Endangered Languages and Cultures

Research, records and responsibility conference: Ten years of PARADISEC

11 December 2013 by Nick Thieberger

The conference celebrating ten years of PARADISEC in early December had a suitably interdisciplinary mix of presentations. Joining in the reflection on building records of the world’s languages and cultures were musicologists, linguists, and archivists from India, Hong Kong, Poland, Canada, Alaska, Hawai’i, Australia, the UK and Russia. The range of topics covered can be seen in the program: http://paradisec.org.au/RRRProgram.html

The conference ended with a discussion of what was missing in our current tools and methods. While it is clear that linguists have done pretty well at using appropriate tools for transcribing and annotating text, and building repositories to provide long-term citation and access to the material, there is still a long way to go.

Models of community engagement: LIP discussion

10 December 2013 by Lauren Gawne

Lauren Gawne recaps last week’s Linguistics in the Pub, a monthly informal gathering of linguists in Melbourne to discuss topical areas in our field.

Our final LIP for 2013 came at the end of 3 days of the PARADISEC conference, and we were fortunate to be joined by a diverse group of linguists from across the world who were able to contribute new perspectives from their fieldwork experiences. The topic of discussion was the documentation of cultural events, and what this task might mean for our research practice, and for the communities we work with. As usual, if you have another perspective on the topics covered feel free to add them in the comments below.

19 October National Day of Mourning

19 October 2013 by Jane Simpson

Today is 12 years since an unnamed boat sank on the way to Australia. The boat became known as SIEV X (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel, Unknown). At least 146 children, 142 women and 65 men from Iraq and Afghanistan drowned; their names are tracked on a non-official website. The voices of the survivors are rarely … Read more

Vale Peter Newton

8 October 2013 by Amanda Harris

Readers of this blog will be saddened to hear of the passing of Peter Newton last week after a short struggle with illness. Peter was a poet, linguist, writer and editor, Associate Sydney Jazz Club and Jazz Archivist. Peter worked closely with PARADISEC to identify, sort and catalogue the extensive linguistic collection of Arthur Capell, … Read more

Kenneth L. Hale Award: Claire Bowern (Yale University)

18 September 2013 by Jane Simpson

Excellent news! Claire Bowern (see also Anggarrgoon) has been awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award. Here’s the LSA’s commendation. Claire Bowern and her work is the embodiment of the qualities that the Linguistic Society of America would like to see in a Hale award winner. Claire has been involved with documentation of the Bardi language … Read more

The NT Government gets animated

16 September 2013 by David Nash

New animations with spoken audio in Anmatyerr (‘Anmatyere’), Kriol, Luritja, Warlpiri, and Yolŋu Matha were published on You Tube a couple of weeks ago. There are eight nicely done animations of a minute or two explaining aspects of the water supply in each of the five languages, all available through the NT Power and Water … Read more

CALC (Central Australian Linguistic Circle) meeting

26 August 201322 August 2013 by David Nash

Central Australian Linguistic Circle (CALC) 2013 Monday 9 September 2013, 8:30 am – 4:00 pm Venue: Desert People’s Centre Function Room (next to the Irrarnte Café), Desert Knowledge Precinct, South Stuart Highway, Alice Springs Map: http://desertpeoplescentre.org.au/contact-us/ Program: 8:30 am meet at Desert People’s Centre Function Room, set up, introductions 9:00-9:30 Cathy Bow, Charles … Read more

Rejoicing at AUSTRALEX

29 July 201328 July 2013 by Jane Simpson

AUSTRALEX held its biennial conference in a surprisingly green Adelaide, and the tall gums were filled with birds rejoicing. It was the biggest AUSTRALEX conference I’ve ever been to, a range of speakers from around the world, the first one with parallel sessions, and by far the greatest media coverage of any Australian linguistics/lexicography conference … Read more

Useful and interesting websites and apps about endangered languages: July LIP

11 July 2013 by rsinger

Ruth Singer recaps some of the interesting points of this week’s Melbourne Linguistics in the Pub, an informal gathering of linguists and language activists that is held monthly in Melbourne In this month’s LIP and last month’s participants shared in their latest discoveries in the world of apps and online resources. June’s meeting focused on software … Read more

The long road to language resources—CLARIN

2 July 2013 by Nick Thieberger

CLARIN, the ‘Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure’ is a European initiative to support the creation, curation and exploration of language material for research purposes and for as broad an audience as possible. The stated aim is that you should not need to be a technical expert to use the corpora, lexica and annotations that are targeted in CLARIN.

It is part of the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). This is a huge project, with a budget of some €104 million. CLARIN-D is the German section of CLARIN and it recently had its 2-year showcase, which I was able to attend (see current activities at http://clarin-d.net/de/aktuelles/). Given that this is the first two years of a longterm project it has clearly achieved a great deal already, and certainly more than can be glimpsed in a short blog post.

This is part of a ‘roadmap’ process that actually leads somewhere, unlike the Australian version I reported on earlier that appears to have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars only to have been abandoned even before it was published.