The Symposium on Marginalized and Endangered Languages: Documenting the Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent will be a distinct event within the frame of WOCAL 4, the 4th World Congress of African Linguistics at the Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA from June 17. -22. 2003.

The symposium will provide a forum at which recent research results on little or undescribed languages can be presented and discussed. It will be organized by Matthias Brenzinger, University of Cologne, Germany, who is a member of the standing committee of WOCAL. He will invite 24 distinguished scholars from Germany, from Africa, and from Europe/North America, with eight participants from each of the three areas. Main criteria for being invited will be the delivery of new, genuine research data on marginalized and endangered African languages. The dissemination of the contributions from the symposium is planned with a separate publication.

During the last few years, scholars have become more active in analysing and documenting marginalized and endangered languages on the African continent. Many of these colleagues have been motivated through activities carried out by organizations such as the Foundation for Endangered Languages, the Endangered Language Fund, the Gesellschaft für bedrohte Sprachen, and the UNESCO Intangible Heritage Unit. Substantial support for their research has been provided through special programs such as Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen by the Volkswagen-Foundation and Endangered Language Research in the Netherlands by the Netherlands Foundation for Scientific Research (NOW).

WOCAL 4 and ACAL 34 (Annual Conference on African Linguistics) will take place at the same time, thus the world's two major conferences on African languages will be combined for the first time. For that reason the symposium would benefit greatly from the presence of a wide international audience of experts on African languages. But most all, very many scholars working on endangered languages from Canada/USA and Europe will attend WOCAL 4 and the symposium within WOCAL 4.

The proposal for the symposium is strongly supported by Herman Batibo (President of the standing committee of WOCAL) as well as by Akinbiyi Akinlabi (Organizer and congress chairman of WOCAL 4).