Describing endangered languages

The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages, in thirty-nine chapters, provides a comprehensive overview of the efforts that are being undertaken to deal with this crisis. Its purposes are (1) to provide a reasonably comprehensive reference volume, with the scope of the volume as a whole representing the breadth of the field; (2) to highlight both the range of thinking about language endangerment and the variety of responses to it; and (3) to broaden understanding of language endangerment, language documentation, and language revitalization, and, in so doing, to encourage and contribute to fresh thinking and new findings in support of endangered languages. The handbook is organized into five parts. Part I, Endangered Languages, addresses some of the fundamental issues that are essential to understanding the nature of the endangered languages crisis. Part II, Language Documentation provides an overview of the issues and activities of concern to linguists and others in their efforts to record and document endangered languages. Part III, Language Revitalization encompasses a diverse range of topics, including approaches, practices, and strategies for revitalizing endangered and sleeping (“dormant”) languages. Part IV, Endangered Languages and Biocultural Diversity, extends the discussion of language endangerment beyond its conventional boundaries to consider the interrelationship of language, culture, and environment. Part V, Looking to the Future, addresses a variety of topics that are certain to be of consequence in future efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages.

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Building natural language processing tools for Runyakitara

Applied Linguistics Review ◽

10.1515/applirev-2020-2004 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Fridah Katushemererwe ◽

Andrew Caines ◽

Paula Buttery

Keyword(s):

Natural Language Processing ◽

Natural Language ◽

Language Learning ◽

Language Processing ◽

Primary Data ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Endangered Languages ◽

Test Case ◽

Short Supply ◽

Linguistic Resources

AbstractThis paper describes an endeavour to build natural language processing (NLP) tools for Runyakitara, a group of four closely related Bantu languages spoken in western Uganda. In contrast with major world languages such as English, for which corpora are comparatively abundant and NLP tools are well developed, computational linguistic resources for Runyakitara are in short supply. First therefore, we need to collect corpora for these languages, before we can proceed to the design of a spell-checker, grammar-checker and applications for computer-assisted language learning (CALL). We explain how we are collecting primary data for a new Runya Corpus of speech and writing, we outline the design of a morphological analyser, and discuss how we can use these new resources to build NLP tools. We are initially working with Runyankore–Rukiga, a closely-related pair of Runyakitara languages, and we frame our project in the context of NLP for low-resource languages, as well as CALL for the preservation of endangered languages. We put our project forward as a test case for the revitalization of endangered languages through education and technology.

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Grammar writing for a grammar-reading audience

Studies in Language ◽

10.1075/sl.30.2.08noo ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 30 (2) ◽

pp. 351-365 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Michael Noonan

Keyword(s):

Descriptive Study ◽

Endangered Languages ◽

The World ◽

The Many ◽

User Friendly

Thousands of languages are currently in danger of extinction without having been adequately documented by linguists. This fact represents a tragedy for communities in which endangered languages are spoken, for linguistics as a discipline and for all of humanity. One major role of the field of linguistics is to describe languages accurately and thoroughly for the benefit of all concerned. This paper presents the results of an informal survey of major users of grammatical descriptions and gives lists of dos and don’ts for those contemplating a descriptive study of one of the many endangered languages of the world. Concrete suggestions are provided that will help grammar writers produce user-friendly, thorough and useful grammatical descriptions.

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