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.

While developing computational language documentation tools, researchers must center the role of language communities in the process by carefully reflecting on and designing tools to support the varying needs and priorities of different language communities. This paper provides an example of how cross-cultural considerations discussed in literature about language documentation, data sovereignty, and community-led documentation projects can motivate the design of a computational language documentation tool by reflecting on our design process as we work towards developing an annotation and data management tool. We identify three recurring themes for cross-cultural consideration in the literature - Linguistic Sovereignty, Cultural Specificity, and Reciprocity - and present eight essential features for an annotation and data management tool that reflect these themes.