ABSTRACT
When there are no fluent speakers of a language to learn from, revitalization must proceed based on existing documentation, a situation that presents a number of special challenges for learners. Documentation may be dispersed across several archives and difficult to locate; once found, the quality and coverage may be uneven, reflecting the idiosyncrasies of researchers working in different centuries and with highly variable interests and abilities. This chapter considers these and other general problems that arise when working with such materials and outlines strategies both for interpreting the language they contain and for filling in gaps that are inevitably encountered.
