Formosan Language Archive

registration: 2009/03/03 14:28:15, last modified: 2015/03/07 00:57:43
title
  • Formosan Language Archive
title.abbreviation
title.alternative
  • Academia Sinica Formosan Language Digital Library
  • Academia Sinica Formosan Language Archive
  • 台灣南島語數位典藏
creator
  • leeve kazaalae
  • Elizabeth Zeitoun
  • Lu Yu-zhi
subject
subject.linguisticField
subject.monoMultilingual
subject.resourceSubject
description
  • The Formosan languages belong to a widespread language family called "Austronesian", which include all the languages spoken throughout the islands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Indonesian, the Philippines, Taiwan, New Guinea, New Zealand, Hawaii and the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia). A few languages are found in the Malay peninsula and in the Indo-Chinese peninsula (Vietnam and Cambodia). The Formosan languages exhibit very rich linguistic diversity and the variations that oppose different dialects/languages are enormous. These languages are extremely useful in comparative work but though they have been known to be on the verge of extinction for years, Formosan languages, Formosan linguistics as a specific field has bloomed only very recently, with the participation of more scholars adopting different contemporary linguistic approaches to investigate individual languages or establishing cross-linguistic comparisons. Unlike Chinese, the Formosan languages do not have any writing system and the lack of written records dampen our knowledge of extinct languages. Today, while elders are still able to speak their mother tongues fluently, the young cannot, as a result of migration in the cities and the prevalence of Mandarin Chinese in every day life. We are currently making attempts to record and maintain these languages but we believe that collecting and/or editing existing texts (sentences, textbooks, folktales, narratives) in a digital format constitute the most precious legacy for future generation. In order to achieve our goal, we hope that more people will devote to the study of the Formosan languages and integrate our project. The Formosan Language Archive contains: (i) texts, (ii) a geographical information system and (iii) four databases on related publication. 1. Texts: During the first year project, we have drawn the emphasis on Rukai, a Formosan language which stretches across the south of Taiwan and includes six different dialects (Mantauran, Maga, Tona, Budai, Labuan and Tanan). We provide a search system that enables users to choose one of these dialects and download recorded texts. Each text is divided into sentences and every sentence is translated in both Chinese and English. Glosses allow users to understand the meaning of each word. Users can also listen to the pronunciation of each sentence through the recorded sound file. Every word is analyzed and each morpheme separated by a hyphen. Search permits to understand the use of the various affixes that occur in the language and the lexical category of each word. Currently information on the Mantauran dialect can be searched online. 2. Geographical Information System:The geographical information system permits a search of basic lexical items in the Formosan languages and an identification of cognates and non-cognates and their mapping onto the map of Taiwan. 3. Related Publications:In the past few months, we have constructed four databases that permit publication queries pertaining to: linguistics, language teaching, literature and music.
description.price *This metadata is only as a guide
description.language
description.inputDevice
description.inputEnvironment
description.speakingStyle
  • read_speech
description.speechMode
  • monologue
description.samplingRate
description.additionalData
publisher
  • Academia Sinica, Institute of Linguistics, Preparatory Office Academia Sinica
contributor
contributor.attribute.author.motherTongue
contributor.attribute.author.dialect
contributor.attribute.author.level
contributor.attribute.author.age
contributor.attribute.author.gender
contributor.attribute.speaker.motherTongue
contributor.attribute.speaker.dialect
contributor.attribute.speaker.level
contributor.attribute.speaker.age
contributor.attribute.speaker.gender
contributor.attribute.speaker.number
date.created
  • 1992-00-00 1999-00-00 1992, 1997-1999
date.issued
  • 2001-12-00
date.modified
  • 1992-00-00
type
  • Sound
  • Image
  • Text
type.discourseType
type.linguisticType
  • lexicon
type.purpose
type.style
type.form
type.sentence
  • isolated_words
  • short
  • long
type.annotation
  • annotated
type.annotationSample
type.sample
format.extent
  • Duration:737 minute.
  • MP3 file.
format.medium
format.encoding
format.markup
format.functionality
identifier
identifier.doi
identifier.islrn
source
language
  • Formosan Language
language.area
relation
relation.utilization *This metadata is automatically extracted
coverage.temporal
coverage.spacial
  • Taiwan
rights
  • Copyright 2001 Institute of Linguistics (Preparatory Office), Academia Sinica. All rights reserved.