Documenting and Researching Endangered Languages: The Pangloss Collection.

TLDR

The Pangloss Collection, an open archive established in 1994 by LACITO CNRS, offers free access to over 1,400 recordings and annotated documents in 70 endangered or under‑resourced languages, supporting research and community use. The article introduces the current contents of the collection and illustrates its potential for researchers, speakers, and the public. Annotations include time‑aligned transcriptions, translations, and glosses, displayed interlinearly via a web interface, with XML structure enabling search and indexing, and long‑term preservation secured through a digital archive partnership.

Abstract

The Pangloss Collection is a language archive developed since 1994 at the Langues et Civilisations a Tradition Orale (LACITO) research group of the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). It contributes to the documentation and study of the world’s languages by providing free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in endangered or under-resourced languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. The Collection is an Open Archive containing media files (recordings), text annotations, and metadata; it currently contains over 1,400 recordings in 70 languages, including more than 400 transcribed and annotated documents. The annotations consist of transcription, free translation in English, French and/or other languages, and, in many cases, word or morpheme glosses; they are time-aligned with the recordings, usually at the utterance level. A web interface makes these annotations accessible online in an interlinear display format, in synchrony with the sound, using any standard browser. The structure of the XML documents makes them accessible to searching and indexing, always preserving the links to the recordings. Longterm preservation is guaranteed through a partnership with a digital archive. A guiding principle of the Pangloss Collection is that a close association between documentation and research is highly profitable to both. This article presents the collections currently available; it also aims to convey a sense of the range of possibilities they offer to the scientific and speaker communities and to the general public.