliterate traditional cultures, the poems are narrative: the Iliad, Beowulf, the verse Edda, etc. And these poems contain the language, IMHO, at its richest and finest. I remember in Greek class (I was no class hotshot, trust me) hearing that Homeric was really a collection of several regional Greek dialects, and I also read elsewhere since that "crafted" narrative epics like the Divine Comedy were also made from several regional dialects in Italian.
Maybe I'm still a Poundean (-ian?) at heart, since "poet as protector of the language" was one of his more prominent critical dicta. I do think it's true to some extent, though a lot of it would depend on the poet.
Still, I hope these language scientists don't forget the poems. They may tell the most about that culture of anything they might find.
BTW -- You may have noticed I haven't been posting weekly in a long while. I'll try to be more regular. I'm still averse to linking, as you can tell.
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