A paper from the Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages (ComputEL-3) about making better tech tools for linguistic annotation, featuring many ideas that I wish I’d had in grad school!
Abstract:
To reduce the annotation burden placed on linguistic fieldworkers, freeing up time for deeper linguistic analysis and descriptive work, the language documentation community has been working with machine learning researchers to investigate what role technology can play, with promising early results. This paper describes a number of potential follow-up technical projects that we believe would be worthwhile and straightforward to do. We provide examples of the annotation tasks for computer scientists; descriptions of the technological challenges involved and the estimated level of complexity; and pointers to relevant literature. We hope providing a clear overview of what the needs are and what annotation challenges exist will help facilitate the dialogue and collaboration between computer scientists and fieldwork linguists.
Read the whole thing.
