NNA: Collaborative Research: Integrating Language Documentation and Computational Tools for Yupik, an Alaska Native Language

NNA：协作研究：集成阿拉斯加母语 Yupik 的语言文档和计算工具

基本信息

批准号：
1760977
负责人：
Sylvia Schreiner
金额：
$ 12.41万
依托单位：
George Mason University
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Continuing Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-08-01 至 2024-01-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1760977&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
NNA Collaborative Research Integrating Language

项目摘要

One locus of crosslinguistic variation in how languages build words is whether meaning is encoded in free morphemes ('units of meaning') that stand alone as words, or whether those morphemes must combine with other morphemes to become words. While English has many free morphemes, the Alaska Native language St. Lawrence Island/Siberian Yupik uses the second strategy with very complex words, often sentence-sized. These properties are known as agglutination and polysynthesis. Researchers will document critical structures in the language, digitize existing Yupik materials, and build computational tools to help the community and other researchers. The data from Yupik are extremely important to language science, since many of the phenomena displayed in the language are rare and not well understood. Creating computational tools for languages with very complex words, like Yupik, is of additional benefit to computer scientists and language scientists in that it helps researchers improve computational tools for languages like English. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. This project will build and improve tools like a morphological analyzer, a spellchecker, and a searchable dictionary, of value to the community in revitalizing their language. Graduate students will be trained in these methods, and researchers will hold outreach meetings with high school students in the language community to teach them important computer and coding skills that will enable them to build further tools. All data gathered will be permanently archived at the Alaska Native Language Archive.The investigators, a collaboration of language and computer scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and George Mason University, will undertake this project. It involves three interconnected parts: digitization of existing materials on and in Yupik for use by community members and researchers; recording and analyzing the speech of Yupik speakers; and working with the community to build computer tools for Yupik and teaching students how to do so. A successful computational model of Yupik linguistic phenomena has implications for unsupervised and semi-supervised methods in morphology induction and grammar induction because the types of morphophonological change are pervasive, much more so than models used in other approaches to unsupervised morphology induction. This work is likely to have important implications regarding appropriate computational modeling of polysynthetic agglutinative morphosyntax. Accessing materials at several archives, the team will scan them, and clean and process the scans so they are accessible digitally and searchable. This will create a digital corpus of Yupik materials for use by the community and for linguistic investigations into grammatical mood, tense, and aspect to better understand these complex morphosemantic constructions. The data will also improve the computational tools being developed in this project, providing the Yupik community with access to modern tools like spellcheckers, electronically searchable dictionaries, and electronic books. Finally, in its tight integration of field work and the development of computational tools for the analysis of the language, this project will serve as a model for future collaborations of this kind.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

语言如何构建单词的交叉语言变化的一个源是含义是否是在自由的词素（“含义单位”）中单独使用的含义，或者这些词素是否必须与其他词素相结合才能成为单词。尽管英语有许多免费的词素，但阿拉斯加的母语圣劳伦斯岛/西伯利亚Yupik使用第二个策略，其中具有非常复杂的单词，通常是句子。这些特性称为凝集和多合成。研究人员将记录语言中的关键结构，对现有的Yupik材料进行数字化，并建立计算工具来帮助社区和其他研究人员。来自Yupik的数据对语言科学非常重要，因为该语言中显示的许多现象很少见，并且不太了解。用非常复杂的单词（例如Yupik）为语言创建计算工具，这对计算机科学家和语言科学家提供了额外的好处，因为它可以帮助研究人员改善英语等语言的计算工具。美国国会于1990年通过的《美洲原住民语言法》颁布了政策，认识到美国原住民语言的独特地位和重要性。该项目将在形态分析仪，拼写检查器和可搜索的词典中构建和改进工具，以振兴他们的语言。研究生将接受这些方法的培训，研究人员将与语言社区中的高中生举行外展会议，以教给他们重要的计算机和编码技能，以使他们能够构建更多的工具。收集的所有数据将在阿拉斯加的母语档案馆中永久存档。调查人员是伊利诺伊大学Urbana-Champaign和George Mason University的语言和计算机科学家的合作，将进行该项目。它涉及三个相互联系的部分：在Yupik和Yupik中现有材料的数字化，以供社区成员和研究人员使用；录制和分析Yupik演讲者的演讲；并与社区合作，为Yupik构建计算机工具，并教学学生如何这样做。 Yupik语言现象的成功计算模型对形态诱导和语法诱导中的无监督和半监督方法具有影响，因为形态学变化的类型普遍存在，比在其他方法中使用的模型更为普遍。这项工作可能对多合成凝集的形态句法的适当计算建模具有重要意义。在几个档案中访问材料，团队将扫描它们，并清洁并处理扫描，以便在数字上可访问它们。这将创建Yupik材料的数字语料库，以供社区使用，并对语言情绪，时态和方面进行语言研究，以更好地理解这些复杂的形态语义结构。这些数据还将改善该项目中正在开发的计算工具，从而为Yupik社区提供访问Spellacheckers，电子搜索字典和电子书等现代工具的访问。最后，在其野外工作的紧密整合和用于分析语言的计算工具的开发中，该项目将成为这种未来合作的模型。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的审查标准通过评估来进行评估的。

项目成果

期刊论文数量（8）

专著数量（0）

科研奖励数量（0）

会议论文数量（0）

专利数量（0）

Semantic fieldwork from a distance with speakers of Akuzipik

与 Akuzipik 使用者进行远距离语义实地考察

DOI：
发表时间：
2022
期刊：
Semantic fieldwork methods
影响因子：
0
作者：
Schreiner, Sylvia L.R.;Hunt, Benjamin;Chen, Emily;Haas, Preston;Aningayou, Ukaall Crystal
通讯作者：
Aningayou, Ukaall Crystal

Bootstrapping a Neural Morphological Analyzer for St. Lawrence Island Yupik from a Finite-State Transducer

从有限状态传感器引导圣劳伦斯岛 Yupik 的神经形态分析器

DOI：
发表时间：
2019
期刊：
Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Methods for Endangered Languages
影响因子：
0
作者：
Schwartz, Lane;Chen, Emily;Hunt, Benjamin;Schreiner, Sylvia L.R.
通讯作者：
Schreiner, Sylvia L.R.

Community-Focused Language Documentation in Support of Language Education and Revitalization for St. Lawrence Island Yupik

支持圣劳伦斯岛语言教育和振兴的以社区为中心的语言文档 Yupik

DOI：
10.7202/1071949ar
发表时间：
2019
期刊：
Études/Inuit/Studies
影响因子：
0
作者：
Schwartz, Lane;Schreiner, Sylvia L.R.;Chen, Emily
通讯作者：
Chen, Emily

A Digital Corpus of St. Lawrence Island Yupik

DOI：
10.33011/computel.v2i.985
发表时间：
2021-01
期刊：
ArXiv
影响因子：
0
作者：
Lane Schwartz;Emily Chen;Hyunji Hayley Park;Edward Jahn;Sylvia L. R. Schreiner
通讯作者：
Lane Schwartz;Emily Chen;Hyunji Hayley Park;Edward Jahn;Sylvia L. R. Schreiner

Multidirectional leveraging for computational morphology and language documentation and revitalization

计算形态学和语言文档及振兴的多向利用