Seminar Series: Abstract

9.30
May 22 2009
Seminar Room B (Arndt Room)

Basic Oral Language Documentation: Getting a clear picture of the world's languages by 2020
Steven Bird (U of Melbourne)

There is a pressing need to document the world's linguistic heritage while there is still time. The consequence of language shift is that many genres -- and many whole languages -- are quickly falling out of use. Digital technologies speed up the task, yet the work is not covering a sufficient number of languages, in sufficient depth, at a sufficient rate. What would it take to compile comprehensive documentation on 5,000 languages within the space of a decade? There is not enough funding -- or linguists -- for the model of three-year grants to scale up to the necessary level of 500 per year. How could less highly trained "language workers" be equipped for the task, and what are appropriate ways to incorporate digital technologies? Is the new technique of "basic oral language documentation" (BOLD) up to the task? I will describe BOLD and report on a pilot study with Usarufa, a moribund language spoken by approximately 1200 people in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. Local literacy teachers were trained in the use of digital voice recorders for capturing linguistic events, and then adding oral transcriptions and interpretations into a language of wider communication. I will describe a variety of technical and sociological challenges, present several workflows, suggest a framework for evaluation, and present some requirements for new software to support this work. The talk will conclude with some speculations on how BOLD could be scaled up to deliver the required quantity and quality of language documentation.