Comparative Wordlist System

Submitting data

The usefulness of the Comparative African Wordlists Project to linguists and language communities is dependent on data submissions. We hope that you will consider submitting wordlist data that you might have. Our personnel resources are currently limited so we are only accepting data that meets the following requirements and adheres to the following process.

We thank you in advance for your understanding and your data contribution! Our hope is that this resource will facilitate some interesting and innovative comparative research!

Sincerely,

The CANIL Comparative African Wordlist Project team

Philosophical requirements

Making the data upon which scientific conclusions are based available to other researchers is an essential part of the research process; results cannot be verified or improved unless we make an effort to get this information to our colleagues. The CanIL Comparative African Wordlists Project and any data submitters agree to the following principles with respect to data submitted to or posted by the Project:

  • to provide our data in electronic form for use by others (to the extent reasonably possible);
  • to acknowledge the use we make of the data provided to use by others according to the usual conventions of scholarship;
  • to hold others harmless for any errors or misuse of the data;
  • to make no commercial use of such data except by prior and specific written agreement with the providers of the data.

The CanIL Comparative African Wordlists Project will place submitted data on the database server and will present to database users acknowledgements and copyright restrictions provided by the submitter.

Adapted from the CBOLD Manifesto, http://www.cbold.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/Docs/manifesto.html.

Data requirements

  1. Data phonetically transcribed in standard IPA.
  2. IPA transcribed using SIL IPA90, SIL IPA93, or any Unicode fonts that supports the IPA character set (refer to Resources link above).
  3. Transcribed data submitted in one of the following formats:
    • Toolbox/Shoebox standard format file (SFM)
    • Excel or equivalent spreadsheet
    • Tab-delimited format
    • Microsoft Word/Open Office/WordPerfect using tables with a separate column for each field.
  4. Links to sound files captured in data file. (i.e. each record in your database must also list the name of the associated sound file).
  5. CAWP data submission form filled out including: 
    • Documented permissions for sharing of data online.
    • Language information including name, region, etc.
  6. Sound files for each word sample in .wav format.

Data submission process (web-based)

  1. Put data files (NOT INCLUDING SOUND FILES) and completed CAWP data submission form in a directory.
  2. Compress the directory using ZIP compression.
  3. Send the compressed ZIP archive to keith_snider@sil.org. If the file is too large for sending (many mail servers have a maximum of 1 MB) then use the free service provided at www.yousendit.com.
  4. Upon receiving, your submission will be reviewed to determine if the data can be integrated into our system, or to ask you for further details if necessary. Once the submission is accepted, we will ask you for sound files and send instructions for submitting them.

Data submission process (mail-based)

  1. Put data files, sound files and completed CAWP submission form on a CD.
  2. Mail to: 
    CAWP Review - Dr. Keith Snider
    CANIL c/o TWU
    7600 Glover Road
    Langley, BC Canada V2Y 1Y1