Ngali

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MULTIPERSON MULTILINGUAL MULTIMEDIA
yunmi
we
Ngali
Patrick McConvell Research Fellow, Language
Society Australian Institute of Aboriginal
Torres Strait Islander Studies
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AUSTRALIA HAS AROUND 60 ENDANGERED LANGUAGES NOW
AND ONLY ABOUT 15 STRONG LANGUAGES THE
PROPORTION OF THE INDIGENOUS POPULATION SPEAKING
THE LANGUAGES IS DECLINING FAST

• KEY RESOURCES FOR A DISTRIBUTED TWO-WAY
  DOCUMENTATION PROGRAM IN AUSTRALIA
• REGIONAL ABORIGINAL LANGUAGE CENTRES (RALCS)
• CENTRE FOR ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES LITERACY (CALL,
  formerly SAL)
• AIATSIS
• -ASEDA
• -Audio-visual Archives

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Regional Aboriginal Language Centres in Western
Australia and the Northern Territory
State centres
Smaller centres
Network of RALCs 2002
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• Documentary Linguistics (Woodbury 2003)
• A good corpus is
• Diverse
• Large
• Its production is
• Ongoing
• Distributed
• Opportunistic (taking every opportunity to
  record)
• Ethical
• Materials should be
• Transparent
• Preservable (archived, with metadata)
• Portable

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• LANGUAGE AND CULTURE DOCUMENTATION
• The Boasian trilogy
• Grammar
• Dictionary
• Texts
• PLUS
• Wider range of speakers (gender, age, variety)
• Wider range of genres (not just
  narrativeincluding)
• Conversation
• Multilingual, multidialectal
• Context and action (making video a requirement)
• Cultural commentary (a/v files linked to original
  as annotation?)

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www.ea.gov.au - SoE Technical Reports, State of
Indigenous Languages in Australia
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PERVASIVE CODE-SWITCHING - GURINDJI/KRIOL
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GURINDJI CHILDRENS LANGUAGE
GURINDJI CHILDRENS LANGUAGE
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THE FLEETING PERFORMANCE OF TRADITIONAL COMPETENCE
A 17 year old Gurindji girl talking to a 55 year
old man, 2001
GCL
Traditional Gurindji
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CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION PROJECT
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Video of Lajamanu Warlpiri
(Carmel OShannessy team)
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• How can documentary linguistics contribute to
  language maintenance?
• Source of information on the old language which
  can assist and inspire the community to learn and
  maintain
• This information and learning can be a key
  element in land claims
• Community researchers get involved and find that
  they can discover more than outsiders
• Some outsiders place value on this work and this
  increases its prestige in the community
• Information on the linguistic ecology helps to
  develop plans for language maintenance projects
• - eg which young people keep knowledge of the old
  language and when and why do they use it? Can
  more people reproduce these conditions?

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INDIGENOUS PEOPLE DO RESEARCH
For practical purposes - but what they do
sometimes cannot be matched by non-Indigenous
researchers

• Raymatja Marika a speaker of the new koine
  Dhuwaya researched her own clan language
  Rirratjingu to produce educational material.

• Lizzie Ellis a Western Desert speaker researched
  the vocabulary of animal behaviour and hunting

Local education projects can stimulate recovery
of endangered languages affected by attrition

• Northern Cape York speakers remembered more when
  taping videos of stories for local use than in
  sessions with a linguist

• June Oscar and team working on the Bunuba CD-ROM
  at KLRC, Fitzroy Crossing

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• WHY VIDEO, NOT JUST AUDIO?
• Identifying speakers in multiperson conversation
• Relation to environment, objects (artefacts,
  paintings)
• Gaze, proxemics, gesture,facial expression
• Sign
• Sign altering propositional meaning
• -Wilkins example of negative gesture reversing
  meaning of speech in Arrernte
• Gesture elucidating force
• -Tongue protruding indicating just joking -
  sometimes visible only to some participants
• Preferred by community as record
• Memory for video costs less and less as
  technology improves
• -use of APAC storage by Central Australian
  language acqusition project

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Linking Audio-visual files to text files The
linguists way - interlinear - 3 basic tiers PLUS
other tiers Two commonly used programs SHOEBOX
- builds lexicon, provides automatic glossing,
anthropological notes, but no link to video CLAN
- no automatic glossing, but user-friendly
transcription tool for video and many useful
coding protocols and corpus analysis tools Can we
get SHOEBOX CLAN to work together? Another
way Subtitles on video Can we develop ways of
deriving subtitling from video transcription?
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ACCESS
Whalen (2003) Easier through computerization and
the Internet BUT Need for language stakeholders
to understand and agree to system. How can
community people see advantage in outsiders
accessing their cultural property? Need for a
two-way process with the community of scholars.
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LINKING RESOURCES IN DIFFERENT LOCATIONS
Relation metadata element (Dublin Core/DSpace)
relation   Catch-all for references to other
related items. relation isformatof References
additional physical form. relation
ispartof References physically or logically
containing item. relation ispartofseries Series
name and number within that series, if
available. relation haspart References
physically or logically contained
item. relation isversionof References earlier
version. relation hasversion References later
version. relation isbasedon References
source. relation isreferencedby Pointed to by
referenced resource. relation requires Reference
resource is required to support function,
delivery, or coherence of item. relation
replaces References preceding
item. relation isreplacedby References succeeding
item. relation uri References Uniform Resource
Identifier for related item. rights   Terms
governing use and reproduction. rights uri Refere
nces terms governing use and reproduction.
SPECIALIST LINGUISTIC RELATION VOCABULARY (overlap
ping other disciplines) eg x is a transcript of
y (video) Who will provide this?
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DIGITAL ANNOTATION PROJECTS
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of items within resources

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LINKING DATA IN A MULTIMEDIA PROJECT ON ARTIFACTS
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• A MORE BASIC ANNOTATION TASK Untranscribed
  material
• Need for change in grant policies to facilitate
  transcribing old material
• Here is precisely an area where a two-way team
  can work well
• An (older) speaker of the language - translating
  and providing background knowledge
• A younger inheritor of the language, learning the
  old language and honing research skills
• A linguist providing technical guidance