Defining User Access to the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas

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Defining User Access to the Romanian Online
Dialect Atlas

• Sheila M. Embleton, Dorin Uritescu Eric S.
  Wheeler
• York University, Toronto, Canada

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Context
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Romania
Source http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_lang
uageGeographic_distribution
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Romanian

• 22 million speakers
• critical exemplar of eastern Romance language
  family

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Noul Atlas lingvistic român. Crisana

• Crisana region in north-west Romania
• Hard copy atlas by Stan and Uritescu (1996, 2003,
  etc)
• Digitize to make it more accessible

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RODA Romanian Online Dialect Atlas

• Digitize and present hard copy atlas
• Mostly graduate students
• in Canada and Romania
• Enter data from maps into text files
• When complete, it will be posted to the Internet
  for general use

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State of the Project (Aug 06)

• Have entered all 407 maps
• Twice proof-read
• Consulted source slips, when needed
• Now developing easy-to-use search and mapping
  tools
• Data and tools posted to the Internet for early
  testing

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Objective

• Use Information Technology to permit a broad
  range of scholars to
• access the data,
• select the data appropriately, and
• present the data clearly
• and so gain greater understanding of its
  significance.

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Example from RODA
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Crisana, Romania
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Seeing Words Change

• Word final u from Latin

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Word final /u/ from Latin
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Is word final /u/ random?

• Look for a geographic pattern over all potential
  occurrences
• The maps for single examples such as /ochi/ and
  others, are in dialect Atlas,
• But total data for all examples is spread widely
  over many maps.

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/u/ Pattern

• There is a pattern
• Word final /u/ is retained in central, and
  north-eastern areas
• It is syllabic only in parts of the central area
• Latin noun vs Latin verb no difference
• Non-Latin less data but consistent with Latin
  pattern.
• Note
• Horizontal values include all word final /u/
• Vertical values are non-syllabic word final /u/

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RODA as linguistic technology
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The technology allows one to

• Ask a user-defined question
• Compare one query to another
• See the correlation (vertical vs horizontal)
• See the strength of the data (short vs long bars)
• Save the results for further processing or
  presentation

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Requirements

• Multiple comparisons, using
• Shapes
• Colours
• Symbols
• Reference to original data
• See numeric counts
• Locate raw data (especially when there are few
  examples)

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RODA function

• Custom-defined maps
• You select the data
• You see the result as a map
• Programmable access to the whole set of digitized
  data
• You ask about data spread over many maps
• You can customize what you search for (not just
  the editors choice)

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RODA selection of data

• Context of search becomes important
• Word-final vs non-final vs either
• Plain character vs accented character
• Character vs (superposed) alternate
• Choice of fields to search
• E.g. With nouns sg. vs pl. entries
• Variations heard by field workers
• Flags to mark special situations (e.g.
  hesitation)

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Bigger challenge
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Access to Data

• In the humanities,
• Large amounts of data
• Diverse ways of selecting it
• Information Technology
• Has the technology
• May not understand the needs
• Need to learn how to apply IT to our discipline
  effectively

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Development Process

• Requirements gathering
• Prototypes
• Cycles of propose-and-revise
• User testing
• Test versions on web
• User feedback is important
• Explore technology
• Changes fast
• Much to learn

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Summary

• Data will soon be available
• You are invited to apply your techniques to the
  data
• Digital data and IT methods permit
• Widely accessible data
• Flexible searching and custom presentation
• Repeatable processing

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Contacts

• Sheila Embleton
• embleton_at_yorku.ca
• Dorin Uritescu
• dorinu_at_yorku.ca
• Eric Wheeler
• wheeler_at_ericwheeler.ca
• Test sites ericwheeler.ca/test
• aml.yorku.ca/ewheeler/test