Digital Language Resources Research Articles

The attitudes and motivation of children towards learning rarely spoken foreign languages: a case study from Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the attitudes and motivations of two Saudi children learning Japanese as a foreign language (hence JFL), a language which is rarely spoken in the country. Studies regarding children’s motivation for learning foreign languages that are not widely spread in their contexts in informal settings are scarce. The aim of the study described in this article was to understand what had motivated two Saudi children to learn Japanese outside the school context and how they viewed themselves as ideal JFL speakers in the future. The investigation builds on Dörnyei’s [2005. The Psychology of the Language Learner: Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum] theory of the L2 Motivational Self-System. Additionally, based on Mitra’s [2012. Beyond the Hole in the Wall: Discover the Power of Self-Organised Learning. TED] concept of Self-Organised Learning Environment, the children’s efforts to learn on their own by using digital resources were taken into consideration. The researcher’s observations and the children’s interviews and diaries have been employed in order to obtain in-depth understanding of their attitudes and motivation. Results revealed that the media had played a significant role in influencing the children’s decision to learn Japanese and that they were able to use various digital language resources to support their learning without receiving formal instructions. The study provides pedagogical implications for educational authorities and researchers.

Web-based Software System for Preservation of Language Cultural Heritage

The paper presents a software system for preservation of Bulgarian language resources – parallel corpora and bilingual dictionaries. The system allows an open access to digital language resources via internet. The main components and the functionalities of the current version of the system are briefly described. The article emphasizes on the description of the module “Search” (a tool for information retrieval and data extraction from a bilingual dictionary).

Web-based software system for processing bilingual digital resources

Web-based software system for processing bilingual digital resourcesThe article describes a software management system developed at the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, BAS, for the creation, storing and processing of digital language resources in Bulgarian. Independent components of the system are intended for the creation and management of bilingual dictionaries, for information retrieval and data mining from a bilingual dictionary, and for the presentation of aligned corpora. A module which connects these components is also being developed. The system, implemented as a web-application, contains tools for compilation, editing and search within all components.

Language Technology and Teaching Lithuanian as a Second Language

A few decades ago, when the development of the information society started, the need has arisen to apply a modern language technology in the second language pedagogy. It should be noted that the digital language resources and language analysis tools have not entered yet into the process of the Lithuanian as the second language learning and teaching, however, other European countries can boast of a better integration of language technology (corpora, corpus tools and corpus-based materials) into language learning programmes. This article discusses the pedagogical application features of corpus and accentuator (http://donelaitis.vdu.lt) for Lithuanian as the second language learning and teaching. The first case study focuses on the use of the accentuator. The second case study focuses on a good practice in development, use and promotion of the corpus of Contemporary Lithuanian Language for language learning and teaching, with a focus on both technological and pedagogical innovation and on the direct use of this corpus in the classroom. Analysis of basic Lithuanian units showed that the corpora could effectively complement the traditional foreign language learning and teaching. However, attention is drawn to the fact that the contemporary Lithuanian technology still does not provide accurate data, so in some cases, the language tools should be used with caution. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.24.7067

Legal Aspects of Processing Personal Data in Development and Use of Digital Language Resources: The Estonian Perspective

Language research and development of digital language resources creates several legal challenges. The authors’ main focus in this article relates to data protection issues in the context of the development of digital language resources. This article complements the research already done on copyright aspects of digital language resources.In the first section of the article the authors analyse technical and legal nature of digital language resources and language technologies. The authors rely on the previous research and define digital language resources as a database containing oral and written texts. Since the choice of the texts constitutes a creative process then this database is protected as a work. Since the creation of language resources requires considerable investment then it can also be protected as sui generis database.Digital language resources can be used for language research and creation of language technologies. The development of language technologies (e.g. spelling checkers, machine translation, speech synthesis and recognition) relies on the existing digital language resources. Language research and language technologies are crucial for the survival of a language in the internet era. The main legal issue here is that the texts used may contain personal data.In the second section of the article the authors concentrate on the processing of personal data for scientific research and other purposes. The processing of the personal data can be based on the consent of data subject or exceptions allowed by law.In the third section of the article the authors focus on specific aspects of processing personal data in context of digital language resources. The authors address the specific issues relating to oral speech and then focus on problems common to both of them.The authors conclude that language research offers tremendous opportunities to address multilingualism issues in Europa. It is also a measure to fight against the extinction of a language. An adequate regulatory framework plays a key role in enhancement of language research.

Editorial Introduction to the Second Issue

It is my pleasure to introduce this second issue of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, containing selected papers from the 2010 TEI Members Meeting, which was held from November 11 to 13 at the University of Zadar in Croatia. All the papers in this volume are derived from presentations at the conference. The theme of the conference was Digital Texts and Language Resources, with a rather open scope of possible applications. The submitted presentations and also the papers included in ...

Seven Dimensions of Portability for Language Documentation and Description

The process of documenting and describing the world's languages is undergoing radical transformation with the rapid uptake of new digital technologies for capture, storage, annotation, and dissemination. While these technologies greatly enhance our ability to create digital data, their uncritical adoption has compromised our ability to preserve this data. Consequently, new digital language resources of all kinds-lexicons, interlinear texts, grammars, language maps, field notes, recordings-are proving difficult to reuse and less portable than the conventional printed resources they replace. This article is concerned with the portability of digital language resources, specifically with their ability to transcend computer environments, scholarly communities, domains of application, and the passage of time. We review existing software tools and digital technologies for language documentation and description, and analyze portability problems in the seven areas of CONTENT, FORMAT, DISCOVERY, ACCESS, CITATION, PRESERVATION, and RIGHTS. We articulate the values that underlie our intuitions about good and bad practices, and lay out an extensive set of recommendations to serve as a starting point for the community-wide discussion that we envisage.*