11-736 Seminar on Endangered Languages

Instructors:
Alan W Black, Robert Frederking, Lori Levin, Laura Tomokiyo


We are pleased to announce that we are again offering this graduate seminar in Fall 2014. 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 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 on Thursdays, 3:00-4:20, room GHC6404.
Note: this is a different number from the non-existent room in the HUB listing!
We met first on 8/26/2014, but then switched to Thursdays, starting Sept. 4.

Grade will be based on presentations and class participation.

You can still access the Fall 2013 details webpage.

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

Class dates and material covered:
DateMaterialPresenter
08/26/2014Sem on ELs session 1.pptREF
09/04/2014Crystal Ch. 1 and 5AWB
09/11/2014Language Documentation/IPALMT
09/18/2014IPA/Language DocumentationLMT/Mortensen
09/25/2014Surprise language: BerberMortensen/Bensasi
10/02/2014Project discussionAll
10/09/2014WordsLSL
10/16/2014"Putting" videos/Comrie-Smith checklist subsetLSL
10/23/2014Comrie-Smith resultsLSL
10/30/2014OralityREF/AWB
11/06/2014Interim project presentationsAll
11/13/2014Writing systemsLMT
11/20/2014WALS and SSWLLSL
11/27/2014Thanksgiving DayNative Americans
12/04/2014Project presentationsAll
12/11/2014Bonus! More Project presentationsAll