@inproceedings{gessler-etal-2026-missing,
    title = "The Missing Middle: Language Documentation Needs Better Infrastructure, Not Better Models",
    author = {Gessler, Luke  and
      Anastasopoulos, Antonios  and
      Auderset, Sandra  and
      Bodt, Timotheus  and
      Chelliah, Shobhana  and
      Christian, Sebastien  and
      Fily, Maxime  and
      Herrera, Santiago  and
      Huber, Eva  and
      Loaiciga, Sharid  and
      Meelen, Marieke  and
      {\"O}stling, Robert  and
      Palmer, Alexis  and
      Visser, Eline},
    editor = "Agyapong, Godfred  and
      Moeller, Sarah  and
      Arppe, Antti  and
      Marashian, Ali  and
      Rosenblum, Daisy",
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Ninth Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages ({C}omput{EL}-9)",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, California, USA",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl-workshops/2026.computel-1.15/",
    pages = "136--147",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-422-4",
    abstract = "Despite decades of progress in human language technology (HLT) and growing research interest in endangered languages, practical uptake of HLT in documentary linguistics workflows remains rare. In this opinion piece, we report on a structured dialogue among approximately twenty academics convened to diagnose why this gap persists. Across all topics, we identify a recurring structural problem, which we call the missing middle: despite the existence of many potentially useful HLTs, the connective infrastructure necessary to make them genuinely accessible to linguists and language communities does not exist. We report the details of our discussion and make four specific recommendations for how those active in language documentation and HLT research might orient their future work."
}