Reflections on ethics: Re-humanizing linguistics, building relationships across difference

Himmelmann (1998) uses the word 'ethics' only once, but his arguments for proposing a field of documentary linguistics reflect assumptions about ethical stances that have been addressed in linguistics publications since 1998. This paper begins by outlining some of these ethical assumptions, and then focuses on considerations closely connected to what Dobrin & Berson (2011: 207) refer to as "re-humanizing linguistics'' and "building relationships across difference". The paper suggests that ethical language documentation work must be grounded in considerations of the human nature of research relationships, the histories of interactions between peoples which inform those research relationships, and varying conceptions of knowledge. Since language documentation work inevitably has social consequences for human beings, aligning language documentation practice with Indigenous research paradigms which emphasize relational accountability (Wilson 2008: 99), allows for a practice based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility and ultimately leads to good documentation.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Language as a Link to Wellness

This poster presents a visual representation of wellness considering seven important elements (worldview, land, language, identity, spirituality, social relations, and health) established from a literature review and interviews with Indigenous experts. is conceptualization focuses on language as a link connecting the other elements and is adaptable to other understandings of wellness

Spatially-Resolved Nonthermal Line Broadening During The Impulsive Phase of a Solar Flare

This paper presents a detailed study of excess line broadening in EUV emission lines during the impulsive phase of a C-class solar flare. In this work, which utilizes data from the EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) onboard Hinode, the broadened line profiles were observed to be co-spatial with the two HXR footpoints as observed by RHESSI. By plotting the derived nonthermal velocity for each pixel within the Fe XV and Fe XVI rasters against its corresponding Doppler velocity a strong correlation (|r| > 0.59) was found between the two parameters for one of the footpoints. This suggested that the excess broadening at these temperatures is due to a superposition of flows (turbulence), presumably as a result of chromospheric evaporation due to nonthermal electrons. Also presented are diagnostics of electron densities using five pairs of density-sensitive line ratios. Density maps derived using the Mg XII and Si X line pairs showed no appreciable increase in electron density at the footpoints, while the Fe XII, Fe XIII, and Fe XIV line pairs revealed densities approaching 10^(11.5) cm^(-3). Using this information, the nonthermal velocities derived from the widths of the two Fe XIV lines were plotted against their corresponding density values derived from their ratio. This showed that pixels with large nonthermal velocities were associated with pixels of moderately higher densities. This suggests that nonthermal broadening at these temperatures may have been due to enhanced densities at the footpoints, although estimates of the amount of opacity broadening and pressure broadening appeared to be negligible.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures. Accepted to Ap

Using TEI for an Endangered Language Lexical Resource: The Nxaʔamxcín Database-Dictionary Project

This paper describes the evolution of a lexical resource project for Nxaʔamxcín, an endangered Salish language, from the project’s inception in the 1990s, based on legacy materials recorded in the 1960s and 1970s, to its current form as an online database that is transformable into various print and web-based formats for varying uses. We illustrate how we are using TEI P5 for data-encoding and archiving and show that TEI is a mature, reliable, flexible standard which is a valuable tool for lexical and morphological markup and for the production of lexical resources. Lexical resource creation, as is the case with language documentation and description more generally, benefits from portability and thus from conformance to standards (Bird and Simons 2003, Thieberger 2011). This paper therefore also discusses standards-harmonization, focusing on our attempt to achieve interoperability in format and terminology between our database and standards proposed for LMF, RELISH and GOLD. We show that, while it is possible to achieve interoperability, ultimately it is difficult to do so convincingly, thus raising questions about what conformance to standards means in practice.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Investigations into Polish morphology and phonology

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1989.Title as it appeared in M.I.T. Graduate List, February, 1989: The interaction of phonology and morphology in Polish.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-291).by Ewa Czaykowska Higgins.Ph.D

Plasma heating in the very early and decay phases of solar flares

In this paper we analyze the energy budgets of two single-loop solar flares under the assumption that non-thermal electrons are the only source of plasma heating during all phases of both events. The flares were observed by the Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) on September 20, 2002 and March 17, 2002, respectively. For both investigated flares we derived the energy fluxes contained in non-thermal electron beams from the RHESSI observational data constrained by observed GOES light-curves. We showed that energy delivered by non-thermal electrons was fully sufficient to fulfil the energy budgets of the plasma during the pre-heating and impulsive phases of both flares as well as during the decay phase of one of them. We concluded that in the case of the investigated flares there was no need to use any additional ad-hoc heating mechanisms other than heating by non-thermal electrons.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures, The Astrophysical Journal (accepted, March 2011