1,721,014 research outputs found
From documenting languages to documenting language dynamics: Experiences from Lower Fungom, Cameroon
Full text linkThe Lower Fungom region of Northwest Cameroon is noteworthy for its exceptional linguistic diversity: Seven languages, or small language clusters, are spoken in its thirteen recognized villages, which occupy a core area roughly the size of the island of Niʻihau and have populations ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand speakers. This situation prompts the consideration of not only standard documentary concerns, such as how to collect sufficient information to grammatically describe each of the region’s languages, but also raises the question: What factors have allowed Lower Fungom to develop and maintain its extreme linguistic diversity? Answering this question would not only be of relevance to linguistic scholarship but also has potential applications for addressing language endangerment in other parts of the world to the extent that the maintenance of linguistic diversity in Lower Fungom provides an obvious counterexample to dominant worldwide trends.
This talk will describe the ways in which the standard documentary toolkit has been augmented by an interdisciplinary research team studying the region to allow for the creation of a documentary record which covers both the synchronic features of the target languages and offers sufficient ethnographic and historical context to allow us to begin to understand what has allowed it to maintain such a surprising level of diversity. This has included: (i) collection of detailed geographic information, (ii) shallow archaeological exploration, (iii) ethnographic investigation aimed at cultural features most relevant to understanding patterns of language transmission and multilingualism, and (iv) examination of archival records.
By combining data from this diverse set of sources, it has been possible to model the devel-opment of diversity in Lower Fungom via a combination of historical migrations of speaker communities into the region over the last two hundred years—thus, in effect “importing” diversi-ty—and of the movement of formerly dispersed groups into compact villages resulting in the formation of clear-cut dialect boundaries which had not previously existed. A particularly signif-icant discovery has been the role of language ideologies in promoting linguistic diversity. In par-ticular, an emphasis on the role that having a unique “language” plays in justifying the political independence of a village has initiated a number of recent, abrupt processes of linguistic differ-entiation among many of the region’s villages.
In addition to outlining key results of this interdisciplinary research, this talk will provide concrete recommendations for linguists interested in engaging in similar kinds of work
A Gentle Introduction to Metadata
No full textThis is the first in a series of advice documents about metadata. In general the documents are aimed
at those developing managed and sharable digital collections and are of use to those creating still
image, moving image or audio collections. This first document defines metadata and introduces
some of the key themes and issues that are dealt with in more depth later on.Este es el primero de una serie de documentos de asesoramiento sobre los metadatos. En general, los documentos están dirigidos a desarrolladores de colecciones digitales y son de utilidad para los que generadors de colecciones de imagen fija, imagen en movimiento o audio. Este documento define los metadatos e introduce
algunos de los temas clave y cuestiones que se tratan en mayor profundidad más adelante.Aquest és el primer d'una sèrie de documents d'assessorament sobre les metadades. En general, els documents estan dirigits a desenvolupadors de col.leccions digitals i són d'utilitat per als generadors de col.leccions d'imatge fixa, imatge en moviment o àudio. Aquest document defineix les metadades i introdueix
alguns dels temes clau i qüestions que es tracten en major profunditat més endavant
Beyond the ancestral code: Towards a model for sociolinguistic language documentation
Full text linkLanguage documentation is prototypically characterized as the collection of records of a language which can form the basis of traditional descriptive products such as lexicons, grammars, and texts (see, e.g., Himmelmann 1998:168–171). This follows from an emphasis by linguists and speaker communities on the so-called “ancestral code”—that is, the variety that is taken to be most representative of a given community’s traditions (Woodbury 2011). By comparison, relatively little attention has been paid to understanding what kinds of documentary products are required to adequately capture sociolinguistic aspects of language use.
This paper reports on the results of a workshop exploring theoretical and applied aspects of sociolinguistic language documentation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). SSA is special in being characterized by high rates of multilingualism and numerous vital “small” languages, where sociolinguistically informed approaches are likely to yield useful results for academic and speaker communities. More than sixty workshop participants, from Africa and elsewhere, organized into five working groups covering the following topics: conversational data and sociolinguistic documentation, documentation of culturally significant events, how languages acquire “value” in multilingual environments, social mechanisms fostering multilingualism, and documenting the relationship between language and culture.
Among the conclusions of the working group discussions were: (i) the value of natural conversation as a way of documenting a language’s sociolinguistic setting and culture, (ii) the importance of documenting actual language use without distorting the data to make it better reflect notions of language purity (and other ideological positions), (iii) recommendations for expanded metadata collection about speakers and the recording context so that sociolinguistic configurations affecting data collection can be more adequately recorded, (iv) the necessity of establishing strong interdisciplinary partnerships when the goals of documentation go beyond structural aspects of grammar and basic lexical data, (v) that documentation including information on sociolinguistic context can usefully inform language planning decisions in ways that traditional documentation cannot, and (vi) the need for more flexible training opportunities than are presently available.
A more general conclusion of the workshop was the importance of seeing more reflexive scholarship on the goals and practices of language documentation. This is crucial if we want to ensure that commonly employed idealizations such as “speaker community” do not inappropriately lead to documentary projects focusing on selections of speech events that are not an accurate reflection of the actual practices of those individuals whose speech is being documented
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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