A Summary of the First Workshop on Language Technology for Language Documentation and Revitalization
Graham Neubig, Shruti Rijhwani, Alexis Palmer, Jordan MacKenzie, Hilaria Cruz, Xinjian Li, Matthew Lee, Aditi Chaudhary, Luke Gessler, Steven Abney, Shirley Anugrah Hayati, Antonios Anastasopoulos, Olga Zamaraeva, Emily Prud'hommeaux, Jennette Child, Sara Child, Rebecca Knowles, Sarah Moeller, Jeffrey Micher, Yiyuan Li, Sydney Zink, Mengzhou Xia, Roshan S Sharma, Patrick Littell
Abstract
Despite recent advances in natural language processing and other language technology, the application of such technology to language documentation and conservation has been limited. In August 2019, a workshop was held at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to attempt to bring together language community members, documentary linguists, and technologists to discuss how to bridge this gap and create prototypes of novel and practical language revitalization technologies. This paper reports the results of this workshop, including issues discussed, and various conceived and implemented technologies for nine languages: Arapaho, Cayuga, Inuktitut, Irish Gaelic, Kidaw'ida, Kwak'wala, Ojibwe, San Juan Quiahije Chatino, and Seneca.