Integrating Automatic Transcription into the Language Documentation Workflow: Experiments with Na Data and the Persephone Toolkit

Automatic speech recognition tools have potential for facilitating language documentation, but in practice these tools remain little-used by linguists for a variety of reasons, such as that the technology is still new (and evolving rapidly), user-friendly interfaces are still under development, and case studies demonstrating the practical usefulness of automatic recognition in a low-resource setting remain few. This article reports on a success story in integrating automatic transcription into the language documentation workflow, specifically for Yongning Na, a language of Southwest China. Using Persephone, an open-source toolkit, a single-speaker speech transcription tool was trained over five hours of manually transcribed speech. The experiments found that this method can achieve a remarkably low error rate (on the order of 17%), and that automatic transcriptions were useful as a canvas for the linguist. The present report is intended for linguists with little or no knowledge of speech processing. It aims to provide insights into (i) the way the tool operates and (ii) the process of collaborating with natural language processing specialists. Practical recommendations are offered on how to anticipate the requirements of this type of technology from the early stages of data collection in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

The Human Auditory System

This book presents the latest findings in clinical audiology with a strong emphasis on new emerging technologies that facilitate and optimize a better assessment of the patient. The book has been edited with a strong educational perspective (all chapters include an introduction to their corresponding topic and a glossary of terms). The book contains material suitable for graduate students in audiology, ENT, hearing science and neuroscience

On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar

This book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language at the origin of current-day Bantu languages. While Bantu is a low-level branch of Niger-Congo, the world’s biggest phylum, it is still Africa’s biggest language family. This edited volume attempts to retrieve the phonology, morphology and syntax used by the earliest Bantu speakers to communicate with each other, discusses methods to do so, and looks at issues raised by these academic endeavours. It is a collective effort involving a fine mix of junior and senior scholars representing several generations of expert historical-comparative Bantu research. It is the first systematic approach to Proto-Bantu grammar since Meeussen’s Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967). Based on new bodies of evidence from the last five decades, most notably from northwestern Bantu languages, this book considerably transforms our understanding of Proto-Bantu grammar and offers new methodological approaches to Bantu grammatical reconstruction

Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide

Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them. Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians and historians to explore both correlations and contrasts in how the various disciplines see the relationship between the Andes and Amazonia, from deepest prehistory up to the European colonial period. The volume emerges from an innovative programme of conferences and symposia conceived explicitly to foster awareness, discussion and co-operation across the divides between disciplines. Underway since 2008, this programme has already yielded major publications on the Andean past, including History and Language in the Andes (2011) andArchaeology and Language in the Andes (2012). ‘This book makes a major contribution to the study of the deep, interregional history of humanity in South America. I am unaware of any other volume that occupies the place envisioned for this work, with the result that it will become a standard book to be read or consulted for some time to come. Overall, it is a professional contribution of real significance that will be widely used across history, genetics, linguistics, and archaeology, as discussion of the kinds of issues treated by this study of Andean-Amazonian relations is badly needed.’ – Terence N. D’Altroy, Columbia Universit

"On the knowledge necessary for one who wishes to recite well in the theatre" the rhetorical tradition of delivery and the performance practice of recitativo semplice in eighteenth-century dramma per musica

Recitative is so integral an element of eighteenth-century opera that without understanding it we cannot hope to understand the genre as a whole. Yet the notation of recitativo semplice leaves so much to the discretion of the performers that it, in turn, cannot be understood without making sense of its performance practice. The aim of this study is therefore to contribute to reconstructing a theoretical and practical basis for that performance practice, and in particular, for the unnotated aspects of recitative for which it is otherwise almost impossible to account. Following Giambattista Mancini’s advice to singers in his Riflessioni Pratiche sul Canto Figurato (1777) to “listen to the speech of a good orator” as a model for recitative delivery, I argue that the “rules of perfect declamation” followed by orators were those dictated by the discipline of rhetoric, and that the rhetorical paradigm of delivery thus represents a model for recitative performance practice. Chapter 1 outlines the scope of the study and its principal sources. The following chapters examine the implications of the rhetorical understanding of delivery for the performance of recitativo semplice. In Chapter 2, the case is made that the rhetorical principles of delivery did apply to musical recitation as much as to spoken declamation. Some consideration is also given to the ways in which this body of knowledge and its corresponding skills in vocal delivery may have been acquired by Italian singers. The nature and purpose of delivery as it was understood in the rhetorical tradition forms the subject of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 discusses its principles as they apply to musical declamation in recitative, under the headings of Quintilian’s “virtues of delivery”. These are shown to be consistent themes, even when they were not named as such, in early modern theatre and singing treatises as well as in writing about rhetoric. In Chapters 5 and 6, these prin ciples, and in particular the overriding virtue of decorum o! r “appropriateness”, are applied to the musical parameters of vocal delivery in recitative: rhythm, timbre, dynamic and pitch. The rhetorical paradigm of delivery is shown to cast valuable light on the vocal performance practice of recitativo semplice, and in particular on its unnotated aspects

Sinophone Southeast Asia

This volume explores the diverse linguistic landscape of Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities. Based on archival research and previously unpublished linguistic fieldwork, it unearths a wide variety of language histories, linguistic practices, and trajectories of words. The localized and often marginalized voices we bring to the spotlight are quickly disappearing in the wake of standardization and homogenization, yet they tell a story that is uniquely Southeast Asian in its rich hybridity. Our comparative scope and focus on language, analysed in tandem with history and culture, adds a refreshing dimension to the broader field of Sino-Southeast Asian Studies. . Readership: Students, scholars, (academic) libraries, community organizations, heritage organizations; linguistics, Southeast Asia Studies, East Asia Studies, Overseas Chines

Weathered Words : Formulaic Language and Verbal Art

Formulaic phraseology presents the epitome of words worn and weathered by trial and the tests of time. Scholarship on weathered words is exceptionally diverse and interdisciplinary. This volume focuses on verbal art, which makes Oral-Formulaic Theory (OFT) a major point of reference. Yet weathered words are but a part of OFT, and OFT is only a part of scholarship on weathered words. Each of the eighteen essays gathered here brings particular aspects of formulaic language into focus. No volume on such a diverse topic can be all-encompassing, but the essays highlight aspects of the phenomenon that may be eclipsed elsewhere: they diverge not only in style, but sometimes even in how they choose to define “formula.” As such, they offer overlapping frames that complement one another both in their convergences and their contrasts. While they view formulaicity from multifarious angles, they unite in a Picasso of perspectives on which the reader can reflect and draw insight.Peer reviewe