@inproceedings{yang-etal-2026-annotation,
    title = "Annotation Tools for Language Documentation: A Survey of Capabilities, Gaps, and Morphological Support",
    author = "Yang, Changbing  and
      Anderson, Pt  and
      Agyapong, Godfred  and
      Moeller, Sarah",
    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-1.9/",
    pages = "80--92",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-422-4",
    abstract = "Annotation tools are foundational infrastructure for language documentation, yet few comprehensive surveys have evaluated the tool landscape specifically from a documentary linguistics perspective. We survey 98 annotation tools across dimensions critical to language documentation workflows: annotation support, collaboration features, active learning, cost and openness, and institutional sustainability. Of the 44 tools both free and accessible for evaluation, only 15 support morpheme segmentation and glossing, and only 6 combine morphological annotation with remote collaboration at no cost. We identify a structural gap between the current tools and the requirements of field linguists working with endangered and Indigenous languages. While many NLP tools prioritize scalable annotation for high-resource settings, documentary linguists need interlinear glossed text (IGT) support and community-accessible interfaces. We taxonomise the tool landscape, present a multi-dimensional feature matrix, suggest current tools for language documentation, and conclude with concrete recommendations for tool developers and the documentary linguistics community."
}