Data Formats and Management Strategies from the Perspective of Language Resource Producers ― Personal Diachronic and Social Synchronic Data Sharing ―

Data Formats and Management Strategies from the Perspective of Language Resource Producers – Personal Diachronic and Social Synchronic Data Sharing – Kazushi Ohya Tsurumi University Tsurumi 2-1-3, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Japan oya-k@tsurumi-u.ac.jp Abstract This is a report of findings from on-going language documentation research based on three consecutive projects from 2008 to 2016. In the light of this research, we propose that (1) we should stand on the side of language resource producers to enhance the research of language processing. We support personal data management in addition to social data sharing. (2) This support leads to adopting simple data formats instead of the multi-link-path data models proposed as international standards up to the present. (3) We should set up a framework for total language resource study that includes not only pivotal data formats such as standard formats, but also the surroundings of data formation to capture a wider range of language activities, e.g. annotation, hesitant language formation, and reference-referent relations. A study of this framework is expected to be a foundation of rebuilding man-machine interface studies in which we seek to observe generative processes of informational symbols in order to establish a high affinity interface in regard to documentation. Keywords: Language Documentation, Data Sharing, Description Model 1. Introduction A study of making, sharing, and using language resources began from a digitization project conducted by R.Busa, 1949(Busa, 1951), from then, the digitization of language resources has presented many challenges(Greenberger, 1964), and this has become a central theme of our research. Nowadays most information is born-digital, and language resources also have already been digitized. In this digi- tal era, the main focus of language resource studies seems to have been changing from creating language resources to exploring how they can be shared and used. However, even if information is pervasive in a digital format, we can only generate information via a physical interface. Digi- tal environments have developed and improved the quality of output information from a system and consequently also the output interface from the system. However, we need a physical interface to enter data and, as is often the case, the interface is not designed with a view of users in a digital system and we are required to fit with the interface a system provides.1 In this case, we have to change in our plans, data, processes, and sometimes philosophy on entering data, in conformity with requirements from the system. This is one of the reasons why language documentation has been ex- pected in linguistics(Gippert et al., 2006). Language docu- mentation is not an activity that people unacquainted with technologies or computers try to learn them with support from computer scientists, but a study that linguists seek for a way of using computers as data-input tools that computer scientists have overlooked for a long time unconsciously. In this paper, firstly, we report our projects on language documentation from 2008 to 2016 and, as findings from 1In the mechanical era, man-machine interfaces had been cul- tivated through many experiments. However, in …

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