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Questions related to Language Documentation
Madam Sai Kiran
Madam Sai Kiran
  • asked a question related to Language Documentation
Is it good to transform all language documents into one document and later transform into user language?
Question
1 answer
  • 26 Nov 2019
i wanna place all same documents at one place to save storage? when user want that document then it will translate into user's language?
is good to do it?
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  • 23 Dec 2019
Answer
Your question is not very clear. What type of documents? What purposes?
But in general I would say: No. Do not combine the documents into one. Leave them as separate documents, so the users can find specific documents they want and have only these translated.
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Yan Jiang
Yan Jiang
  • asked a question related to Language Documentation
Are there any works or syllabi that seek a seamless integration of inferential pragmatics with discourse analysis, that can be used as a textbook ?
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11 answers
  • 13 Jun 2018
I am looking for a syllabus/textbook that I can use to teach a new course on discourse and pragmatics, which can cover the following:
1) introducing the basics of pragmatic theory
2) introducing the basics of discourse analysis
3) covering corpus-driven analysis of discourse, preferably complemented by the use of some user-friendly free software for English discourse analysis
4) broadening into some other related discussions such as inferential/cognitive pragmatics, CDA, literary stylistics, CA and rhetoric, and possibly special DA for language documentation and archiving.
would very much like to hear about others' experience and suggestions
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  • 10 Nov 2018
Answer
I think it is better to design a new syllabus with chapters chosen from different sources .It will be more enriching
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Quanfu Pan
Quanfu Pan
  • asked a question related to Language Documentation
Is there a quick way to collect and read foreign language（English） documents?
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24 answers
  • 18 Apr 2018
I am a Chinese scientific researcher. There are many foreign language readings, but I don't always get much. Is there a good way to collect and read foreign language documents more quickly， especially research on agricultural industrialization and small-scale farmer households? I hope you have enlighten me. Thank you.
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  • 26 Apr 2018
Answer
6. Learn phrases, not words
What the science says:
Some words have one meaning on their own, but a completely different meaning when they are put together with other words. As we listen to or read a sentence in English, we look for these groups.
In the sentence “I ran around,” you are saying that you ran without a goal. If you add just two words, it turns into “I ran around the park,” which has a completely different meaning. You learn more and more information about the sentence and the words in it as you listen.
This might not seem so surprising, but until recently linguists (people who study languages) thought that we listen to a whole sentence and then break it down into parts. One study explains that the order of the words might be more important than the whole sentence.
Think about it this way: “Bread and butter” and “butter and bread” have the same meaning, but only one has the right order of words (bread and butter).
What you can do:
Learning words on their own can be difficult since many words have more than one meaning. Just knowing a word does not mean you will be able to actually use it. So when you learn new words, learn how they are used in phrases, sentences and conversation.
The word “retrospect,” for example, means to look back on something. You will probably never hear it used without the word “in” before it: “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have eaten the whole cake.” Learn how words are grouped and you will sound more natural when you speak.
7. Learn with music
What the science says:
Do you remember the cute songs you learned when you were very young? I bet you can still sing the songs your mother or your teachers taught you. But you learned those songs a very long time ago! How can you still remember them so well?
When you are a child, music is very important for language learning. That is why children have songs that help them remember numbers and letters, learn how vowels work and learn new words. Songs repetition and music to help kids remember important parts of language.
Adults learn easier with music, too. Language skills are usually seen as very important and music is not as important. But according to one study, the ways we learn both music and language are very similar, and both are very important! We learn that “ba” and “da” sound different, in the same way that we learn that a trumpet and a piano sound different.
What you can do:
Language is almost a kind of music of its own. Learning language skills by using music makes learning easier and faster. There are many songs for learning English, many of which you can find on YouTube or right here on FluentU. Listen to songs and sing along to them, and you will be speaking like a native soon!
There are no real shortcuts for learning English quickly, but science has proven that some tips work better and faster than others.
According to scientific studies and experiments, the tips above will help you learn English better and faster.
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Massimiliano Grassi
Massimiliano Grassi
  • asked a question related to Language Documentation
Topic analysis with rarely occurring topic and small document corpora. Which technique should I use?
Question
3 answers
  • 15 Oct 2016
Hi everyone,
I need to perform a topic analysis on various corpora of documents and I need a procedure that can be applied to all of these corpora independently in a standard way. 
These are the characteristics of the corpora:
  • the number of documents in each corpus will hardly be more the 500 and most of the times is around 50;
  • documents are generally very shot (from 20 to 200 words most fo the times);
  • each corpus is independent and analyses will never be done merging corpora, but only performed within each corpus;
  • the language of documents will be homogeneous within each corpus, but it may vary between corpora;
  • the number of topics is unknown a priori, and topics will be different in every corpus.
 Specifically, I’m looking for a procedure that:
  • automatically detects the best number of recurrent topic in each corpus, but that it is also able to take into account that some documents may have “peculiar” topics that are not represented in any other document. These are not of interest and may be seen as a kind of “residuals”. If these peculiar, single-document topics are identified as further topics by the model it is fine too;
  • gives for every document a % for all the identified recurrent topics, plus a % that is “residual” from them. Otherwise, also the single-document topics have to be identified and scored in each document.
if I understand the LDA models well, they don’t allow this “residual” part and the sum of the %-score of the topics is always 1. Moreover, they are not good in identifying single-document topics and the result for these “outcast” documents is somehow a uniform score for all the topics, even though none of them is truly present in the document.
Are there other topic analysis models that better fit with my task or I misunderstood the LDA models?
Thank you very much!
Massimiliano
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  • 23 Oct 2016
Answer
I do not think topic analysis on a collection of 50 documents would give robust and stable results since LDA is generally an ill-posed task which has many solutions. Why can't you perform some soft clustering to detect "outliers" with peculiar topics. I am not an expert in topic modelling but the authors of this work suggest a general model that embraces LDA and PLSA (though I do not know whether it is used in practice). If I understand them properly, you could regularize the model to enforce the topics to be as diverse as possible but that is by no means a "black-box" procedure.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Konstantin_Vorontsov/publication/262314923_Robust_PLSA_performs_better_than_LDA/links/54e9f3480cf25ba91c814c64.pdf
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John Bruce Langley
John Bruce Langley
  • asked a question related to Language Documentation
Can anyone offer strategies for modernizing older orthographies into modern translation formats?
Question
4 answers
  • 11 Sept 2015
I am undertaking a translation of the Shawnee New Testament and am using a 1929 orthography instituted by Thomas Wildcat Alford in translating the four gospels. Research shows that other orthographies have been used in the past but have not been universally accepted by the Shawnee. The language is currently spoken by an estimated 200 people. Those of Shawnee heritage number more than 14,000 and many would appreciate this translation in that it could help to revitalize this endangered language. I am interested in any former research or strategies to be followed to make their dream come true. Can you help?
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  • 28 Oct 2015
Answer
Nate,
Thank you for your good suggestion. In fact, recently I have a working relationship with SIL and and a team to translate the Native American Shawnee. Through networking with them and native speakers I have found resolution for an acceptable orthography. Thanks again for your response.
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