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"Toward the Interoperability of Language Resources" is the topic of a workshop to be held July 13-15 at Stanford University in conjunction with the 2007 LSA Summer Institute. It will capitalize on the momentum of two workshops held in conjunction with the 2006 LSA Summer Meeting at Michigan State University: the Digital Tools Summit in Linguistics (DTSL), and the E-MELD (Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data) workshop on digital language documentation, which focused on "Tools and Standards: The State of the Art." A major aim of both E-MELD and DTSL has been to involve an interdisciplinary group of researchers in the resolution of pressing issues in linguistic data management. E-MELD has primarily stimulated the development, evaluation and amelioration of guidelines and standards for annotation, computer-assisted lexicography, ontologies, and extant tools; DTSL focused on catalyzing the development of the next generation of tools for linguistic inquiry. In focusing on interoperability, the TILR workshop will exploit the momentum of E-MELD and DTSL to involve an even more diverse group of researchers in addressing a critical issue in the development of cyberinfrastructure for linguistics. This meeting is intended to encourage tool developers to coordinate outputs of existing tools and to plan new tools that are extensible, modular, and renewable. If tools developed by one project can be readily adapted for other similar projects, this will not only conserve development time and effort, but also constitute major progress towards the ultimate goal of creating sustainable and accessible digital resources. Organizing Committee Sponsors Arienne Dwyer (U of Kansas), Co-Chair Helen Aristar-Dry (Eastern Michigan U), Co-Chair Anthony Aristar (Eastern Michigan U) Emily Bender (U of Washington) Steven Bird (U of Melbourne) Phil Cash Cash (U of Arizona) Christopher Cieri (Linguistic Data Consortium) Lori Levin (Carnegie Mellon U) Geoffrey Rockwell (McMast

Endangered Languages / Endangered Documentation * Of the approximately 7,000 languages alive today, 96% are spoken by only 4% of the world's population (Crystal, 2000) * 80% may be gone by the end of this century (Krauss, 1992) * Although some are documented, the documentation is at risk This site promotes best practices in digitizing language data. Computer programs commonly used in field research, such as word processors and spreadsheets, produce files that are often unreadable after only a few years. Physical media like cassette tapes deteriorate even when carefully stored. This site suggests how you might collect, convert and store your data in robust digital formats. The Entrance Hall introduces the importance of best practices in digital language documentation. The Case Studies provide examples of data digitization using the technologies presented in the Classroom. The Reading Room hosts a searchable database of references, and enables users to suggest additional resources. The Work Room enables users to use online tools such as Charwrite, the Terminology Mapper and FIELD to work with their data, and the Tool Room lists various downloadable tools of use to field linguists, and enables users to suggest additional tools. Ask an Expert is a forum through which users may ask our panel of experts about creating and preserving digital language documentation. The site can also be searched, and user comments can be made on Class Room pages. If you collect or use documentation of endangered languages, this website is for you. * What are 'best practices'? * Best practices in a nutshell * Why follow best practices? * Endangered languages * Endangered documentation Implementing digital best practices will make language documentation more useful to you, as well as to the scientific and speaker communities. It will also preserve irreplaceable linguistic information for the benefit of future generations. * Start page for Linguists

ScholarSpace at University of Hawaii at Manoa > Language Documentation > Language Documentation & Conservation > Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publications > LD&C Special Publication No. 1: Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages > Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1355 Title: Chapter 7. E-learning in Endangered Language Documentation and Revitalization Author(s): Rau, D. Victoria Yang, Meng-Chien Keywords: e-learning Yami Orchid Island Taiwan Issue Date: 25-Apr-2008 Series/Report no.: LD&C Special Publication 1 Abstract: This chapter analyses the application of e-learning in the revitalization of endangered languages. It outlines the areas in which e-learning is efficacious, the attitudes of the indigenous language teachers to e-learning, the feelings of the Yami community toward this kind of pedagogy, and the reactions of the users, mostly young and adolescent learners of Yami. The findings are based on the results of surveys and in-depth studies in the Yami community and also on surveys made in a nation-wide seminar that enrolled teachers of the majority of the still-spoken aboriginal languages in Taiwan. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gather empirical data to address questions in the following three areas: (1) the contexts of developing e- Learning materials for endangered indigenous languages in Taiwan, (2) the indigenous language teachers' perceptions of e-Learning in Taiwan, and (3) the attitudes of the Yami community on Orchid Island toward e-Learning. This chapter provides a model for the many language revitalization projects underway in Taiwan and worldwide to take advantage of e-Learning. It also provides guidelines that enable each project to better understand the kinds of e-Learning that workto make e-Learning acceptable and efficacious. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1355 ISBN: 978-0-8248-3309-1 Appears in Collections: LD&C Special Public

Researchers are fighting against time to save decades of data on the world's endangered languages from ending on the digital scrap heap. Extract from a dictionary Preserving languages for future generations Computer scientist and linguist Professor Steven Bird of Melbourne University says most computer files, documents and original digital recordings created more than 10 years ago are now virtually irretrievable. Linguists are worried because they have been enthusiastic digital pioneers. Attracted by ever smaller, lighter equipment and vastly improved storage capacity, field researchers have graduated from handwritten notes and wire recordings to laptops, mini-discs, DAT tape and MP3. "We are sitting between the onset of the digital era and the mass extinction of the world's languages," said Prof Bird. "The window of opportunity is small and shutting fast." Languages disappearing "The problem is we are unable to ensure the digital storage lasts for more than five to 10 years because of problems with new media formats, new binary data formats used by software applications and the possibility that magnetic storage just simply degrades over time," said Professor Bird. When you record material in MP3 format now, what will happen in five years' time when a new format comes along? Prof Peter Austin, University of London There are a number of initiatives across the world to ensure that endangered languages are saved for future generations. "Linguists estimate that if we don't do anything, half of the world's languages will disappear in the next 100 years," said Professor Peter Austin of the School of Oriental and Africa Studies at the University of London. "There are currently about 6,500 languages in the world, so that's 3,000 languages completely going, lost forever," he told the BBC programme Go Digital. Professor Bird is involved in the Open Language Archive Community (OLAC), an attempt to create a international network of internet-based digital archives, u

Preserving While Documenting Documentation is the key to preserving endangered languages. Linguists are trying to document as many as they can by describing grammars and structural features, by recording spoken language and by using computers to store this information for study by scholars. Many endangered languages are only spoken; no written texts exist. So it is important to act quickly in order to capture them before they go extinct. To help preserve endangered languages, E-MELD (Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Language Data) aims to boost documentation by: * duplicating and digitizing high-quality recordings in an archival form; * emphasizing self-documenting and software-independent data; * giving linguists a toolkit to analyze and compare languages; * developing a General Ontology for Linguistic Description (GOLD) to allow interoperability of archives, and comparability of data and analysis. In another kind of archiving, Joel Sherzer, Anthony Woodbury and Mark McFarland (University of Texas at Austin) are ensuring that Latin America's endangered languages are documented through The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA). This Web-accessible database of audio and textual data features naturally-occurring discourse such as narratives, ceremonies, speeches, songs, poems and conversation. Using their Web browsers, scholars, students and indigenous people can access the database, search and browse the contents and download files using free software. Documentation is the right thing to do for both cultural and scientific reasons. According to NSF program director Joan Maling, we must explore as many different languages as we can to fully understand this uniquely human capacity-"Language" with a capital L. "Just as biologists can learn only from looking at many different organisms, so linguists and language scientists can learn only from studying many different human languages," she says. "Preserving lingu

The first time Jose Freeman heard his tribe's lost language through the crackle of a 70-year-old recording, he cried. "My ancestors were speaking to me," Freeman said of the sounds captured when American Indians still inhabited California's Salinas Valley. "It was like coming home."

The last native speaker of Salinan died almost a half-century ago, but today many indigenous people are finding their extinct or endangered tongues, one word or song at a time, thanks to a linguist who died in 1961 and scholars at the University of California, Davis, who are working to transcribe his life's obsession.

Linguist John Peabody Harrington spent four decades gathering more than 1 million pages of phonetic notations on languages spoken by tribes from Alaska to South America. When the technology became available, he supplemented his written records with audio recordings - first using wax cylinders, then aluminum discs. In many cases his notes provide the only record of long-gone languages.

Martha Macri, who teaches California Indian Studies at UC Davis and is one of the principal researchers on the J.P. Harrington Database Project, is working with American Indian volunteers to transcribe Harrington's notations. Researchers hope the words will bridge the decades of silence separating the people Harrington interviewed from their descendants.

Freeman hopes his 4-month-old great-granddaughter will grow up with the sense of heritage that comes with speaking her ancestors' language.

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