Category Archives: Gregory D. S. Anderson

Digital Resources, Endangered Language Activism, Events, Gregory D. S. Anderson, Language Documentation, Luke Horo

Presentation at LISPRUL 2022

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson and Dr. Luke Horo presented their work at the conference, Linguistic Issues in Speech Processing Research of Under-Resourced Languages (LISPRUL 2022) on March 2-3, 2022. The title of their presentation is “Under-resourced Languages and Documentation in India: The Living Tongues Approach.” Their abstract can be read below.

View all presentations and slides

ABOUT LISPRUL 2022

From the conference website: “There are 22 scheduled languages in India and several hundreds of under-resourced languages. Development of speech technologies like speech recognition, machine translation, speech synthesis and speech to speech translation systems for these languages is a resource and time intensive task. Apart from technology development, speech and language data collection in the under-resourced languages may also be aimed towards creating linguistic archives for community use and for linguistic analysis in digital, easily usable and open access manner. In this workshop, we intend to learn how linguistic data archiving, analysis and technology development can be accomplished in a synergetic manner.

Eminent researchers from all over the world, specialising in the fields of speech and language processing, linguistic analysis, archiving and technology development will share their experience and expertise in this workshop. Apart from in-depth discussions, the sessions are designed to have ample time for the participants to have open discussions with the speakers.”

LISPRUL Flyer
Official LISPRUL Flyer

TITLE OF PRESENTATION
“Under-resourced Languages and Documentation in India: The Living Tongues Approach”

by Gregory D. S. Anderson and Luke Horo

ABSTRACT
In this presentation we offer some details about our work documenting the under-resourced languages of India. We begin with a discussion of the two sets of languages we have worked on over the past decades in India which belong to the Munda and various subgroups of the Trans-Himalayan (Tibeto-Burman) language families. We then draw attention to how we have gone about classifying these languages and situate this against computational phylogenetics based on Swadesh lists that dominate the field today. We then give an overview of the Munda Languages Initiative and detail the types of data we collect and how we analyze it and why we feel this is the correct way to do so. We then detail some of the past and ongoing scientific and applied outcomes of this work including an introduction to a powerful tool the Living Dictionary app that we have developed that aids linguists and citizen-scientists alike in creating high-quality and free documentation records. We conclude with a look to ongoing and future projects and ways that interested and qualified participants can find roles in the furthering of these projects and the development of skills in best practice in language documentation.

Digital Resources, Endangered Language Activism, Get Involved, Gregory D. S. Anderson

Welcome, summer interns of 2021!

A warm welcome to the Living Tongues summer interns of 2021! Our latest online cohort includes Isaak Spain, Benjamin Hunt, Ria Isabelle Allida Dela Rosa, Şima Doğan Balci, Ashwini Parmar, Becky Smith, Olga Olina, Abbie Amick and research assistants Ella Hannon and Ashlie Devenney. They join us from India, Turkey, the US, the UK and Germany. The team is working on Sora annotations in ELAN with Dr. Greg Anderson, Opino Gomango and Anna Luisa Daigneault.

A screenshot of people working together on Zoom
2021 Living Tongues summer interns working on ELAN annotations of oral texts for the Sora documentation project.

Sora is a Munda language spoken by tribal people in Odisha State and other regions in India. It has numerous varieties, and this summer we are working on Sarda Sor, Lanjia Sor and Tenkala Sor. The current tasks focus on digitizing all of the Sora oral texts using the ELAN software for the texts, and Praat for phonetic analysis. We have been working on this research project for several years and are glad to have assistance from interns and research assistants.

Pre-Covid era, we conducted numerous field trips to Sora villages to work with various speakers, mostly recording oral texts and doing a large amount of grammatical and lexical elicitation. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, all of our work has been conducted remotely between our researchers located around the world.

Phonetics Cohort
We also have a second team of interns, Vinny Ong and Cassandra Caragine, who are working with Dr. Luke Horo on Sora phonetics. Welcome to our first-ever phonetics cohort! Here are some screenshots from our first training with them this week.

Charts describing vowel acoustics in Sora disyllables
Image credit: Sora phonetic research by Dr. Luke Horo, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

Thank you to all our interns for working with us!

Digital Resources, Endangered Language Activism, Featured Videos, Gregory D. S. Anderson, Indigenous Language Activists, Media and Publicity, Projects

NEW VIDEO: The House of the Lurni Spirit

We are thrilled to post a segment from our latest video project documenting the culture and language of the Sora people of Odisha State, India.

The co-lead scientist on this project is Opino Gomango. He is a native Sora scholar and multimedia creator who has been working for over 10 years as a trained, professional linguist, in collaboration with Living Tongues Institute. He began working as a field linguist on his native Sora language in several local dialects and expanded this work to include closely related languages like Juray and Gorum and distantly related ones spoken in Odisha and in Jharkhand State like Remo, Didayi, Gadaba, Kharia, and Santali, as well as directed research teams on the unrelated Kui and Kuvi of Odisha (Dravidian languages). Gomango received initial training in Linguistics from Deccan College, Pune, and is currently completing his MBA. He is the director of this series of Sora films in collaboration with Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson of Living Tongues Institute.

It is hoped that this film (and upcoming ones in this series) will serve not only to preserve a wide range of traditional knowledge domains and cultural practices of the Sora, but also to help promote these as valuable markers of identity for the Sora community both within India and abroad.

This project was funded by a National Geographic Citizen Science Grant entitled: “Citizen science and cinematography: Documenting stories and technology of the Sora tribe” (India, 2019-2021). Their support is gratefully acknowledged.

Credits:
Filmed by Opino Gomango for Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Narrated by Srinivas Gomango. Sora community members, in order of appearance: Sarothi Pradhan (priest), Srinivas Gomango (interviewee). Directed by Opino Gomango and Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson. Produced by Opino Gomango, Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson, Anna Luisa Daigneault, Dr. Luke Horo. Music by Srinivas Gomango. Sound Mix by Anna Luisa Daigneault. Hindi subtitles by Dr. Luke Horo. English subtitles by Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson and Anna Luisa Daigneault. Edited by Anna Luisa Daigneault

_______________________________________________________
Behind the Scenes: The House of the Lurni Spirit
Screenshot of transcribing and subtitling “The House of the Lurni Spirit” in ELAN.


One of the many speakers we interviewed for the Sora documentation project was Sora cultural expert Srinivas Gomango (pictured above). In this screenshot from the film, he is discussing Lurni-sum, also known as Grandmother Spirit, a spiritual being that watches over Sora villages and is appeased by specific offerings.

While most of the Sora traditional cultural practices were still thriving a generation ago, all are severely threatened now due to state-mediated environmental, education and economic policies that impact the Sora people. The rapid advance of Christian and Hindu religious practices is also replacing the original Sora animist religion.

Living Tongues project coordinator and Sora scholar Opino Gomango has spent months recording interviews, documenting cultural practices among the Sora and curating the footage for the final series of films. This will be one of the first series of films made primarily made by a Sora person for an audience of Sora communities. Living Tongues team members Greg Anderson, Luke Horo and Anna Luisa Daigneault are also helping out with the production, editing and the subtitling of the films.

_________________
Like our work?
Please make a donation today!

Endangered Language Activism, Gregory D. S. Anderson, Language Documentation

Birhor Project Update: Abun Ari Re

“Abun Ari Re” (Our Surroundings) will soon become the first-ever children’s book published in Birhor, an endangered Munda language spoken in India. We are in the final production stage of creating this book, and will be printing many copies in early 2021 for educational use in Birhor tribal communities. Here is a draft of one of the pages:

Birhor Children's Book Excerpt Draft
Draft of a page about local bird species in the “Abun Ari Re” (Our Surroundings).

Finishing this project through remote collaboration has not been easy, but well worth the challenge. This project was made possible by ongoing work by Living Tongues linguists, Birhor speakers, and indigenous artists in India (with support from the Zegar Family Foundation). Full credits below.

AUTHOR
Dr. Bikram Jora

ILLUSTRATORS
Khandu Degio
Sashi Kant Lakra
Dipika Hemrom

BIRHOR LANGUAGE CONSULTANTS
Bishwanath Birhor
Madhuri Birhor
Kameshwar Birhor
Kaushila Birhor
Bitni Birhor
Malti Birhor
Seema Birhor
Anil Birhor

CONTENT EDITING
Dr. Bikram Jora
Dr. Luke Horo
Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson
Anna Luisa Daigneault, M.Sc
Anukaran Marki

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Shashi Kant Lakra
Dr. Bikram Jora

PUBLISHER
Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

Supported by
Zegar Family Foundation

______________________
Thanks for reading.
If you like our work, please consider donating today!