Jeff Good (ed.), Linguistic universals and language change. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xv+339
Journal of Linguistics
... xv+339. Reviewed by SUSAN LIXIA CHENG, University of Nottingham & Dalian Universi... more ... xv+339. Reviewed by SUSAN LIXIA CHENG, University of Nottingham & Dalian University of Technology ... Variation, change, and structure', consists of two papers: Juliette Blevins's 'Consonant epenthesis: Natural and unnatural histories' and Joan L. Bybee's 'Formal universals ...
The Lower Fungom region of Northwest Cameroon is one of the most linguistically diverse areas of ... more The Lower Fungom region of Northwest Cameroon is one of the most linguistically diverse areas of the Cameroonian Grassfields. Seven languages, or small language clusters, are spoken in its thirteen recognized villages, four of which are restricted to a single village. While the languages are all recognizably Bantoid, five of them do not have any established close relatives outside of the region, nor can they be straightforwardly shown to be closely related to each other. Until recently, the languages of the area have not been subject to extensive investigation. However, since 2005, available information on them has increased significantly, and it is now possible to provide an overview of their grammatical structures. This paper offers sketches of segment inventories, pronominal and noun class systems, and verb stem alternations of six of the region's seven languages, in addition to giving relevant background information and an updated map of the area. Received classifications of the region's languages are assessed in light of the newly collected data, and a concrete proposal is made to reclassify the group of languages presently known as Western Beboid into a referential grouping which we term the Yemne-Kimbi group.
Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages
While there have been significant improvements in speech and language processing, it remains diff... more While there have been significant improvements in speech and language processing, it remains difficult to bring these new tools to bear on challenges in endangered language documentation. We describe an effort to bridge this gap through Shared Task Evaluation Campaigns (STECs) by designing tasks that are compelling to speech and natural language processing researchers while addressing technical challenges in language documentation and exploiting growing archives of endangered language data. Based on discussions at a recent NSF-funded workshop, we present overarching design principles for these tasks: including realistic settings, diversity of data, accessibility of data and systems, and extensibility, that aim to ensure the utility of the resulting systems. Three planned tasks embodying these principles are highlighted: spanning audio processing, orthographic regularization, and automatic production of interlinear glossed text. The planned data and evaluation methodologies are also presented, motivating each task by its potential to accelerate the work of researchers and archivists working with endangered languages. Finally, we articulate the interest of the tasks to both speech and NLP researchers and speaker communities.
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Lingui... more This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Please check back later for the full article.The pervasiveness of multilingualism throughout the African continent has led it to be viewed as Africa’s “lingua franca.” Sociolinguistic research on this topic has concentrated mostly on urbanized areas where, as a norm, individual language repertoires are dominated by the interplay between European ex-colonial languages, African lingua francas, and local languages, and where language ideologies emphasize the ordering of languages in a hierarchy that is tied to social status. Similar situations are also found also in rural areas of Africa. However, recent research suggests that the dynamics of multilingualism in some rural regions, in particular those characterized by high linguistic diversity, can be of quite different character than urban ones and that the methods required to study them are distinct from those that have been used to...
, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this work. I would also l... more , and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this work. I would also like to thank the attendees at the Workshop on Creole Phonology and Morphology held in Siegen, Germany on August 22-24, 2001. Finally, special thanks should go to my primary consultant Henry Leisberger and the other members of his family who assisted on occasion. Mr. Leisberger is from the village of Gaanze in Surinam.
Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole whose lexifier languages are Portuguese and English, has a "split"... more Saramaccan, an Atlantic creole whose lexifier languages are Portuguese and English, has a "split" prosodic system wherein the majority of its words are marked for pitch accent but an important minority are marked for tone. Split prosody is typologically unusual and runs counter to McWhorter's (2001a) idea that creole languages should have "simpler" grammars than non-creole languages. However, this complication of Saramaccan grammar does appear to be broadly consistent with the more general claim of McWhorter (1998) that creoles form an identifiable class of languages on typological, in addition to sociohistorical, grounds.
C4 grammaticography colloquium: Grammars in the cloud: Linking grammatical data into grammatical stories
... The following license files are associated with this item: Creative Commons License. This ite... more ... The following license files are associated with this item: Creative Commons License. This item appears in the following Collection(s). 2nd International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC) [75]. Show full item record. ...
Avenue (Probst et al., 2002, Monson et al., 2004, Lavie et al., 2003, Font-Llitjos et al., 2005) ... more Avenue (Probst et al., 2002, Monson et al., 2004, Lavie et al., 2003, Font-Llitjos et al., 2005) 1 is a machine translation system that automatically learns translation rules between two languages. In the Avenue scenario, one of the languages is a resource rich language like ...
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