Repurposing bible translations for grammar sketches

Heider, Paul M.; Hatfield, Adam; Wilson, Jennifer

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/25513 Copy

Description

Title

Repurposing bible translations for grammar sketches

Author(s)

• Heider, Paul M.
• Hatfield, Adam
• Wilson, Jennifer

Issue Date

2011-06

Keyword(s)

grammar

Abstract

With the number of languages expected to go extinct in the coming century, language documentation as a priority is gaining increasing support. We discuss an experimental method for augmenting the number and scope of available language descriptions. Unlike traditional language descriptions, this work is largely based on translations of Bible verses with the accompanying English text used as a guide to the underlying semantics. Methodologically, our work sits at the intersection of three different approaches to language and linguistics: Classics studies of undeciphered languages, traditional field methods, and corpus linguistics. We further motivate this methodology and discuss related work in section 1. Section 2 describes some of the language-general challenges posed, both practical and philosophical. Section 3 covers the traditional methodologies from which we extended our work. Section 4 includes short examples from four languages spoken in Papua New Guinea: Folopa, Mufian, Suki, and Urim. In the final section, we sketch several directions for future work.

Series/Report Name or Number

Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the Illinois Language and Linguistics Society

ISSN

0049-2388

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/25513

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