Help with documentation

[sree ganesh]

Dear Dale McCreery,
Have you seen our web based language documentation tool www.typecraft.org
Thanks
Ganesh

On 3 April 2011 10:04, Dale McCreery <mccreery at uvic.ca> wrote:

> Hello ILAT,
>
> I have a question for all of you.  First, some background.
>
> For the last two months I've been working documenting the Sgüüx̱s
> language, or South Tsimshian so that they can eventually teach it locally.
>  By the end of April I will have worked through a Coast Tsimshian
> dictionary looking for cognates, and will have gone through the Dictionary
> Development Process template from SIL recording not just vocabulary, but
> everything that I can think of in terms of ways of expressing concepts
> without specific vocabulary, work-arounds for things that aren't common,
> different ways to use words, etc.  As we work we're also getting an idea
> of groups of vocabulary, and common ways of saying things, and trying to
> expand on those.
>
> That said, even though I suspect that by the end of the month we'll have
> as much of the vocabulary of the language, both roots and set phrases etc)
> as the elder will be able to give us with the methods we're using, I feel
> there's a gap in our documenting that we need to fill if at all possible.
>
> While we've been able to get quite a few of what I call conversation
> scripts - the normal way to introduce yourself, the whole conversation,
> the way to give and accept gifts, a lot of set phrases for speeches, and
> things like that, I think that there are so many other conversations that
> we really have missed, and just from our conversations in English I get
> the impression that a lot of these common social encounters are handled
> quite differently by speakers of Tsimshian.
>
> So - Is there something like a massive list of common types of social
> interactions, or a textbook I could find that would teach me how to
> recognize them in a language, and how to go about documenting them? Sort
> of like a list of semantic domains, but for conversations?
>
> We only have one speaker left, and she is 97, so I really want to make the
> absolute best use of our time recording together.
>
> Thank you all in advance for any advice you might have!
>
> Dale McCreery
>



-- 
 T. Sree Ganesh
Language Maintainer for Telugu
Red Hat Software Services Pvt Ltd
Pune.
Email: mrthottempudi at yahoo.com
Phone:  020 - 40057382.
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