SIL Forum for Language Fieldwork 2008-001

In this case study of Kenyang, the author advances the concept that once a language has been documented and a corpus of literature produced so that the language can be studied in the community speaking it, the language is undergoing the process of development or (for short) that it is being developed. Once a language has a large amount of literature sufficiently documented, he considers the language to be developed. Those that still have little published materials that can be studied in their communities are said to be developing. A language that has no written literature is said to be underdeveloped.