#icldc

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.

I organized several Lingwiki editathons in conjunction with the International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation at the University of Hawaii Manoa. We had a total of 37 participants who edited at least 29 articles, including 15 about languages, 5 about topics and organizations, and 9 about people. 

One participant commented, “I am one of about 3 people in the world who knows enough about the grammar of this language to edit its Wikipedia article.”

Thanks to the University of Hawaii Manoa, the organizers of ICLDC and especially Andrea Berez-Kroeker and the student volunteers who assisted with organizing the editathons. 

Here’s a list of articles edited. Feel free to check them out and see what else you can add! 

If you participated in any of the editathons but don’t see your article on here, just put it in bit.ly/lingwikisurvey and I’ll update the list. You can also check out the slides at bit.ly/lingwiki if you want advice on how to edit for linguists, or wikiedu.org if you’re thinking of assigning Wikipedia editing as a class assignment. 

Languages (15)

Yurok_language Igbo_language Anii_language Vurës_language Vera'a language Nivaclé_language Mlabri_language Yasa_language Kala_language Shor_language Awetï_language Gyele_people Kwasio_language Iau_language Sikaritai_language

Topics and organizations (5)

Ka_Haka_‘Ula_O_Ke‘elikōlani,_College_of_Hawaiian_Language Language_nest Tepehua_de_huehuetla  (on Spanish Wikipedia) Kaipuleohone University_of_Hawaii_at_Hilo

People (9)

https://www.icldc.ae/

I had a great time at ICLDC4 - and not just because it was in Honolulu, with its sunny days and (for a Singaporean resident) cool nights. The conference has become a highlight of my calendar, because of the opportunity to see the great work being done by so many committed and enthusiastic academics and communities from around the world. I've storifed some of the Twitter traffic from the conference to give you an idea of the range of presentations, and people's opinions (it was also nice that there was a real Twitter community online at the conference this year!)

I loved many of the presentations I saw, but I also just liked speaking to people and discovering what they were working on. One minute you'd be in a presntation about using Harry Potter to encourage students to develop their Cook Islands Maori language skills, the next you'd be talking to someone about the Taku River Tlingit Place names map or how researchers should use social media to encourage good habits #GetYourLangDocOut, so that good work doesn't languish on a computer where it's of no use to communities.

My own presentations went well - people were particularly interested in the work on setting benchmarks for good methodology writing in grammar writing, you can download the slides here, and when the ICLDC team upload the recordings I'll let you know! We're also working on getting a written version of the paper together, which I'm really enjoying working on, and will keep you updated about as well. 

It was also a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and make new ones. It was good to see lots of people from Melbourne and other parts of the world, and it was also great to meet some twitter people as well.

Thank you so much to the team at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa for organising the event - I'm always particularly impressed by the number of engaged students who do so much work making the conference happen.