Looking at language: appropriate design for sign language resources in remote Australian Indigenous communities

Sign languages, or iltyem-iltyem angkety, are in daily use in Arandic speaking communities of Central Australia. They are a form of communication used alongside other semiotic systems, including speech, gesture and drawing practices. Whereas sign languages used in deaf communities operate without any connection to speech, these 'alternate' handsign languages are used in various contexts by people who also use spoken language. They are culturally valued and highly endangered, yet there has been little or no systematic documentation of Arandic sign since Kendon (1988). In this paper we describe a pilot program to record Arandic sign languages, conducted by a community language team, funded by the Maintenance of Indigenous Languages and Records (MILR) program and by the Endangered Languages Documentation Program (ELDP), and auspiced by the Batchelor Institute (BIITE). Research into various aspects of multimodal communication brings with it many theoretical and practical challenges. New technologies and the ever-expanding potentials of data annotation systems create a plethora of choices and huge volumes of recorded material. Whereas the use of film in language documentation has recently become de rigueur, at least in some circles, it is often only as an adjunct to studies of spoken language. When the visual is foregrounded, as it is in sign and gesture research, additional layers of complexity are added that impact on all aspects of the documentation process. How, for example, do we balance the desire for naturalistic visual data with the need for visually 'clean' images? What lessons can linguists learn from ethnocinematographers (Dimmendaal 2010)? What kinds of resources will benefit the community and a range of users (scholarly, archival, educational etc), as well as satisfying community aspirations for medium and long-term engagement with their audio-visual language materials? How do we ensure that our methodologies are robust enough to allow comparisons between primary sign language corpora and alternate sign language ones? We discuss these issues and various others encountered in our research, including our field methodologies, annotation of film data, community consultations and ethical considerations, and issues that have arisen in designing an interactive sign language website for use as a teaching/learning resource in Arandic schools. Although the creation and management of digital archives for primary sign languages have been documented before (see Johnston & Schembri 2006), 'alternate' sign languages have received little attention.PARADISEC (Pacific And Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures), Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories, Ethnographic E-Research Project and Sydney Object Repositories for Research and Teaching

Glycolaldehyde, methyl formate and acetic acid adsorption and thermal desorption from interstellar ices

We have undertaken a detailed investigation of the adsorption, desorption and thermal processing of the astrobiologically significant isomers glycolaldehyde, acetic acid and methyl formate. Here, we present the results of laboratory infrared and temperature programmed desorption (TPD) studies of the three isomers from model interstellar ices adsorbed on a carbonaceous dust grain analogue surface. Laboratory infrared data show that the isomers can be clearly distinguished on the basis of their infrared spectra, which has implications for observations of interstellar ice spectra. Laboratory TPD data also show that the three isomers can be distinguished on the basis of their thermal desorption behaviour. In particular, TPD data show that the isomers cannot be treated the same way in astrophysical models of desorption. The desorption of glycolaldehyde and acetic acid from water-dominated ices is very similar, with desorption being mainly dictated by water ice. However, methyl formate also desorbs from the surface of the ice, as a pure desorption feature, and therefore desorbs at a lower temperature than the other two isomers. This is more clearly indicated by models of the desorption on astrophysical time-scales corresponding to the heating rate of 25 and 5 M⊙ stars. For a 25 M⊙ star, our model shows that a proportion of the methyl formate can be found in the gas phase at earlier times compared to glycolaldehyde and acetic acid. This has implications for the observation and detection of these molecules, and potentially explains why methyl formate has been observed in a wider range of astrophysical environments than the other two isomers

Trapping and desorption of complex organic molecules in water at 20 K

The formation, chemical and thermal processing of complex organic molecules (COMs) is currently a topic of much interest in interstellar chemistry. The isomers glycolaldehyde, methyl formate and acetic acid are particularly important because of their role as pre-biotic species. It is becoming increasingly clear that many COMs are formed within interstellar ices which are dominated by water. Hence the interaction of these species with water ice is crucially important in dictating their behaviour. Here we present the first detailed comparative study of the adsorption and thermal processing of glycolaldehyde, methyl formate and acetic acid adsorbed on and in water ices at astrophysically relevant temperatures (20 K). We show that the functional group of the isomer dictates the strength of interaction with water ice, and hence the resulting desorption and trapping behaviour. Furthermore, the strength of this interaction directly affects the crystallization of water, which in turn affects the desorption behaviour. Our detailed coverage and composition dependent data allow us to categorize the desorption behaviour of the three isomers on the basis of the strength of intermolecular and intramolecular interactions, as well as the natural sublimation temperature of the molecule. This categorization is extended to other C, H and O containing molecules in order to predict and describe the desorption behaviour of COMs from interstellar ices