Data Capture and Presentation in the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas

Authors

  • Sheila Embleton York University
  • Dorin Uritescu York University
  • Eric Wheeler York University

Abstract

RODA,the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas (Embleton, Uritescu, and Wheeler 2002, 2004,2006, in press), is a two-stage project involving (I) the transfer of data from a hard copy atlas of the Crisana dialect of Romanian (Stan and Uritescu 1996,2003) to an online system for general availability, and (2) the application of innovative statistical methods to the data. Romanian, as the prime exemplar of the eastern Romance languages. has had scholarly attention, including the detailed work of Stan and Britescu (1996,2003) and Uritescu (l984a, 1984b) on the dialects of the Crisana region in north-west Romania. In digitizing this data to make it more broadly accessible, and in successfully digitizing a hardcopy dialect atlas of Finnish (Embleton and Wheeler 1997b, 2000), we encountered several situations worth highlighting to others who may be considering parallel projects.

Author Biographies

Sheila Embleton, York University

Born in Ottawa, Dr. Embleton graduated from Lisgar Collegiate Institute, then attended the University of Toronto, from where she earned her BSc (Mathematics & Linguistics, 1975), MSc (Mathematics & Statistics, 1976), and PhD (Linguistics, 1981). Her areas of scholarly interest are historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, dialectology, mathematical/statistical methods in linguistics, onomastics, Peircean semiotics, and women and language. She has published in all these areas. Her areas of language specialization include English, German, Germanic, French, Romance, Slavic, and Finno-Ugric. She is the author of Statistics in Historical Linguistics (1986) and is editor of the Fourteenth LACUS Forum (1988) andTwenty-Fourth LACUS Forum (1998), and co-editor of Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans (1992, 1993) as well as both The Emergence of the Modern Language Sciences: Studies on the Transition from Historical-Comparative to Structural LinguisticsVolume 1 Historiographical Perspectives and Volume 2 Methodological Perspectives and Applications (1999), published by John Benjamins, of Amsterdam and Philadelphia. She is associate editor of Diachronica and The Journal of Quantitative Linguistics , review editor of Word and Journal of Finnish Studies , and member of the editorial board of Onomastica Canadiana and for the book series Amsterdam Classics in Linguistics, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, and Edinburgh Historical Linguistics monograph series . Her current research is mostly on dialectometry (statistical methods applied to dialect study), with particular application to British, Finnish and Romanian dialects.

Dorin Uritescu, York University

Professor, Department of French Studies,  Glendon College, York University

Eric Wheeler, York University

Adjunct Professor, Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, and  Adjunct Professor, School of Information Technology,  York University

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Published

2007-09-26

How to Cite

Embleton, S., Uritescu, D., & Wheeler, E. (2007). Data Capture and Presentation in the Romanian Online Dialect Atlas. Linguistica Atlantica, 27, 37–39. Retrieved from https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/la/article/view/22616

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