Using Computational Tools to Facilitate Corpus Collection and Language Use in Arrernte (aer)

Linguists studying endangered languages in the field often ask their informants to describe pictures that illustrate particular characteristics of their language, such as how it uses pronouns or spatial relations or concepts of time. This enables the field linguist to obtain natural language with minimal instruction, exercising minimal influence on what is said, so that accurate information about the language can be recorded. Typically such pictures are prepared in advance, based upon research hypotheses about the language -- but often new hypotheses emerge in the course of sessions with informants. Researchers at Columbia University have proposed to develop an aid to field linguists which makes it possible to test new research questions as they arise in the field. They will adapt existing text-to-scene generation software, WordsEye, which allows users to create 3D scenes from simple English input, to produce a novel tool for fieldwork called WELT, the WordsEye Linguistics Tool.

WELT tool will ultimately have two modes of operation: 1) In Phase 1, English input will automatically generate a picture which can be used to elicit a targeted description, 2) In Phase 2, input in the target language will automatically generate a picture representing the meaning of the input, to verify linguistic hypotheses with native speakers.

While WELT is intended ultimately for general use, it will initially be developed to study Arrernte, an endangered language spoken by ~6000-8000 Arrernte people in Central Australia. While some aspects of this language are well documented, a number of idiosyncratic lexical and morphological features of the language that relate to describing spatial relations are not well understood. Such features are interesting because they relate directly to how a language is used by its speakers to describe the way their perceive the world. The language group's remote location and insular culture have made it difficult to document by traditional means, so that tools such as WELT should be particularly useful. WELT will be tested in the field as part of an existing cooperation with Dr. Mark Dras and other researchers at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia.

The Division of Information & Intelligent Systems of the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering is [co-]funding this award as part of its commitment to support the development of computational tools and methods for the documentation of endangered languages.