Conference de Hilda Koopman sur "Syntactic Structures of the World=?iso-8859-1?Q?=92s_?=languages"

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Conference de Hilda Koopman sur  "Syntactic Structures of the World's languages" database project.

Hilda Koopman fera une présentation en Anglais 
Vendredi 14 Septembre à l'école normale supérieure, 29 rue d'ulm, Salle 236 (deuxième étage gauche).

Tout le monde est bienvenu.

The SSWL database project
Description: The goal of this presentation is to introduce and familiarize the audience with the SSWL (Syntactic Structures of the World's languages) database project (http://sswl.railsplayground.net/ and http://www.terraling.com/).
We first discuss (i) the need to build a database of the syntactic structures of the world's languages in support of linguistic research, (ii) the general goals of such a database and its design specifications, which will lead to (iii) a demonstration of the features of the current prototype, the SSWL database, and finally (iv) a discussion of future developments, with the ultimate success of the project depending on the direct participation of the linguistic community.

The SSWL prototype is open to all: formal, theoretical linguists, typologists, fieldworkers, scientists, and members of the general public curious about (the structure of) language. It has four features which make it powerful and unique.
First, its basic design allows an unlimited number of syntactic properties to be refined or added without the need for reprogramming, each exemplified by accessible, searchable primary data.
Second, the data are generated through property definitions (questionnaires with elicitation contexts), which code the relevant surface phenomena on which linguists base their theories.
Third, SSWL is language expert oriented: the data in the database on a particular language comes directly from language experts (preferably native speaker linguists or linguists with a deep knowledge of the language), thus directly involving as large a pool of potential expert contributors.
Fourth, SSWL has powerful and sophisticated search functions and visualization tools. The query interface allows millions of different kinds of searches in a linguist-friendly format, so as to allow answers to many different kinds of questions, from simple queries about the properties of individual languages, to browsing individual properties or languages, to exploring the connections among the grammatical systems of the languages in the database, to mapping and visualizing results, to verifying specific theoretical predictions, and exploring the limits of grammatical systems, etc.

The ultimate goal is to document the syntactic (and morpho-syntactic) properties of as many languages as possible, at a level of precision and detail not previously undertaken, without regard to genetic affiliation or region, including endangered languages (anywhere, including the highly endangered regional varieties in Europe), extinct languages (in so far the records allow), creoles, sign languages, etc, and to create a tool for the community and by the community.


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