Call for Papers: Rosetta Project (various LCTLs) (fwd)

[Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 07:18:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Adelwisa A Weller <alagawel at umich.edu>
To: cotseal2000 at umich.edu
Subject: Call for Papers:  Rosetta Project (various LCTLs) (fwd)

fyi.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 11 May 2001 09:45:24 -0400
From: Scott McGinnis <smcginnis at nflc.org>
To: "'councilnews-list at majordomo.umd.edu'" <councilnews-list at Glue.umd.edu>
Subject: Call for Papers:  Rosetta Project (various LCTLs)


Date:  Tue, 8 May 2001 13:01:22 -0700
From:  "Jim Mason" <jimmason at longnow.org>
Subject:  New 1,000 Language Online Archive


Announcing the launch of The Rosetta Project 1,000 Language Online
Archive at http://www.RosettaProject.org
Call for text contribution and review comments.


The Rosetta Project is an attempt to create a broad corpus of language
descriptions, vernacular texts, analytic materials and audio files for
1,000 languages in a publicly accessible, online archive as well as on
various extreme term storage media.  The intention is to create a
meaningful survey and near permanent archive of 1,000 languages as well
as a unique platform for contemporary comparative linguistic research
and education.  For each language, we are collecting seven
descriptive/analytic components.

- Detailed descriptions
- Glossed vernacular texts
- Orthographies
- Swadesh 100 word vocabulary lists
- Inventories of phonemes
- Morphology and Syntax sketches
- Translations of Genesis Ch 1-3
- Audio files with transcriptions

We are creating this broad language archive through an open
contribution, open review process, similar to the strategy that created
the Oxford English Dictionary.  Though in this case, we hope the
Internet speeds the process a little bit. . . ;-)  And to help the
process along, we are initiating collection efforts at Stanford
Berkeley, Yale and SIL, as well as collaborations with various scholars
of comparative and historical linguistics.

As this is an open source project (a Linux of Linguistics), we need your
help.  We call on all language specialists, whether linguist,
anthropologist, translator or interested native speaker, to contribute
texts or provide review comments in their languages of expertise.  To
enable this collaboration, we have created an elaborate online working
environment at www.rosettaproject.org, offering access to all the texts
in our database, as well as providing various tools for text review,
annotation and discussion.

To clarify, this project is not an attempt to orchestrate massive new
research on lesser documented languages.  Rather, our intention is to
develop a powerful, well tended platform to collect, preserve and make
available the many riches of already completed descriptive linguistic
work- work that is often difficult to access or rotting away in
underfunded archives or in the file cabinets of our aging colleagues.
We are starting with the above descriptive frame for each language, but
hope to expand the list as new datasets or texts appear that need an
online home.  We have created the navigation and search environment.  It
is now yours to fill what that which interests you.

In the end, we hope this worldwide collaboration to create a new global
"Rosetta Stone" will help draw attention to the tragedy of language
extinction as well as speed the work to preserve what we have left of
this critical manifestation of the human intellect.

Please visit us at www.rosettaproject.org.  We expect you will be
pleased with what you find and hope you will join us for this very
ambitious new initiative.


Jim Mason
Director, The Rosetta Project
Long Now Foundation
http://www.longnow.org
jimmason at longnow.org