Group items tagged

Technology to the "Rescue" of Endangered Languages  InvestigatorsW S Y Wang (PI), Benjamin K Tsou  Funding SourceCompetitive Earmarked Research Grant by the Research Grant Council (Hong Kong)  Project durationDec 1996 - Sep 1998 Because of the great numerical superiority of the Han ethnic group, over 95% of all Chinese, people tend to forget that there are over a hundred other ethnic groups as well in China. Like the Hans, most of these groups trace back to the dim mist of prehistory. Beijing has officially recognised only 55 of them; this gross under-estimate is due to socio-political complications as well as lack of comprehen-sive information. Experts all agree that the real number is at least twice as high. Many of these groups are disappearing fast, especially the ones that have not been officially recognised so far. The table below shows a few of these groups in South China. The data are extracted from a lecture by Professor Sun Hongkai, of the Institute of Nationalities in Beijing, given at RCL in October 1996. While the greatest concentration of these groups is in Yunnan, they can be found throughout South China.

  Technology to the "Rescue" of Endangered Languages  InvestigatorsW S Y Wang (PI), Benjamin K Tsou  Funding SourceCompetitive Earmarked Research Grant by the Research Grant Council (Hong Kong)  Project durationDec 1996 - Sep 1998 Because of the great numerical superiority of the Han ethnic group, over 95% of all Chinese, people tend to forget that there are over a hundred other ethnic groups as well in China. Like the Hans, most of these groups trace back to the dim mist of prehistory. Beijing has officially recognised only 55 of them; this gross under-estimate is due to socio-political complications as well as lack of comprehen-sive information. Experts all agree that the real number is at least twice as high. Many of these groups are disappearing fast, especially the ones that have not been officially recognised so far. The table below shows a few of these groups in South China. The data are extracted from a lecture by Professor Sun Hongkai, of the Institute of Nationalities in Beijing, given at RCL in October 1996. While the greatest concentration of these groups is in Yunnan, they can be found throughout South China.

LISRC, one of six university research centres at CityU, aims to foster interdisciplinary research in the diverse areas of linguistics, natural language processing and information science. It provides a forum for experienced researchers and young scholars to work together on problems of language and information technology in Chinese speech communities, to play a major role in advancing language information sciences globally, to provide a new and useful bridge between technology and the humanities and social sciences, and to inform the community about relevant research findings, especially within the Chinese context.