Internet-Linguistics

Audiamus  Versions 1 and 2 A tool for building corpora of linked transcripts and digitised media. Nick Thieberger November 2007 thien@unimelb.edu.au Overview Audiamus is a tool developed in the course of writing a grammatical description of South Efate. The need for a special tool arose in the absence of a simple method to work interactively with digitised ethnographic field tapes via their transcripts. It is designed with the key principles of reusability of and accessibility to the data, and with the basic premise that every example quoted in the grammar should be provenanced to an archival source if possible. A sample workflow for using Audiamus is outlined below. It shows that media is time-aligned, then added to the Audiamus corpus from where it can be exported to Shoebox while maintaining timecodes. Audiamus is not a transcription tool!

Some Basics of Indigenous Language Revitalization Jon Reyhner Drawing from papers presented at the five Stabilizing Indigenous Languages symposiums held since 1994, activities are recommended for language revitalization at each of Joshua Fishman's eight stages of language loss. The role of writing in indigenous language revitalization is discussed, and two types of language use, primary and secondary discourse, are described. The conclusion stresses the importance of motivating language learners and using teaching methods and materials that have proven effective in indigenous communities. Symposiums on teaching indigenous languages have been held annually since 1994 under the cosponsorship of Northern Arizona University's Bilingual Multicultural Education Program in its Center for Excellence in Education. The symposiums have featured a wide range of presentations, ranging from marketing the value of native languages, to implementing immersion teaching programs, to using Total Physical Response teaching techniques, to developing indigenous language textbooks useful for children, and even to teaching languages over the telephone.