11-736 Seminar on Endangered Languages

Instructors:
Alan W Black, Robert Frederking, Laura Tomokiyo


We are pleased to announce that we are again offering this graduate seminar in Fall 2017. The purpose of this seminar is to allow students to better understand the linguistic, social and political issues when working with language technologies for endangered languages. Often in LTI we concentrate on issues of modeling with small amounts of data, or designing optimal strategies for collecting data, but ignore many of the wider practical issues that appear when working with endangered languages.

This seminar will consist of reading books and papers, and having participants give presentations; a few invited talks (e.g. from field linguists, and language advocates) will also be included. It will count for 6 units of LTI course credit. It may be possible for interested students to also carry out a related 6-unit project as a lab.

We will meet Thursdays 4:30-6:00, in GHC6404.

Grade will be based on presentations and class participation.

You can still access the Fall 2016 details webpage.

Please contact AWB, LMT, or REF if interested, or if you have any questions.

Class dates and material covered:
DateMaterialPresenter
08/31/2017 IntroductionREF
09/07/2017Crystal Ch. 1 and 5AWB
09/14/2017Orality, Writing systemsREF/LMT
09/21/2017Project discussionAWB
09/28/2017Working with indigenous communitiesLMT
10/05/2017IPAMortensen
10/12/2017Project discussionsAll
10/19/2017Surprise language: LithuanianMortensen
10/26/2017InuktitutJeffrey Micher
11/02/2017Unwritten languagesAWB
11/09/2017Orthography developmentLMT
11/16/2017Elicitation/"Putting" videosAWB
11/23/2017Thanksgiving DayNative Americans
11/30/2017WALSAWB
12/07/2017Project presentationsAll