CREATION OF A DIGITAL CORPUS OF BULGARIAN DIALECTS

The paper presents our considerations related to the creation of a digital corpus of Bulgarian dialects. The dialectological archive of Bulgarian language consists of more than 250 audio tapes. All tapes were recorded between 1955 and 1965 in the course of regular dialectological expeditions throughout the country. The records typically contain interviews with inhabitants of small villages in Bulgaria. The topics covered are usually related to such issues as birth, everyday life, marriage, family relationship, death, etc. Only a few tapes contain folk songs from different regions of the country. Taking into account the progressive deterioration of the magnetic media and the realistic prospects of data loss, the Institute for Bulgarian Language at the Academy of Sciences launched in 1997 a project aiming at restoration and digital preservation of the dialectological archive. Within the framework of this project more than the half of the records was digitized, de-noised and stored on digital recording media. Since then restoration and digitization activities are done in the Institute on a regular basis. As a result a large collection of sound files has been gathered. Our further efforts are aimed at the creation of a digital corpus of Bulgarian dialects, which will be made available for phonological and linguistic research. Such corpora typically include besides the sound files two basic elements: a transcription, aligned with the sound file, and a set of standardized metadata that defines the corpus. In our work we will present considerations on how these tasks could be realized in the case of the corpus of Bulgarian dialects. Our suggestions will be based on a comparative analysis of existing methods and techniques to build such corpora, and by selecting the ones that fit closer to the particular needs. Our experience can be used in similar institutions storing folklore archives, history related spoken records etc

Digital Presentation of Bulgarian Lexical Heritage. Towards an Electronic Historical Dictionary

The article presents the results of the project “ICT Tools for Historical Linguistic Studies”, funded by the European Social Fund, OP Human Resources. The main project goal was to elaborate electronic tools for creating a Historical Dictionary of Diachronic Type that should present the history of the Bulgarian words from their first written occurrence until today. By the end of the project the team (Faculty of Slavic Studies at Sofia University, Institute for Bulgarian Language, BAS and PAM Publishing Company, Sofia) had at their disposal a set of Old Bulgarian Unicode fonts, meant for publishing medieval texts and a convertor that converts non-Unicode documents into the new standard. The convertor allowed the participants to create in a relatively short time a Diachronic text corpus of Bulgarian medieval texts, containing already more than 90 texts dated from the 10th to the 18th century. The corpus software enables editing the texts and turned out to be an excellent tool for preparing electronic editions of the Old Bulgarian (OCS) manuscripts. In addition to the corpus an electronic dictionary of Old Bulgarian is available, which contains the digitized version of Старобългарски речник, produced by IBL. Both tools are accessible on the project website at the address histdict.uni-sofia.bg. The Standard of the Historical Dictionary took shape during the project course and respective software for elaborating new dictionary entries was designed and tested. The article also displays screenshots that demonstrate the functionalities of both the corpus and dictionary software.The article presents the results of the project “ICT Tools for Historical Linguistic Studies”, funded by the European Social Fund, OP Human Resources

06491 Abstracts Collection -- Digital Historical Corpora- Architecture, Annotation, and Retrieval

From 03.12.06 to 08.12.06, the Dagstuhl Seminar 06491 ``Digital Historical Corpora - Architecture, Annotation, and Retrieval\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if availabl

Slavic Dialectology: A Survey of Research since 1989

The last 25 years in Slavic dialectology mark the period not only of JSL’s founding but also of major and multiple political, social, and economic reorganizations in predominantly Slavic-speaking states. During this period research institutions and their priorities and projects have both continued and changed; technological innovation has meant moving towards electronic dissemination, “digital humanities,” and innovative modes of presenting research data and findings. In some cases major works (e.g., dialect atlases) have advanced during this period. Moreover, a new generation of scholars has had greater opportunities for mobility and therefore exposure to a variety of linguistic frameworks and approaches, which has fostered cross-border collaboration in the field. The present essay gives an overview of progress made on dialect projects both created institutionally and individually and including both traditional (book, article) and new digital means of dissemination

Use of Knowledge Technologies for Presentation of Bulgarian Folklore Heritage Semantics

Preserving and presenting the Bulgarian folklore heritage is a long-term commitment of scholars and researchers working in many areas. This article presents ontological model of the Bulgarian folklore knowledge, exploring knowledge technologies for presenting the semantics of the phenomena of our traditional culture. This model is a step to the development of the digital library for the “Bulgarian Folklore Heritage” virtual exposition which is a part of the “Knowledge Technologies for Creation of Digital Presentation and Significant Repositories of Folklore Heritage” project

Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Annotation of Corpora for Research in the Humanities (ACRH-2). 29 November 2012, Lisbon, Portugal

Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Annotation of Corpora for Research in the Humanities (ACRH-2), held in Lisbon, Portugal on 29 November 2012