Internal Links

 InField Homepage
 Workshops
 Field Training
 For Participants
 Costs
 Workshop Tracks
 Who is InField?
 Supporting InField
 Links
 Photo Album

 UCSB Linguistics
 UCSB

STEPS IN LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION
June 23 - 28
Life Science Computing Facility

Instructors
Alice Taff, Assistant Research Professor of Alaska Native Languages
University of Alaska Southeast

Keren Rice, Professor
University of Toronto

Course Overview
Steps will give an overview of the entire process of documentation and maintenance, from conceptualization of a project to post-production of linguistic analysis and language-learning materials. We will describe the various dimensions of a documentation project and how they fit together. Steps sessions 1 and 2 will provide a road map to each of the other inField workshops which will teach specific skills for each step. Steps 3 will explore ways to develop video and audio products.

Course Materials

• Recommended Reading List [PDF]

Relevant Links

• Deg Xinag Athabascan audio learners’dictionary
• Lingít conversation with English subtitles
• Unangam tunuu (Aleut language) phrases with English subtitles

Steps 1 - Planning and Funding
Becoming informed by the language community. Designing the project. The project as a forum for language transmission. Finding funding. Partnerships. Writing the proposal. Budget considerations. Media promotion.

Steps 2 - Implementation
Travel. Hardware and software. Recruiting assistants and speakers. Working with elders. Recording sessions. Collecting and organizing complete metadata. Archiving the original recordings. Workflow. Considering individual and group language learning processes.

Steps 3 - (A-E are identical, attend one of these sessions) Working with recordings for linguistic analysis and language learning.
Translating and transcribing in time-aligned electronic formats. Migrating data to newer formats. Post-production for linguistic analysis and language learning materials. Attendees may bring short .wav or .mp4 recordings to start work on.