field linguistics

Launch of L&C Field Manuals and Stimulus Materials

Submitted by Mark Dingemanse on Fri, 09/03/2010 - 01:25

It is our pleasure to announce the launch of the L&C Field Manuals and Stimulus Materials, a web resource providing access to many of the field manuals produced by the Language and Cognition group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

Abney & Bird's Grand Challenge: The Human Language Project

Submitted by Emily M. Bender on Thu, 08/19/2010 - 22:24

Steven Abney and Steven Bird published a provocative paper (.pdf) at ACL 2010 calling on the computational linguistics community to work to create a "Universal Corpus", an undertaking that they compare in both scale and potential impact to the Human Genome Project. Here is the abstract:

Invitation from NSF/SBE for white papers describing grand challenges

The NSF Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) released last week a Dear Colleague Letter inviting members of the research community (individuals and groups) to submit by September 30th, 2,000-word-maximum white papers outlining what they think are "grand challenge" questions in the fields supported by SBE "that are both foundational and transformative". These contributions will be used to help the Directorate make plans to support research over the coming decade and beyond.

Conference on Electronic Grammaticography—Location Change

Submitted by Jeff Good on Sun, 08/15/2010 - 11:40

The location for the Conference on Electronic Grammaticography, previously announced on this blog, has been moved to the University of Hawaii so that it can be held under the umbrella of the 2nd International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation.

Abstracts are due on 31 August 2010.

RELISH Meeting in Nijmegen

Submitted by Jeff Good on Sun, 08/15/2010 - 11:33

On 4–5 August, the RELISH project held a workshop on lexicon tools and lexical standards. Slides from many of the presentations are posted on the workshop site.

Dictionaries and Endangered Languages

Submitted by Sarah Ogilvie on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 15:21

The Endangered Languages and Dictionaries Project at the University of Cambridge investigates ways of writing dictionaries that better facilitate the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages. It explores the relationship between documenting a language and sustaining it, and entails collaboration with linguists, dictionary-makers and educators, as well as members of endangered-language communities themselves, in order to determine what lexicographic methodologies work particularly well pedagogically for language maintenance and revitalization.

Dictionaries and Endangered Languages

Submitted by Sarah Ogilvie on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 15:11

The Endangered Languages and Dictionaries Project at the University of
Cambridge investigates ways of writing dictionaries that better facilitate
the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages. It explores the
relationship between documenting a language and sustaining it, and entails
collaboration with linguists, dictionary-makers and educators, as well as
members of endangered-language communities themselves, in order to
determine what lexicographic methodologies work particularly well
pedagogically for language maintenance and revitalization.

Etnolinguistica.Org: a report from South America

Submitted by Eduardo Rivail Ri... on Thu, 03/18/2010 - 00:33

For the past few years, I've been part of a team involved in building an information hub on indigenous South American languages, a place to create and gather online resources for both academic researchers and the general public. The project, Etnolinguistica.Org, started in 2002 as a mailing list. The list quickly evolved into a major forum for the discussion of research topics on South American languages, the promotion of events and online resources—in sum, a meeting point for all those interested in South American linguistics and related areas.

Focus on applications

Submitted by Rob Malouf on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 18:41

A lot of digital ink has been spilled in recent years laying out standards and best practices for language documentation and archiving, and rightly so. Coherent standards greatly improve the usefulness and longevity of archived data, and getting standards right is a difficult process. And, measures like the recent LSA resolution and the requirements of funding agencies are an important step towards getting researchers to use these standards.

ISO 639-3 changes, four years on

Submitted by Jeff Good on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 17:50

About a year ago, in working on this paper, I attempted to do rough count of the affiliations of people submitting code change requests for the ISO 639-3 language codes.