Crowd-sourcing and Language documentation: September LIP

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Ruth Singer recaps some of the interesting points of the last week’s Linguistics in the Pub, an informal gathering of linguists and language activists that is held monthly in Melbourne The most recent LIP included a demonstration of the Ma! Iwaidja phrasebook and dictionary app developed by the Minjilang Endangered Languages Publication project (publishing as Iwaidja … Read more

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PARADISEC’s ‘Data Seal of Approval’

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As we approach our tenth year of operation, it is gratifying that PARADISEC has achieved this seal of approval (DSA), based on 16 criteria (listed below, and see how we meet these criteria here: https://assessment.datasealofapproval.org/assessment_75/seal/html/). We have been a five-star Open Language Archives Community repository for some time, which also means that we are one of the 1800 archives whose catalog and metadata conform to the Open Archives Initiative standards, but the DSA looks more broadly at the whole process of the repository, from accession of records, through their description and curation and to disaster management. This is important for our depositors to know as they can be sure that their research output is properly described and curated, and can be found using various search tools, including google, but more specifically the Australian National Data Service, OLAC and the WorldCat, and also the aggregated information served in the Virtual Language Observatory.

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Bursting through Dawes (2)

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Further to my last post, I’ve read on, and my disappointment has only deepened at the treatment of the Sydney Language in Ross Gibson’s 26 views of the starburst world.

Think about the notes you made when you were getting into learning an undocumented language … Imagine they get archived and in a century or two someone looks through them and tries to work out what was going on when you made the notes.  With only shreds of metadata and general knowledge of the historical period to go on, the future reader makes inferences from the content. Could a cluster of words in one of your vocabulary lists point to a hunch you were checking? Or a sequence of illustrative sentences could be the skeletal narrative of a memorable experience shared with your teachers.

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Signs of change?

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London is about to experience Olympic fever again with the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games taking place tonight. Already disabled athletes have started appearing in the city and interacting with locals and other visitors. The Paralympics provide a great occasion to focus attention on the issues and difficulties faced by disabled people across the … Read more

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Bursting through Dawes

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‘Aspects of the Sydney Language are a perennial fascination’, as I observed in a 2008 post, and the best record we have of the language is in the two notebooks of Lt William Dawes. Dawes himself has become a fascination and a new book pursues him to imaginary lengths. I have so far only read … Read more

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New blog about endangered languages

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Readers may like to check out and subscribe to a new blog that went live today: EL Blog from the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS, University of London. This new blog: “will add to [ELAR’s] support of collaboration between collection depositors and users by providing an additional platform for sharing information and advice. EL … Read more

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Distinguishing language documentation and language description, revisited: LIP discussion

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The distinction between language documentation and language description: a LIP discussion, Ruth Singer recaps last night’s Linguistics in the Pub, a monthly informal gathering of linguists in Melbourne to discuss topical areas in our field.

Last Monday’s debate about the distinction between language documentation and language description inspired by a recent article on the topic by Nikolaus Himmelmann in Language documentation & Conservation:
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2012. Linguistic Data Types and the Interface between Language Documentation and Description. Language Documentation & Conservation 6. 187-207

The discussion was led by Rachel Nordlinger and Nick Thieberger from the University of Melbourne. Also commenting on the debate was Eva Schultze-Berndt, visiting Melbourne Uni from the University of Manchester, via Kununurra and Cairns.

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Summer research scholarships!

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AIATSIS/ANU Summer Research Scholarship Program 2012/13 CLOSING DATE 31 AUGUST The ANU School of Language Studies (SLS) and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies (AIATSIS) are pleased to announce they will co-host two Summer Research Scholars in the 2012/13 round. Outstanding undergraduate and honours students working on Australian languages are encouraged … Read more

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New book and launch

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Talk, Text and Technology: Literacy and social practice in a remote Indigenous community by Inge Kral (The Australian National University) has just been published by Multilingual Matters in Britain. It is an ethnography of language, learning and literacy in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands communities of south-east Western Australia. This study traces the Ngaanyatjarra from the introduction … Read more

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