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SpeechIndexer: Tool for Endangered Language Documentation

Explore the portability, modularity, and seamless indexing of Formosan languages with rich metadata, serving surviving and endangered languages. Discover the Aristotelian roots behind language philosophy and the importance of oral tradition in disappearing languages research. Embrace hardware advancements to preserve speech-oriented language documentation with robust archiving and preservation tools. Benefit from easy dissemination for researchers and local communities, empowering language revival efforts.

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SpeechIndexer: Tool for Endangered Language Documentation

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  1. Portability, modularity and seamless speech-corpus indexing and retrieval: A software for documenting (not only) the endangered Formosan languages Jozsef Szakos, Providence University, Taichung, Taiwan Ulrike Glavitsch, Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

  2. Diverging practices in language documentation Keyboard coded collections and their internal arrangement principles: - text, mark-up, conceptual hierarchies - corpus methods for reaching comprehensive documentation - software equally serving surviving and endangered languages: concordancers, national language corpora interfaces

  3. Revealing the Aristotelian roots of philosophy behind the practice: • Ontology • (Cosmology) • (Metaphysics) • (Logic) They all lead us to treat language as a written entity (grapho, grammar). Where is the primacy of spoken language (rheo, phago), especially in studies of disappearing languages?

  4. A.D. MMIV = A.D. XML We have reached a stage in hardware and software development, where we can return to a speech oriented documentation and preservation of languages. Federal view of archiving and preservation: Speech communities endure, institutions last long, projects will finish, therefore the preservation tools should move from mainframe to portable forms. Core is the rich speech recording and grammatical, lexical, phonetic, cultural metadata are to be spherically arranged around the authentic, unchanged recordings, open for coming generations.

  5. In the field, on the roadside, caught in the web Coming from the field, we need downward and upward compatibility, dissemination of tools, empowering local, intermediary and central researchers. SERVERS: “servare” and “servire”. Conservation: complex system. Service: easy to use, easy to learn.

  6. A case: Formosan languages and SpeechIndexer, SpeechFinder Distribution, importance: Formosan homeland of Austronesian languages. National digital archiving project at Academia Sinica. Language revival effort by local communities Native language instruction in the curriculum, strong support from Ministry of Education and Aboriginal Affairs Council Language use in social events: churches.

  7. Li, 1999

  8. Dialect divisions – exam committees

  9. Starting the research in 1987 – in Front of Jade mountain – Tsou tribe

  10. The main features of SpeechIndexer – under development

  11. Conclusions, ideas, developments: “Small is beautiful”– suitable for the fieldworker and for a large project. Editing capabilities for HTML or XML will be added. Integrating the software to documentation and learning environment. Easy publication and exchange of indexed materials for all languages.

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