Web

Posted on by anggarrgoon Revitalisation, Web

Country-Lines

Country-lines is a wonderful archive of story-telling from Aboriginal Australia. The site has a growing collection of animations created in collaboration with Aboriginal communities in different parts of Australia. For example, Yanyuwa people from Boorooloola have a set of stories of saltwater dreamings, narrated in Yanyuwa and illustrated. This is a wonderful teaching resource.

Posted on by anggarrgoon Individual Languages, Miscellaneous, Web

Language Description Heritage

MPI Digital Library on language description and documentary materials.

Currently includes the Yanyuwa dictionary (that’s all for Australia at present).

This from Michael Cysouw:

it is my pleasure to announce the Language Description Heritage (LDH) open access digital library, available online at

http://ldh.livingsources.org

The LDH is being compiled at the Max Planck Society in Germany, specifically at the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in cooperation with the Max Planck Digital Library in Munich.

The goal of the LDH is to make available existing descriptive and analytic work about the world’s languages. The main focus is to provide easy access to traditionally difficult to obtain scientific contributions. Specifically, there are many unpublished theses and manuscripts with valuable data on individual languages that are often unknown and unavailable to the wider linguistic community. Also many out-of-print publications with a limited availability in research libraries deserve a much wider audience and recognition.

To enhance to flow of scientific discussion, we offer this platform to make electronic version of said contributions freely available. The Language Description Heritage Digital Library minimally provides photographic scans, downloadable in PDF format (more is planned for the future). Most importantly, all content in this digital library is available under a permissive Creative Commons (CC-by) license, so everything can be freely used for all scientific purposes.

When you are the author and/or rights-holder of a suitable publication, please and consider making your works available under a CC-license. This is a very simply process. Basically, you sign a permission form (http://ldh.livingsources.org/files/2009/08/formular13081.pdf) and send this to us. Detailed instructions can be found at http://ldh.livingsources.org/for-authors/

We recommend you assign a bare CC-by (“Attribution”) license to your work, though you might also opt for an even freer CC-zero (“No Rights Reserved”, equivalent to “Public Domain”). Clear an open licensing enhances the exchange of scientific ideas. In choosing a license, please be aware that there is a difference between scientific recognition and commercial recognition of your work. Whatever license you choose for your work, this does not regulate scientific recognition!  To obtain more scientific recognition it is best to make your work as broadly and easily available as possible, so others can find and acknowledge your work without restriction. To enhance the exchange of scientific results, we recommend you to choose a highly permissive license.

Posted on by anggarrgoon Education, Individual Languages, Lexicography, Pama-Nyungan, Web

Gayarragi, winangali

From the project web site:

Gayarragi, Winangali is an interactive multimedia resource for Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay, languages of northern New South Wales, Australia (see pop-up maps). Gayarragi, Winangali was produced as a CD-ROM but is also available by download (about 200MB, Win XP/Vista).

Gayarragi, Winangali is a resource for language learners at all levels, and for anyone interested in the Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay languages. It contains extensive language resources, including audio:

  • a searchable Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay Dictionary with over 2,600 entries, all including audio
  • 957 spoken sentences from traditional speakers, all transcribed, and hyperlinked to the dictionary
  • 30 songs and 14 stories, all transcribed, and hyperlinked to the dictionary
  • games, including crosswords and memory/matching games
  • other language resources as pdf and text files
Posted on by anggarrgoon Miscellaneous, Web

Archive for Endangered Language work

[from the ILAT list]Studies on Endangered Languages (SEL): A new open archive for linguistic research

Call: We would like to announce a new open archive for unpublished, in-progress and in-press work on endangered languages: Studies on Endangered Languages. SEL will be integrated as a topic page on Lingbuzz (http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/). To get the site going, we need a minimum critical mass of about 20 studies. If you have work you would like to make available, please send it (or a link to it) to Chris Collins (cc116@nyu.edu) or Daniel Kaufman (bahasawan@gmail.com), and we will post it when we have the critical mass.

Description: The inspiration for this archive is Lingbuzz, a thriving repository of papers on theoretical linguistics. We would like the SEL archive to serve as a repository of electronic grammars, dictionaries, and papers (including scans) on endangered languages.

As there is no precise definition of  “endangered language” – even very large languages can be considered endangered if their speaker population is rapidly decreasing – we extend the scope of this archive to include studies on under-researched languages as well.

The papers can be descriptively or theoretically oriented. For the more descriptive papers, the description and keywords that are posted on Lingbuzz (see below) should try to convey notable typological features or points of potential wider interest in the data. One of the goals of the project is to try to integrate data on endangered and under-researched languages into work being done in the theoretical linguistics community.

Papers will not be reviewed. For an overview of Lingbuzz policies, see:

http://ling.auf.net/buzzdocs/

As with Lingbuzz, each paper will appear with the following information:

Title
Name of Author
Date of Submission
Description
(one or two paragraphs)
Place of publication
(if there exists a published version)
Keywords
(one of the key words for all SEL papers will be “Endangered Languages”)
Previous version dates
Number of times downloaded

Posted on by anggarrgoon Grammars, Individual Languages, Miscellaneous, Web

Many Rivers Language Centre

From their web site:

Established in 2004, Many Rivers Aboriginal Language Centre (M.R.A.L.C.) provides strategic support for Aboriginal communities of the northern and central coasts of NSW who want to revitalise their languages. MRALC is a regional language centre that aims to support the following languages: Awabakal – Wonnarua, Bundjalung, Darkinyung, Dhanggati, Kattang (Birrbay & Warrmay), and Yaygirr – Yaegl.  Click here to view map.

Like other regional language centres, MRALC conducts research on several Aboriginal languages and supports communities in their efforts to learn and teach their languages. Regional Aboriginal Language Centres have until recently only existed in more remote areas of Australia, for example Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre, and Wangka Maya in Port Headland. There have been language programs elsewhere including NSW but they have tended to work with one local language, or closely related dialects, for example the Yuwaalaraay Language Program based in Walgett supports Yuwaalaraay, Yuwaalayaay and Gamilaraay. MRALC has an Advisory Group made up of representatives from all languages, and a Specialist Group of Elders, linguists and teachers who assist as needed. MRALC employs a coordinator – linguist, language researchers – teachers and teacher – linguists.

 The Centre has an impressive publication plan (the first volume on the Hunter River and Lake Macquarie language is out).