Language Article

[Garry Forger]

Language engineering for the Semantic Web: a digital library for
endangered languages
http://informationr.net/ir/9-3/paper176.html

Abstract:
Many languages are in serious danger of being lost and if nothing is
done to prevent it, half of the world's approximately 6,500 languages
will disappear in the next 100 years. Language data are central to the
research of a large social science community, including linguists,
anthropologists, archeologists, historians, sociologists, and political
scientists interested in the culture of indigenous people. The death of
a language entails the loss of a community's traditional culture, for
the language is a unique vehicle for its traditions and culture. In this
paper, we describe the effort undertaken at Wayne State University to
preserve endangered languages using the state-of-the-art information
technologies. We discuss the issues involved in such an effort, and
present the architecture of a distributed digital library which will
contain various data of endangered languages in the forms of text,
image, video and audio files and include advanced tools for intelligent
cataloguing, indexing, searching and browsing information on languages
and language analysis. Various Semantic Web technologies such as XML,
OLAC, and ontologies are used so that the digital library is developed
as a useful linguistic resource on the Semantic Web.

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"...the inequalities suffered by the many are in no way justified by the rise of a few." James Baldwin
______________________
Garry J. Forger, MLS
Assistant Director
Learning Technologies Center
The University of Arizona
1077 N. Highland Ave
Tucson, AZ 85721-0073
gforger at u.arizona.edu
http://www.ltc.arizona.edu/
Phone 520-626-7761
Fax 520-626-8220