DSpace Collection:

Language Endangerment and Vernacular Literacy - Is There a Link?

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Language Endangerment and Vernacular Literacy - Is There a Link? Authors: Moseley, Christopher Abstract: In this paper I shall be using the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger as a basis for exploring the question: is there a link between vernacular literacy and endangerment? While the Atlas does not provide an explicit gauge of vernacular literacy in endangered languages, I would like to try to extrapolate from the data in the Atlas, and in related sources such as Ethnologue, whether a language can be guaranteed a safer future by being written. This may provide a basis for fruitful further research. It is especially relevant in view of the recent paper by members of the Ethnologue editorial team: The World’s Languages in Crisis: An Update, in which they question some of the assumptions now being made about language endangerment and try to refine a set of criteria for measuring the threat to the world’s more vulnerable languages. Are the vulnerable ones the unwritten ones? The Occasional Paper referred to in this presentation can be downloaded from the following URL . Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

Language Landscape: Mapping the Dynamics of Language Diversity

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Language Landscape: Mapping the Dynamics of Language Diversity Authors: Ritchie, Sandy; Ritchie, Graham; Goodchild, Samantha Abstract: languagelandscape.org is a website designed to map language recordings where they were made. Users add audio or video recordings to the map and supply a wide range of linguistic and contextual annotation. The recording is then shown on the map where users can listen to it and browse the associated metadata. We have designed a flexible data schema which supports intelligent querying of the recording database allowing, for example, users to search for all recordings within a language family and then see all recordings on the map. The project has three main goals. The first is to offer speakers of minority and endangered languages an online platform where they can represent their language and culture. We also want to encourage more people to provide and access language data on the website in the hope that this will help raise awareness about language endangerment and related issues. Finally, we want to experiment with an innovative way of mapping languages. We map individual instances of language use according to where they happened. The resulting map is a series of snapshots of people engaging in communication at a certain time and place. We hope that as the project grows our underlying schema will facilitate mining of the data to reveal empirical patterns of global language use. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

Sustainable Solutions for Endangered Languages Data: The Language Archive

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Sustainable Solutions for Endangered Languages Data: The Language Archive Authors: Drude, Sebastian Abstract: Language endangerment is by now a well-known topic, and language documentation one well-established academic discipline that aims at addressing this urgent issue. Language documentation in the modern sense is concerned with creating lasting records of language in the natural environment by building annotated multi-media corpora, among other resources. A crucial point here is to ensure that the data are archived in a sustainable way – they ought to be available and usable for years and decades to come, as the basis for further research, educational projects or language revitalisation activities. Generally there is yet little awareness of the fact that the data about endangered languages are endangered themselves. This talk presents the activities and solutions being developed at The Language Archive at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen that aim at providing tools and an infrastructure that supports the creation and long-term archiving of precious language data. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

Affordable and Expedient: Platforms and Technologies for the Capture and Cartographic Presentation of Linguistic and Cultural Data

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Affordable and Expedient: Platforms and Technologies for the Capture and Cartographic Presentation of Linguistic and Cultural Data Authors: Maples, Stacey Abstract: An English language (as opposed to technical and incomprehensible) overview of current technologies and platforms for mapping, from fieldwork to presentation. Emphasis will be upon inexpensive (or free), high-tech, low-tech and no-tech solutions for capturing, managing, analysing and presenting ethnographic information. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

Why a Catalogue of Endangered Languages?

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Why a Catalogue of Endangered Languages? Authors: Campbell, Lyle Abstract: This talk is a report on the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, prepared by linguists at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa and Eastern Michigan University. It explains the Catalogue's purpose, its contributions, why it is necessary, how it is being developed, and its findings to date. It relates its potential benefits for languages groups/community members, linguists, other scholars, funding agencies, and the public at large. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

TELEMETA: An Audio Content Management System for the Web

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: TELEMETA: An Audio Content Management System for the Web Authors: Simonnot, Joséphine Abstract: Researchers in the field of humanities disciplines such as anthropology and linguistic work with a wide variety of documents: pictures, sound recordings, videos and so on. The time-based nature of these audio-visual materials raises issues of access and visualisation. For sound recordings, it is essential to manage the sounds together with their associated metadata, in an effective way, to enrich them. As there was no open source software available, the Research Center for Ethnomusicology (CREM, CNRS) and the Laboratory of Musical Acoustic (LAM) have been working together since 2007 on the design of an innovative and collaborative tool. The objective is to improve access, annotation and preservation of intangible heritage. http://archives.crem-cnrs.fr Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

Endangered Alphabets

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Endangered Alphabets Authors: Brookes, Tim Abstract: The Endangered Alphabets Project is a series of carvings, a book and a continuing blog, all of which address the fact that the world has fewer than 100 writing systems and roughly a third of them are endangered—no longer taught in schools, no longer used for commerce or government, understood only by a few elders, restricted to a few monasteries or used only in ceremonial documents, magic spells, or secret love letters. For Charting Vanishing Voices, Tim Brookes will display a dozen carvings, each of which displays the word ‘words’ in an endangered writing system. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

ScriptSource: Making Information on the World's Scripts and Languages Accessible

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: ScriptSource: Making Information on the World's Scripts and Languages Accessible Authors: Raymond, Martin Abstract: Although there is plenty of script information on the web, there has been a need for a web site to present the information authoritatively and clearly, making it easier to understand the often complex relationships between scripts, characters and languages. ScriptSource has been designed to meet that need and to answer questions such as: ‘Which scripts can be used to write that language?’, or, ‘Which writing systems use this Unicode character?’. ScriptSource imports language data from the Ethnologue, character data from Unicode and locale data from the CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository). ScriptSource also provides a place where people can document languages and scripts for the benefit of everyone. Registered users can add information in the form of entries, which may include links to other sites. They can also post ‘needs’ to enlist help in solving script-related problems. This session will cover some of the needs ScriptSource has been designed to meet, as well as showing the depth of information available on the site. SIL's Ethnologue website, covering the world's languages, will also be presented. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

Mapping Endangered Records of Endangered Cultures

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: Mapping Endangered Records of Endangered Cultures Authors: Thieberger, Nicholas Abstract: As the global effort to record as much as possible of the world's linguistic diversity proceeds apace there is a great need to ensure the longevity of the records created. While, optimistically, the records created by academic linguists should be 'well-formed' (and so be easily accessioned into an archive), there is a great deal of recording that is not in an academic context and has less chance of being 'well-formed'. More realistically it is also clear that many academics are still not engaged with new methods, and their primary recordings (if they actually make any) risk being lost completely. The first step in visualising such data using web-based tools is for it to be properly described from the moment of recording. ExSite is a tool our team is working on that will create collections on the laptop in a form that allows them to be delivered to an archive. Once the material is in a collection, there are a number of options for access and representation of the collection. The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is creating streaming access to all items in its collection (subject to deposit conditions) and we have also explored streaming media with time-aligned glossed transcripts (Eopas). We are adding records to our catalog to describe collections that are outside language archive networks, in order to make those collections discoverable. An example is a collection of keyboarded versions of missionary material in languages of the Pacific (http://anglicanhistory.org/oceania/) for which records in our catalog now provide a link from the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC) search tool. To visualise language archives as a global network rather than as a single language archive requires archives to agree on standard representations of their metadata and their collections. The international network of archives, the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archives Network (DELAMAN) has the potential to create such standards, as does OLAC. Having created interoperating metdata repositories is a prerequisite to the task of creating visualisations of the collections. Along these lines, see the discussion at the following blog posts: Where are the records? (Blog post on Endangered Languages and Cultures June 7th, 2011, http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2011/06/5649) You gotta be in it to win it (Blog post on Endangered Languages and Cultures May 29th, 2011. http://www.paradisec.org.au/blog/2011/05/you-gotta-be-in-it-to-win-it) Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

The World Oral Literature Series: An Open Access Collaboration Between WOLP and Open Book Publishers

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: The World Oral Literature Series: An Open Access Collaboration Between WOLP and Open Book Publishers Authors: Gatti, Rupert Abstract: Rupert Gatti will speak about the OBP/WOLP joint book series: Open Book Publishers and the World Oral Literature Project teamed up in 2011 to create the World Oral Literature Series in order to preserve and promote the oral literature of indigenous people. All the books in the series will be available for free online in their entirety and will be complemented by audio/video material. Rupert will outline the titles forthcoming in this series and describe publication and funding innovations developed with the first title to be published—the revised edition of the classic Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth Finnegan. Rupert Gatti is a co-‐founder and Director of Open Book Publishers. He is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he is a Director of Studies in Economics. His academic work includes microeconomic analysis of competition in online markets. Description: This presentation was given at the World Oral Literature Project 2012 workshop Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures.

World Oral Literature Project 2012 Workshop programme

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: World Oral Literature Project 2012 Workshop programme Authors: Turin, Mark Abstract: A two-day collaborative workshop bringing together scholars, digital archivists and international organisations to share experiences of mapping ethno-linguistic diversity using interactive digital technologies. Description: Friday, 29 June 2012 to Saturday, 30 June 2012 Location: CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT

World Oral Literature Project 2012 Workshop poster

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:00:00 GMT

Title: World Oral Literature Project 2012 Workshop poster Authors: Turin, Mark Abstract: A two-day collaborative workshop bringing together scholars, digital archivists and international organisations to share experiences of mapping ethno-linguistic diversity using interactive digital technologies. Description: Friday, 29 June 2012 to Saturday, 30 June 2012 Location: CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DT