Creating electronic resources on Tuvan language: preliminary results, current challenges and prospects

Abstract

At the moment, corpus linguistics is a rapidly developing field of studies, which, among everything else, plays a significant role in applied research. In the Republic of Tuva, debates on using information technologies in studying Tuvan language and literature studies began as far back as the 1990s, but a breakthrough cane in 2009, when the Research and Education Center of Turkic Studies was opened at Tuvan State University. As the Center’s director, in this article the author takes stock of the work done so far, sets new goals and describes the current challenges.

The Center works in collaboration with the Departments of IT at Tuvan State University and Siberian Federal University, as well as with foreign scientists – F.M. Tyers (University of Tromsø, Norway), J. Washington (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA). Among the projects already under way a special place belongs to the Electronic Corpus of Tuvan Language (www.tuvacorpus.ru). Current challenges include creating electronic textbooks on Tuvan language and literature for secondary school level (in compliance with the Federal State Standards of Education)

Another large-scale project spearheaded by the Center is the ‘Pisateli Tuvy / Tyvanyң chogaalchylary’ website (http://pisateli-tuvy.ru/). The list of its participants includes the Institute for the Development of Ethnic Schools in Tuva, innovative platforms of the Republic of Tuva, as well as several departments at Tuvan State University. When completed, the website will feature materials on over 100 Tuvan writers, including biographies, bibliographies, criticism, translations, opinion writing, scholarly papers, photos, audio recordings, presentation files and other pieces which will soon appear on their profile pages. The site will serve as a fundamental database of sources for other electronic educational resources, such as ‘The Electronic Library of Children’s Literature in Tuvan Language’, ‘Classic Works of Tuvan Literature’ and ‘Electronic School Library in Tuvan Language’.

Other promising projects worth mentioning include a corpus of Tuvan texts in various systems of writing (Tibetan, Old Mongolian, Sanskrit, Latin script and early 20^th century Cyrillic), a corpus of parallel texts (Tuvan-Russian, Russian-Tuvan, Mongol-Tuvan, German-Tuvan, Tuvan-German, Tuvan-English, etc.), a corpus of proper names (databases of Tuvan placenames, personal names, gods of traditional Tuvan pantheon, names of celestial objects, pets, etc.), a corpus of various dictionaries, a corpus of dialects and that of folklore.

The present moment when the foundations of all these corpuses are just being laid is the right time to discuss their future and number. The National corpus of Tuvan language is one of those fundamental projects which can help preserve a language while the number of its active speakers is constantly decreasing.