Difference between revisions of "Language selection"

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(The assignment)
(The assignment)
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* '''Create a "Language selection" page''' under your userpage (<tt>wikis.swarthmore.edu/ling073/User:student1/Language_selection</tt>, replacing <tt>student1</tt> with your username).
 
* '''Create a "Language selection" page''' under your userpage (<tt>wikis.swarthmore.edu/ling073/User:student1/Language_selection</tt>, replacing <tt>student1</tt> with your username).
 
* List in order of preference '''three''' languages you would like to work on this semester.
 
* List in order of preference '''three''' languages you would like to work on this semester.
* For each language, determine as best you can with the resources available '''a [[:wp:Morphological typology|morphological typology]] of the language'''.  E.g., is it isolating, agglutinative, etc., and how do you know?
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* For each language, determine as best you can with the resources available '''a [[:wikipedia:Morphological typology|morphological typology]] of the language'''.  E.g., is it isolating, agglutinative, etc., and how do you know?
 
* Determine '''basic information about each language'''.  How many speakers are there, where do they live, what other languages might they know, what is the status of the language in terms of its transmission to current and future generations, is there a normative orthography of some sort?  Basically all of this information should be findable on [http://ethnologue.com ethnologue] and [http://wikipedia.org/ wikipedia] (in one language or other).
 
* Determine '''basic information about each language'''.  How many speakers are there, where do they live, what other languages might they know, what is the status of the language in terms of its transmission to current and future generations, is there a normative orthography of some sort?  Basically all of this information should be findable on [http://ethnologue.com ethnologue] and [http://wikipedia.org/ wikipedia] (in one language or other).
 
* Give some estimation of how likely it will be for you to find about '''a page's worth of text''' in this language.  (If it's not at all likely, you probably should find some other language to work on.)
 
* Give some estimation of how likely it will be for you to find about '''a page's worth of text''' in this language.  (If it's not at all likely, you probably should find some other language to work on.)

Revision as of 18:38, 12 January 2017

Everyone should choose a language with at least some interesting morphological processes. Note: If you have a strong desire to work on language that is normally regarded as entirely "isolating", some accommodations may be made, but you should talk with the professor about it immediately.

Languages you may not choose

Note: If you really want, you may select a language in Apertium's incubator, but you will basically be expected to start from scratch for each assignment and ignore what's available from Apertium except to augment your resources later
  • No languages supported by Giellatekno.
  • You'll need some authentic text (i.e., text produced by native speakers, even if not standardised) in this language, whether from a source online, an excerpt of published text that you type up, someone's twitter account, or sample sentences from a grammar. See Places to look for corpora for more info.

Random list of languages that might work

  • Western Abenaki
  • Kalmyk
  • Blackfoot
  • Kabardian
  • Chamorro
  • Lakota
  • Shor
  • Guaraní
  • Syriac
  • Lingala
  • Ndebele
  • Nivkh
  • Samoan
  • Walpiri
  • Arrernte

The assignment

By the beginning of the Thursday class during the first week of classes (this semester: 11:20 on 19 January 2016), turn in the following:

  • Create a "Language selection" page under your userpage (wikis.swarthmore.edu/ling073/User:student1/Language_selection, replacing student1 with your username).
  • List in order of preference three languages you would like to work on this semester.
  • For each language, determine as best you can with the resources available a morphological typology of the language. E.g., is it isolating, agglutinative, etc., and how do you know?
  • Determine basic information about each language. How many speakers are there, where do they live, what other languages might they know, what is the status of the language in terms of its transmission to current and future generations, is there a normative orthography of some sort? Basically all of this information should be findable on ethnologue and wikipedia (in one language or other).
  • Give some estimation of how likely it will be for you to find about a page's worth of text in this language. (If it's not at all likely, you probably should find some other language to work on.)
  • Include a category tag for sp17_LanguageSelection and one for the three-letter ISO code of each language. You should have four language codes