Spoken word corpus and dictionary definition for an African language

The preservation of languages is critical to maintaining and strengthening the cultures and identities of communities, and this is especially true for under-resourced languages with a predominantly oral culture. Most African languages have a relatively short literary past, and as such the task of dictionary making cannot rely on textual corpora as has been the standard practice in lexicography. This paper emphasizes the significance of the spoken word and the oral tradition as repositories of vocabulary, and argues that spoken word corpora greatly outweigh the value of printed texts for lexicography. We describe a methodology for creating a digital dialectal dictionary for the Igbo language from such a spoken word corpus. We also highlight the language technology tools and resources that have been created to support the transcription of thousands of hours of Igbo speech and the subsequent compilation of these transcriptions into an XML-encoded textual corpus of Igbo dialects. The methodology described in this paper can serve as a blueprint that can be adopted for other under-resourced languages that have predominantly oral cultures.

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Caribbean French-African Creole and African Metaphysics

10.1093/oso/9780190657543.003.0017 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Hanétha Vété-Congolo

Keyword(s):

African Language ◽

The West ◽

French Empire ◽

African Languages ◽

The World ◽

The Caribbean ◽

Per Se

The Euro-enslavement enterprise in America expanded the European geography temporarily, and, more lastingly, its culturo-linguistic and philosophical influence. The deportation of millions of Africans within that enterprise similarly extended the African presence in this part of the world, especially in the Caribbean. Africans deported by the French Empire spoke languages of the West Atlantic Mande, Kwa, or Voltaic groups. They arrived in their new and final location with their languages. However, no African language wholly survived the ordeal of enslavement in the Caribbean. This signals language as perhaps the most important political and philosophical instrument of colonization. I am therefore interested in “Pawòl,” that is, the ethical, human, and humanist responses Africans brought to their situation through language per se and African languages principally. I am also interested in the metaphysical value of “Pawòl.”

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Daniel Woolf. The Social Circulation of the Past: English Historical Culture 1500–1730. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. xvi, 421. $85.00. ISBN 0-19-925778-7. - Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf, eds. The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain, 1500–1850. (Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain.) New York: Manchester University Press; dist. by Palgrave, New York. 2002. Pp. x, 286. $24.95 paper. ISBN 0-7190-5747-7.

Albion A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies ◽

10.2307/4054391 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 36 (3) ◽

pp. 515-517

Author(s):

David Cressy

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Early Modern ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Oral Culture ◽

Oxford University ◽

The Past ◽

The Social ◽

Modern Britain ◽

Historical Culture ◽

Oxford University Press

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Conference on the Teaching of African Languages

African Studies Review ◽

10.1017/s0002020600039494 ◽

1964 ◽

Vol 7 (03) ◽

pp. 12

Author(s):

L. Gray Cowan

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

The United States ◽

African Studies ◽

Present Moment ◽

African Language ◽

African Languages ◽

National Defense Education Act ◽

Summer Session ◽

Education Act

A small conference was held in New York on March 19 to 20, 1964, concerning the general position of the teaching of African Languages in the United States at the present moment. The conference, called at the joint request of the National Defense Education Act Language and Area Centers and Columbia University's Institute of African Studies, was attended by the directors and teachers of African language of the major centers of African studies in the United States. In the course of the two-day meeting the directors reported in some detail on the position of African language teaching in their respective universities and a number of clarifications of NDEA policy were presented by Mr. Donald Bigelow. The question of a summer session on African languages was discussed at length and a variety of suggestions were offered for possible changes in the format of the existing summer session sponsored by NDEA. In this connection, a resolution was passed urging the establishment of a summer Institute of African Languages, to be located at a permanent site, and under the sponsorship of the African Studies Association.

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Africa's Endangered Languages

10.1093/oso/9780190256340.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Keyword(s):

Endangered Languages ◽

Symbiotic Relationship ◽

African Language ◽

African Languages ◽

Theoretical Perspectives ◽

Language Research ◽

The World ◽

African Context

Relatively little is known about Africa’s endangered languages. In an era when we are racing against time to study and preserve the world’s threatened languages before they go extinct, a disproportionately low amount of research and funding is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. More regrettably, even less has been done to create a community of Africanists and concerned linguists who might work on rectifying this situation. This book puts some of Africa’s many endangered languages in the spotlight in the hope of reversing this trend. Both documentary and theoretical perspectives are taken with a view toward highlighting the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and exploring its consequences for research on and preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. The articles that comprise this volume collectively advocate nurturing synergistic partnerships between documentary and theoretical linguists researching endangered African languages in order to stimulate and enhance the depth, visibility, and impact of endangered African language research in the service of altering the landscape of scholarship and activism in this field.

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Kay Williamson: A grammar of the Kolokuma dialect of Ịjọ. (West African Language Monograph Series, 2.) vii, 127 pp. Cambridge: University Press in association with the West African Languages Survey and the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, 1965. 18s.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x0005998x ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 462-462

Author(s):

E. C. Rowlands

Keyword(s):

West African ◽

African Studies ◽

African Language ◽

The West ◽

Cambridge University ◽

Monograph Series ◽

African Languages

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Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition

New Testament Studies ◽

10.1017/s0028688503000080 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 139-175 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

JAMES D. G. DUNN

Keyword(s):

Oral Tradition ◽

Word Of Mouth ◽

Western Culture ◽

Present Form ◽

Oral Performance ◽

Synoptic Problem ◽

Oral Cultures ◽

Classic Solution ◽

Characteristic Features ◽

Default Setting

The literary mindset (‘default setting’) of modern Western culture prevents those trained in that culture from recognizing that oral cultures operate differently. The classic solution to the Synoptic problem, and the chief alternatives, have envisaged the relationships between the Gospel traditions in almost exclusively literary terms. But the earliest phase of transmission of the Jesus tradition was without doubt predominantly by word of mouth. And recent studies of oral cultures provide several characteristic features of oral tradition. Much of the Synoptic tradition, even in its present form, reflects in particular the combination of stability and flexibility so characteristic of the performances of oral tradition. Re-envisaging the early transmission of the Jesus tradition therefore requires us to recognize that the literary paradigm (including a clearly delineated Q document) is too restrictive in the range of possible explanations it offers for the diverse/divergent character of Synoptic parallels. Variation in detail may simply attest the character of oral performance rather than constituting evidence of literary redaction.

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Ayo Bamgbose: A grammar of Yoruba. (West African Language Monograph Series, 5.) xii, 175 pp. Cambridge: University Press in association with the West African Languages Survey and the Institute of African Studies, Ibadan, 1966. 35s.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x00132586 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 736-737

Author(s):

E. C. Rowlands

Keyword(s):

West African ◽

African Studies ◽

African Language ◽

The West ◽

Cambridge University ◽

Monograph Series ◽

African Languages

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A Nineteenth-Century Link Between Chinese And African Language Studies

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x00060857 ◽

1966 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 143-145

Author(s):

P. E. H. Hair

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Present Note ◽

Chinese Language ◽

African Language ◽

African Languages ◽

Language Studies

In a recent paper on tone-marking systems employed during the last hundred years in African language studies, Professor Tucker has referred incidentally to parallel developments in Chinese language studies. The present note, offered as a footnote to Professor Tucker's paper, documents recognition, early in the nineteenth century, that Chinese and a number of African languages have in common the feature of semantic tone.

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