CRCL Inc.
Annual Report, 2006
This year’s activities included:
· The The SEAlang Lab: Assistive Technology for Reading, Writing, and Vocabulary Acquisition in Complex-Script Languages proposal, submitted to the International Research and Studies program of the US Department of Education, was granted 3 year funding (Oct. 2006 – Sept. 2009).
The SEAlang Lab takes a new approach to reading, writing, and vocabulary acquisition for complex-script less commonly taught languages. The SEAlang Lab proposal received agreements for collaboration from every major US institution with a stake in intensive Southeast Asian language instruction:
o the Foreign Service Institute (FSI),
o the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLI/FLC), and
o the UW-Madison Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS, home of SEASSI).
as well as letters of support from the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR), the Council of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages (COTSEAL), the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages (NCOLCTL), the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC), and the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute (SEASSI).
· The CRCL Inc. Outreach Program assisted the following projects:
o Completed production of the Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary (Paul Sidwell, ed., Doug Cooper, Christian Bauer, asst. eds., published by Pacific Linguistics, 2007: http://pacling.anu.edu.au/catalogue/579.html ).
o Completed the Chuon Nath Dictionary Project. We supported the Buddhist Institute of Phnom Penh in digitizing this important work (the most recent unabridged Khmer-Khmer dictionary), with the assistance of Javier Sola of the Khmer OS Initiative. It will come on-line in Spring, 2007.
o Initiated the Gordon Luce Papers Project in collaboration with the Australian National Library. This treasure trove of unpublished papers (nearly 10,000 pages) has never been fully cataloged. We are scanning all papers related to Southeast Asian linguistics, and supporting development of an on-line Luce Archives (see http://archives.sealang.net/luce ).
o Digitized and built an on-line archives for the past 35 years of publication of the Mon-Khmer Studies Journal. We are also hosting the MKS Journal website (see http://www.mksjournal.org ).
· Executive Director Doug Cooper gave a variety of presentations on behalf of CRCL:
o Attendance, by invitation, at the Library of Congress Cooperative Acquisitions for Program for Southeast Asia (CAPSEA) meeting at UC Berkeley in April, where we discussed the SEAcat Southeast Asian library cataloging and search tools.
o Attendance at the May, 2006 Association for Asian Studies conference in San Francisco, including:
· demonstration of tools to the annual Conference of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages (COTSEAL) meeting.
· report on development to the Southeast Asian Languages Summer Studies Institute (SEASSI) board and executive meetings.
· presentation on SEAcat to the annual meeting of the Committee on Research Materials for Southeast Asia (CORMOSEA) meeting.
o Presentations on and demonstrations of the SEAlang Library at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, including meetings with Dean of Asian School Luba Grant, Dean of Technology Michael Emonts, and the full staff and students of the Thai language program.
o Attendance at the May TICFIA conference in Michigan, including two presentations on behalf of the project:
· The SEAlang Library
· Digital libraries are the answer (now, what was the question?)
o Presentation at the 2006 COTSEAL/SEASSI Conference: The Southeast Asian Languages Library: On-Line Dictionaries, Text Corpora, and Tools for Southeast Asian Languages.
o Meeting and discussion of the project with SEASSI faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
· Proposals CRCL submitted proposals to the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities seeking funding for the Mon-Khmer Languages Project (Dr. Paul Sidwell, Project Director). The project will assemble a century of collected data, linking it to modern comparative analyses, and making it accessible for research and reference. The project’s primary goals are:
o Mon-Khmer languages database: makes all lexicographic reference material, including phonetic transcription, glosses, citations, and links back to original printed data, freely available.
o Mon-Khmer etymological dictionary: is an on-line hierarchical reference that puts language data in historical context. It is based on – and ultimately greatly extends – H.L. Shorto's Mon-Khmer Comparative Dictionary.
o Mon-Khmer languages worksite: ensures rapid and reliable publication of funded work. It manages a collaborative architecture for access, analysis, comment, and correction of database and dictionary data, and implements a new approach to peer certification of data and analysis.
Staffing CRCL welcomes two new consultants to the Bangkok field office (now under the managment of Ms Noosai Inthimas):
o Mr. Seang Sokha is a recent graduate of the Royal Institute of Cambodia,where he studied under Prof. Long Seam, Sokha specializes in Khmer epigraphy. He will work with us on developing resources for Khmer lexicography and epigraphy.
o Frank Smith (MLS) is the Heritage Language Facilitator for the SEASSI program. He has written a half-dozen textbooks on Khmer and Lao language learning, and produces the regular podcast Extreme Khmer (see http://www.studykhmer.com ). Frank will manage lexical resource development for the SEAlang Lab project.
2007 Our agenda for 2007 is focused on meeting our obligations to the SEAlang Library and SEAlang Lab, and continuing to press for Southeast Asian resource development. We will be formulating proposals for the Lexalia Library (of ‘realia you can read’), and the SEAclassics Library of 5th – 15th century Southeast Asian inscriptions.
Submitted January 31, 2007
Doug Cooper
Executive Director, CRCL Inc.