In this poster we describe creation of the first written corpus in Kanien'kéha (Mohawk). We will talk about motivation for this work, the challenges we encountered, and future applications

Brinklow, Thanyehténhas Nathan

Demson, Deirdre

Kazantseva, Anna

Martin, Akwiratékha

English

ScholarSpace at University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Creating a Corpus of Kanien’kéha (Mohawk)*National Research Council Canada, ✤Queen’s University, ⧫SUNY at BuffaloAkwiratékha Martin*, Deirdre Demson*⧫, Thanyehténhas Nathan Brinklow✤ and Anna Kazantseva*Lessons learnt while creating a corpus for a (mostly) oral languageKanien’kéha Contributions● First corpus of Kanien’kéha for linguistic and computational research.● Small but high quality corpus (manually proofread).● Available in two Eastern dialects.● Preliminary analysis completed.Motivation● First available corpus.● Studying usage patterns.● Usage for creating language technology.MethodologyCorpus● Continued proofreading.● Expansion of corpus material from community archives and Canadian and USA archives.● Evaluation of existing language technology for Kanien’kéha.Future WorkCONTACT: Akwiratekha.Martin@cnrc-nrc.gc.caAnna.Kazantseva@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca nathan.brinklow@queensu.ca deirdredemson@gmail.com ● A small corpus: 100,014 tokens.● 68 documents : 51 Bible chapters, 13 movie scripts, 4 others.● Type-token ratio (ratio of all words to unique words) is 3.75.● Average word length is 7.15 characters.● Average sentence length is 11.57 wordsUnification of Orthography●Original files are in the Eastern (Kahnawà:ke and Kanehsatà:ke) dialect written over the last 30 years. ●Spelling mostly follows the Mohawk Language Standardization Project●However, orthography is inconsistent even within dialects.●All documents are manually proofread by an advanced level L2 speaker correcting inconsistencies.●Original files/versions preserved.●Frequent errors: morphological mistakes, nouns and aspect suffixes lacking glottal stops. Tone, falling tone on lengthened vowels followed by a glottal stop.Transliteration● Corpus was automatically translated into the Eastern dialect. ● We could not automatically translate into the older Western dialect: inaccuracies would outweigh the benefits● Iroquoian language spoken in parts of North Eastern US, and Quebec and Ontario in Canada● Polysynthetic language with rich morphology. Verbal morphology is especially elaborate (16 prefixes consisting of non-modal prepronominals, tense and pronominals and reflexives. 16 suffixes consisting of aspects, and root suffixes like inchoative, causative, benefactive; affixes have up to 9 forms).● Speakers: 500-600 first language (L1) speakers, 75 second language (L2) speakers (Advanced-Mid proficiency),  about 25 L1 speakers raised by L2 parents, unattested number of L2 speakers with Novice to Intermediate proficiency over a thousand.● Example:Thiaonsakoniatatshennaranì:ron.Th-i-a-onsa-koni-atat-shenn-a-r-ani-hr-onContras-transloc-opt-rep-1st.2nd.sing-reflex-noun.name- link-verb.contain-ben-purp-stat'I should have just gone and signed your name'.Objectives● Unify orthography.● Correcting morphological accuracy and tone.● Transliteration: making parallel versions available in different dialects of Mohawk. PositionalityThe choice of content, the linguistic guidance and expertise involved in this project are provided by Mohawk community members, Kanien’kehá:ka. Their work is based on decades of language revitalization efforts. The funding, infrastructure and technical expertise are by the National Research Council Canada.● 4 main dialects (spoken in 7 communities).● Few accessible and searchable written resources, no corpora, no complete grammar.

Creating a Corpus in Kanien’kéha

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Creating a Corpus in Kanien’kéha

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