Linguistic and ethnographic sound recordings from early twentieth-century California: Optical scanning, digitization, and access

二十世纪初加利福尼亚的语言和民族志录音：光学扫描、数字化和访问

• 批准号: 1500779
• 负责人: Andrew Garrett
• 金额: $ 20万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1500779&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Linguistic; ethnographic; sound; recordings; early

California has over 90 indigenous languages belonging to 21 different language families, and is linguistically more diverse than any area of its size in the western hemisphere. A hundred years ago, almost all California Native languages still had speakers; in most cases there were active speech communities using traditional narrative, oratory, ritual, teaching, and other speech practices in addition to rich song cultures. During the early decades of the twentieth century, beginning in 1901, Native people recorded songs and spoken texts on wax cylinders in collaboration with anthropologists and linguists at the University of California, Berkeley. The resulting collection of 2,713 cylinders contains over 100 hours of recordings in 78 languages, including about half of California's Native languages. For seven languages these are the only known sound recordings, and in many other cases they include unique speech practices and otherwise unknown stories and songs. Today, though fewer than half of California's indigenous languages have any first-language speakers (in almost all cases fewer than half a dozen), many Native communities have active language restoration programs and would welcome access to sound recordings made a century ago.This project will apply new technology developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to create audio transfers of all wax cylinders at UC Berkeley. This involves optical restoration using a precision optical probe that creates a high-resolution profile of the cylinder surface; this profile can be formed into a three-dimensional digital image. An algorithm on a computer then processes the image to calculate the stylus motion and numerically extract the audio signal. The resulting audio transfers are superior to those produced invasively (with a physical stylus), and can even be created from broken cylinders. The entire cylinder collection will be scanned and digitally archived within a three-year window, in a collaboration involving the Hearst Museum of Anthropology (where the wax cylinder collection is housed), the University Library (where the scanning and digitization will be done), and the Department of Linguistics (which operates the California Language Archive, an online resource where the resulting audio files will be archived and accessible).

加利福尼亚州有 90 多种土著语言，属于 21 个不同的语系，其语言多样性比西半球任何同等面积的地区都更加多样化。一百年前，几乎所有加州原住民语言仍然有人使用。在大多数情况下，除了丰富的歌曲文化之外，还有活跃的言语社区，使用传统的叙事、演讲、仪式、教学和其他言语实践。从 1901 年开始，二十世纪初的几十年里，原住民与加州大学伯克利分校的人类学家和语言学家合作，在蜡筒上录制歌曲和口语文本。最终收集的 2,713 个圆筒包含 78 种语言的 100 多个小时的录音，其中包括大约一半的加州本土语言。对于七种语言来说，这些是唯一已知的录音，在许多其他情况下，它们包括独特的言语练习和其他未知的故事和歌曲。如今，尽管加州土著语言中只有不到一半的人以第一语言为母语（几乎所有情况下都少于六个），但许多土著社区都有积极的语言恢复计划，并欢迎获得一个世纪前的录音。该项目将应用劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室开发的新技术，为加州大学伯克利分校的所有蜡筒创建​​音频传输。这涉及使用精密光学探头进行光学修复，以创建圆柱体表面的高分辨率轮廓；该轮廓可以形成三维数字图像。然后计算机上的算法处理图像以计算触笔运动并以数字方式提取音频信号。由此产生的音频传输优于侵入式（使用物理手写笔）产生的音频传输，甚至可以从损坏的圆柱体中创建。 赫斯特人类学博物馆（蜡缸藏品在此存放）、大学图书馆（扫描和数字化将在此进行）和语言学系（负责管理加州语言档案馆，这是一个在线资源，生成的音频文件将被存档并可供访问），整个蜡缸藏品将在三年内被扫描并进行数字化存档。