Interoperability for Language Documentation The Role of Semantic Web Tools

The threat of imminent extinction of perhaps half of the world’s languages has led to increased efforts aimed at the their documentation. Such documentation necessarily makes use of a suite of tools to handle a diverse array of tasks from time segmentation of recordings, to transcription, to annotation, to publication. No one tool can support all aspects of the workflow for language documentation, but there is, at present, no general solution for interoperation among the tools required. We outline a solution to this problem based on Semantic Web technologies and further suggest that OpenOffice’s capabilities for working with RDF make it an ideal choice for tool development for those aspects of workflow related to the production of publications. Keywords-Semantic Web, RDF, interoperability, linguistics