[RNLD] current work on digital data-based ling descriptions?

[Joseph Brooks]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies! To Luke's email, for me one of the main drawbacks
is what you point out, how the digital grammar in the form of a website
would be linked to and backed up by the archive, and how much funding that
would need. My other main worry about a website (and of course other
digital formats, as we all know) is that technology could change in some
way we can't predict, people moving on to a completely different underlying
structure for websites or something in 25-50+ years, rendering the website
useless.

I'm wondering about something like a digital grammar with the
philosophy/basic structure of ELAN - but (crucially) with a good interface
for descriptive prose. Allowing for different levels of depth akin to
showing or hiding tiers, eg you could see just the bare prose description
with cited examples, or have the original audio or video for any given
example.. But also just having its structure be more open to doing things
like linking to additional examples of the phenomenon if it's a complex or
interesting one, a 'tier' to include commentary for ex situate certain
examples in their cultural context, etc. Basically a format for description
that's neck-deep in the documentation, allowing for lots of flexibility
Anyways just a thought for now,
Joseph


On Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 3:55 PM, Luke Gessler <lukegessler at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Including citations in glosses (as I see Thieberger did in his grammar) is
> a great idea. I'm curious, would you mind sharing some of the websites
> you've seen that attempt to do this?
>
> You say you're looking for alternatives to websites, but if a grammar were
> prepared as a web document, it would be possible to hyperlink from the
> gloss in the description to the primary data, whether it's a written text,
> an audio recording, or something else. That seems pretty ideal, right?
>
> I think your concern might be that websites are often fragile and
> ephemeral (they definitely often are), but this isn't endemic to the
> medium. It is possible to use a website as a front end to a proper archive.
> One example that comes to mind is Lise Dobrin's Arapesh Grammar and
> Digital Language Archive <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/e4MdB8S9659DfJ?domain=arapesh.org>, which has been around
> since 2006 and is maintained by a technical organization at her university
> <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/W91wBaiM9WM5Uk?domain=iath.virginia.edu>.
>
> Was that the limitation you saw in websites, or are there others you see?
>
> Regards,
> Luke Gessler
>
> On Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 11:12 AM, Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada <
> jrosesla at uwo.ca> wrote:
>
>> Hi Joseph,
>>
>> There's an excellent LD&C Special Publications volume edited by Sebastian
>> Nordhoff (available here: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/0RmEBkHraqrKiZ?domain=nflrc.hawaii.edu
>> <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/0RmEBkHraqrKiZ?domain=nflrc.hawaii.edu>)
>> that might be of interest.
>>
>> Best,
>> Jorge
>>
>> -------------
>> Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada
>> Assistant Professor, Indigenous Language Sustainability
>> Department of Linguistics
>> University of Alberta
>> Tel: (+1) 780-492-5698 <(780)%20492-5698>
>> jrosesla at ualberta.ca
>>
>> *The University of Alberta acknowledges that we are located on Treaty 6
>> territory, **and respects the history, languages, and cultures of the
>> First Nations, Métis, Inuit, **and all First Peoples of Canada, whose
>> presence continues to enrich our institution.*
>>
>> On Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 9:36 AM, Joseph Brooks <
>> josephdbrooks at umail.ucsb.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> I'm wondering if anyone out there is working on (or perhaps like me
>>> "very interested in but lacking the tech-know how") creating digital
>>> linguistic descriptions that link directly to the primary data, perhaps
>>> even in new and creative ways (esp including audiovisual data)? Thinking
>>> along the lines here of something inspired from a combination of
>>> Thieberger's South Efate grammar and 2009 paper + Berez(-Kroeker) Gawne &
>>> Kelly's (among others) recent work emphasizing data citation and
>>> resolvability in linguistics.
>>>
>>> I know that some grammars have gone as far as including CDs and that
>>> there are also websites devoted to this sort of endeavor, but I'm mostly
>>> trying to find out about alternatives to those, eg the type of thing one
>>> could archive and have openly accessible.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Joseph
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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