Project Progress
September 2021
The updated version of the database was published in the section Project outputs. In comparison with the previous version, it has only a few texts that are not available due to the copyright issues. This second public version of the database contains 150 texts with almost 223 000 words.
August 2021
The project has achieved its main objective, the dicctionary of A Fala has been sent to the printers on the 25th of August.
July 2021
The sample of the dictionary was printed so that the last corrections could be made before the final print.
September 2020
The database is composed of 156 texts. These texts contain about 225 000 tokens/words (110 000 recorded data and 115 000 written texts). All the texts have already been edited in FLEx and the community members are currently correcting the first version of the dictionary. The dictionary contains more than 12 000 entries.
The first version of the database was published in the section Project outputs. It contains 146 texts with over 204 000 words. Due to the copyright issues 10 of the written texts had to be deleted from the public version.
February 2020
143 texts have been inserted into the lexical database up to February 29. These texts contain about 207 000 tokens/words (94 000 recorded data and 113 000 written texts).
The text are gradually edited in FLEx. The lexicon section contains currently 8 000 entries.
October 2019
139 texts have been inserted into the lexical database up to October 15. These texts contain about 201 000 tokens/words (88 000 recorded data and 113 000 written texts).
The text are gradually edited in FLEx. The lexicon section contains currently 4 400 entries.
June 2019
Up to now (June 30, 2019) 130 texts have been inserted into the lexical database. These texts contain about
175 000 tokens/words (80 000 recorded data and 95 000 written texts).
The texts section of the FLEx database is now gradually edited, text by text, and the individual words are inserted into Lexicon section with information about grammar category, translation into Spanish, examples, variety information, usage and others. The lexicon section contains currently 1 800 entries.
May 2019
Up to now (May 1, 2019) the lexical database contains 110 texts with about 148 000 tokens (70 000 recorded data, 78 000 written texts).
Video recordings
The recordings are made with community members from the three villages. The participants range from 20 to 90 years of age. In some of the recordings younger speakers have the role of interviewers, asking questions to their family members or neighbours.
Transcriptions in the programme ELAN
The transcription in ELAN is not phonological but simply orthographical, however the orthography used in the transcriptions represents all the phonemes of A Fala in a distinctive way, so that there is no doubt about the original pronunciation of individual words. The transcriptions are as detailed as possible. In the transcription process they are double-checked and they are also consulted with the speakers themselves to clarify possible douts and to explain difficult and unusual words.
Consulting transcribed interview with the participant
The orthography was originally established by the Ascociación Cultural a Nosa Fala in 2017. It is not an “oficial” orthography as there is no institution that would be in charge to do that. Nevertheless the orthography was discussed with the community members from the three villages and the result is a compromise that takes into accont many different opinions and aspects (practical use, tradition, etc.). This orthography is also accepted by the Asociación Cultural U Lagartu Verdi.
Editing the annotations in the programme FLEx
Once transcribed the recordings, they are exported to FLEx (Fieldworks Language Explorer) using the ELAN – FLEx – ELAN workflow. In FLEx individual words/tokens are editted adscribing each Headword/Lexem various categories: translation to Spanish, grammatical information, dialect label (as all three varieties are carefully marked), definition and exaples if necessary and other descriptions depending on individual words. The FLEx database also enables to link images, audio and video files. All these features are exploited to make the database the most complex possible.
Dictionary editing in FLEx
The final editing will inted to give the dictionary user-friendly and attractive format. It is expected that the first edition of the dictionary will contain at least 12 000 entries.
