Lesser-known languages of South Asia : status and policies, case studies and applications of information technology

Publication/Creation:

Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, [2006]

Resource Type:

Book

More Details

Additional/Related Title Information

Full Title:

Lesser-known languages of South Asia : status and policies, case studies and applications of information technology / edited by Anju Saxena, Lars Borin

Series Titles:

Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs, 175
Trends in linguistics. 175.

Related Names

Additional Author/Creators:

Saxena, Anju, 1959-
Borin, Lars

Subjects/Genre

Subjects:

Linguistic minorities--South Asia
Sociolinguistics--South Asia
Communication and technology--South Asia
South Asia--Languages--Variation

Description/Summary

Table of Contents:

Status of lesser-known languages in India / Udaya Narayana Singh -- Minority language policies and politics in Nepal / Mark Turin -- Language policy, multilingualism and language vitality in Pakistan / Tariq Rahman -- Lesser-known language communities of South Asia: Linguistic and / sociolinguistic case studies -- Vanishing voices: A typological sketch of Great Andamanese / Anvita Abbi -- Lisu orthographies and email / David Bradley -- Shina in contemporary Pakistan / Razwal Kohistani and Ruth Laila Schmidt -- The rise of ethnic consciousness and the politicization of language in / west-central Nepal / Michael Noonan -- Why Ladakhi must not be written - Being part of the great tradition: / Another kind of global thinking / Bettina Zeisler -- Information and communication technologies and languages of South Asia -- The impact of technology on language diversity and multilingualism / E. Annamalai -- The impact of technological advances on Tamil language use and planning / Vasu Renganathan and Harold F. Schiffman -- Corpus-building for South Asian languages / Andrew Hardie, Paul Baker, Tony McEnery and B. D. Jayaram -- Digitized resources for languages of Nepal / Boyd Michailovsky -- Multimedia: A community-oriented information and communication technology / David Nathan and ¿va ℓ. Csat ̤-- Language survival kits / Jens Allwood -- Grammatically based language technology for minority languages / Trond Trosterud -- Supporting lesser-known languages: The promise of language technology / Lars Borin -- Worrying about ethics and wondering about "informed consent": Fieldwork / from an Americanist perspective / Colette Grinevald.

Summary:

"The increasing globalization and centralization in the world is threatening the existence of a large number of smaller languages. In South Asia some locally dominant languages (e.g., Hindi, Urdu, Nepali) are gaining ground beside English at the expense of the lesser-known languages. Despite a long history of stable multilingualism, language death is not uncommon in the South Asian context. We do not know how the language situation in South Asia will be affected by modern information and communication technologies: Will cultural and linguistic diversity be strengthened or weakened as they become increasingly prevalent in all walks of life? This volume brings together areas of research that so far do not interact to any significant extent: traditional South Asian descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics, documentary linguistics, issues of intellectual and cultural property and fieldwork ethics, and language technology. Researchers working in the areas of documentary linguistics and language technology have become aware of each other in the last few years, and of how work in the other area could be potentially useful in furthering their own aims. Similarly, the insights of documentary linguistics are making their way into descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics. However, the potential for synergy among these areas of research is almost limitless. This volume provides the reader, not so much with a do-it-yourself recipe for applying modern technology to the problem of language shift in South Asia today, but rather with some basic knowledge about the problems involved and some directions from which solutions could be forthcoming, a toolbox rather than a blueprint, for helping to shape the linguistic future of South Asia. " -- publisher description.

Language:

English

Physical Type/Description:

viii, 386 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Additional Identifiers

Catalog ID (MMSID):

990006596360302486

ISBN:

3110189763 (hardcover : alk. paper)
9783110189766 (hardcover : alk. paper)

OCLC Number:

70232352

Barcode:

010001207703