Crowdsourcing and
Gaelic corpus
development
[email protected]
Gaelic in Siabost
• A comprehensive survey of Gaelic
ability, use and attitudes in 2011 -
•
attitudes to Gaelic are extremely
positive
•
but most parents and grandparents
speak to their children in English
•
most children enter English-medium
primary education.
Tragedy of the Commons
•an unregulated depletable shared
resource will be destroyed through
overuse, by individuals acting
independently and rationally in their own
short-term self-interest
•even though everyone knows that the
destruction of the shared resource would
be harmful to everyone’s long-term
interests
The Gaelic commons
• Language is an economic choice •
English - the language of national and
international labour markets
•
Gaelic - the language of local selfidentity.
• Gaelic development requires an
economic solution -
•
parents need to be persuaded of the
tangible, short-term economic benefits
Gaelic development
• Acquisition •
more Gaelic-speakers
•
more Gaelic-speaking
•
•
standardisation and elaboration
• Status/usage • Corpus orthography, lexicon, grammar, . . .
Gaelic corpus: 1900
• The Gaelic Bible •
•
New Testament (1767)
•
•
Forbes, 1848
Old Testament (1801)
• Literature - prose and poetry
• Prescriptive grammars Cameron Gillies,1896
Gaelic corpus: 1970
• Perceived decline in standards •
•
increase in inconsistency?
•
the Gaelic corpus as an unowned,
rapidly depleting resource
•
privatisation - GOC
more demand for consistency?
• Tragedy of the Commons -
Gaelic Language
Academy?
• National Plan for Gaelic 2007-2012 •
commitment to a coordinated approach
to Gaelic corpus planning, including a
Gaelic Language Academy
• But very little progress has been made •
no Gaelic Language Academy is in
sight.
• Why?
Partnership approach?
• The National Plan commits BnaG to a
partnership approach to Gaelic
development.
• Plethora of Gaelic development
organisations -
•
•
BnaG, CnaG, An Comunn Gàìdhealach
•
Gaelic language plans
Gaelic Books Council, Gaelic Arts
Agency, Gaelic Learners Association,
MG Alba, . . .
The Tragedy of the
Anticommons
•a resource cannot be exploited effectively
because there are too many owners,
•all of whom need to agree on how best to
proceed.
•Solution - “bundling”, either by government,
or by market forces.
•Obstacles - ideological factors, lack of trust,
rent-seeking
Crowdsourcing
•commons-based peer production (cf. firm
production and market production)
•Web 2.0, user-generated content, wikis
•diversity trumps ability
•Can we crowdsource corpus planning for
Gaelic?
•A “wikademy”?
Reasons for optimism?
•OED, English orthography
•Fòram na Gàidhlig, Gàidhlig-B
•Broadband
•Web 2.0
•Strong grassroots interest in Gaelic
corpus planning
Community of practice
• Gaelic language professionals
•
CPD
•
•
open science
• Academic linguists
social impact
• Amateur enthusiasts, language activists
http://comhla.wikispaces.co
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