Government language study released (fwd)

[Sean M. Burke]

At 06:46 PM 2004-12-15, MiaKalish at LFP wrote:
> > How well did they test on learning grammatical formations, and other
> > non-lexical things?
>We didn't get that far. This was for basic lexical acquisition, without
>using Any English.  We thought the success of our first project would
>excite others, and we would have the chance to develop the Flash movies
>for teaching grammar dynamically[...]

Yes, the problem of tribal politics is always a massive obstacle in any
language revitalization program.  I think the best solution is to have on
your side not just your ample enthusiasm for technologies that you feel can
be promising, but also clear documentation of past experiments showing the
technologies to be brilliantly useful for the task you're proposing --
demonstrating this with an experimental group and a control group, and
going past just lexical retention.  Having experimental results in hand is
what can put you head and shoulders over the other dog-and-pony shows
that're out there in the realm of language technology.

I mean, anybody can learn a few dozen nouns in an Apachean language -- but
it's trying to go from "he runs" to "I ran" or "he ran around" that trips
up all the learners.  Find a technology that helps with that more than
/just/ chalk-and-talk does, and show proof of how and when your new tech is
effective, and you'll be practically immune to the hassles of tribal politics.

--
Sean M. Burke    http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/