Regional impact: amplifying traditional performance culture

An article published in the internal University of Sydney staff news by Melanie Crook on 20 November 2023 (reposted with permission) In this limited series we speak to University of Sydney colleagues who are making a positive impact in regional communities. Associate Professor Myfany Turpin, Jodie Kell and Dr Georgia Curran share a commitment to preserving … Read more

Music: From preserving the old to creating the new

Steven Gagau spoke with Michael Chow from the ABC Pacific Radio show Nesia Daily Nesia Daily provides news and entertainment from around the Pacific on the ABC Pacific radio. The show focuses on Pacific Island people doing interesting and inspiring things both in the Pacific and Australia. In this episode Michael Chow interviews Steven Gagau … Read more

Stereopsis In the Archive

Lachlan Thompson is currently working as an intern at PARADISEC through the Aurora Internship Program. He recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Arts at UNSW and is hoping to study again next year. As an intern from the Aurora Program, I was unsure if my skill set would fit with PARADISEC. I don’t … Read more

Elan file viewer

We were sent a set of Elan files to add to the PARADISEC collection. It is hard to know what is in each Elan file in a large set without opening them to view the contents. We made the Elan file viewer to deal with this issue. You can select a folder of .eaf files … Read more

Grammars from archival records

Congratulations to Katie Bicevskis who presented her PhD completion talk last Friday. The PhD thesis is a grammar of Marri Ngarr, an Indigenous language from the Northern Territory, one of what are known as the Daly languages (https://dalylanguages.org/view_language.php?id=10). It has few speakers today, as most Marri Ngarr people now speak Murrinhpatha as a first language. … Read more

Audio for dictionary headwords

I’ve been asked about getting audio of headwords into dictionaries a few times, so here’s a summary of how it can be done. The focus here is on getting individual audio files named as per the headword, so that they can be linked automatically in an online application. Some of this is a recap in … Read more

Yapese recordings

Yap is one of four states of the Federated States of Micronesia, a small nation of some 12,000 people in the western Pacific. Like most Pacific languages, the language is Austronesian, and, like most of the hundreds of languages spoken in the Pacific, there are few recordings available in this language (see the OLAC listing … Read more

Linda Barwick AM FAHA

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor Linda Barwick AM FAHA, on being honoured with an Order of Australia (Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia). Excellent recognition for her “significant service to the preservation and digitisation of cultural heritage recordings.” Linda is the founder of PARADISEC, and led it for most of its … Read more

Three hefty lexica

In recent months three large Australian bilingual dictionaries have been published, after decades of preparation. Some of their attributes are compared in the table below.

First, consider what the three works have in common. All were begun more than half a century ago, by trained linguists in collaboration with many named native speakers of the particular language. There are many cross-references between entries, and there is extensive use of example sentences to illustrate senses.

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