Showing papers on "Malayalam published in 2005"

The free word order phenomenon : its syntactic sources and diversity

Abstract: This book deals with the syntax of the free word order phenomenon in a wide range of languages - in particular, German, Japanese, Kannada, Malayalam, Serbo-Croatian, Tagalog, Tongan, and Turkish - in some of which the phenomenon was previously unstudied. The different articles offer ways of analyzing free word order under minimalist assumptions, with respect to the question of how it is acquired, how a typology of free word order languages can be derived, and in connection with its relatedness to information structural factors.

Clause Structure in South Asian Languages

Abstract: Introduction Clause Structure in South Asian Languages: General Introduction Veneeta Dayal, Anoop Mahajan Functional Projections 1. Some Developments in the Functional Architecture of the Kannada Clause R. Amritavalli 2. Two Types of Negation in Bengali Gillian Ramchand Argument Structure 3. The Serial Verb Construction in Malayalam K.A. Jayaseelan 4. Causation and Reflexivity in Kannada Jeffrey Lidz 5. Light Verb Raising, Empty Preposition and Zero Derivation P. Madhavan Case Theory 6. The Status of Case Miriam Butt, Tracy King 7. Structural Case, Lexical Case and the Verbal Projection Alice Davison Movement Phenomena 8. Particle Movement in Sinhala and Japanese Paul Hagstrom 9. The Topic Interpretation in Universal Grammar Ayesha Kidwai 10. Remarks on Adsentential, Adnominal, and Extraposed Relative Clauses in Hindi James D. McCawley

Multilingual Speech Recognition: A Unified Approach

Abstract: In this paper, we present a unified approach for hidden markovmodel based multilingual speech recognition. The proposedapproach could be used across acoustically similar as well asdiverse languages. We use an automatic phone mapping algo-rithm to map phones across languages and reduce the effectivenumber of phones in the multililingual acoustic model. Weexperimentally verify the effectiveness of the approach usingtwo acoustically similar languages, Tamil and Hindi and alsoAmerican English which is very different from the other twolanguages acoustically. The experimental results are very en-couraging and demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach inbuilding a universal multilingual speech recognition system. 1. Introduction A practical approach to multilingual speech recognition forcountries like India where more than 30 languages are spokenacrossthecountrywouldbetohaveatrulymultilingualacousticmodel. This multilingual model should then be adapted to thetarget language with the help of a language identification sys-tem. This is more important in the case of telephony applica-tions where the conversations can be of short durations and thelanguage could change from one conversation to another.IndianlanguagesingeneralbelongtoeitherDravidianfam-ily or Aryan family or both. For example, a south Indian lan-guage Malayalam is derived from another south Indian lan-guage Tamil, a Dravidian language. But, its vocabulary is richwith words derived from sanskrit, an Aryan language, makingit resemble the Dravidian and Aryan languages. The acousticcharacteristics of some of the Malayalam phones are similar toTamil, whilesomeareclosertoSanskrit. Therefore, whiledeal-ing with Indian languages, there are acoustic similarities acrosslanguages that could be shared to our advantage to reduce theoverall size of the acoustic model.Dealing with many languages at the same time, the easi-est and effective approach would be to identify the languagewith the help of a language identification system and choosethe appropriate monolingual acoustic model for decoding. Thisapproach however suffers from mainly two drawbacks:

The Historical Traditions of the Jews of Kochi

Abstract: Three very different types of data must be considered in any attempt at constructing a history of the ancient Jewish community of Kochi in Kerala. There are scant historical data—a third-century patristic letter, a ninth-century Muslim travelogue, an eleventh-century royal charter engraved on copperplates, a twelfth-century Hebrew tombstone. There are numerous motifs from Kochini folklore, especially the intriguing Malayalam songs of Jewish women. Finally, there are indigenous narrations by which the community presents itself to the outside world. Even taken together, these three types of data do not yield a comprehensive history. But what they do reveal is perhaps more significant; they chart the community's crafting for themselves a niche within the social framework of Kerala. In sum, in their narrations they create an identity that resonates exceptionally well with both Indian and Jewish values, themes and motifs.

Creation of digital archives in Indian languages using CDS/ISIS : development of M-ISIS (Malayalam ISIS) and 'Nitya'

Abstract: Need for developing Information Systems in Indian vernacular languages is now felt more than ever Use of local scripts becomes inevitable in the creation of Information Systems for digitized palm leaves, copper plates, manuscripts and local documents M-ISIS is a localized version of CDS\ISIS for Malayalam language, which is programmed using ISIS32DLL created by UNESCO It is a bibliographic information system for Malayalam documents using Malayalam script Together with the techniques of 'Nitya Digital Archives' it searches using Malayalam script and retrieves both references and full texts A special font 'Meerattf' is designed and a rendering engine to process conjunct formation is programmed, enabling both data entry and query formulation in Malayalam Paper describes the creation of a digital archive of 'Mathrubhumi' weekly A few issues of the weekly were scanned to PDF using Adobe Acrobat Catalogue data of every individual article was fed into a CDS\ISIS database through a data entry worksheet designed in M-ISIS The prototype shows immense possibilities of localization of CDS\ISIS in Indian languages

Globalisation and the Changing Scenario on Language Attitude: Malayalam Vs Kannada*

Abstract: India as a nation and world at large is under the spell of globalization and the emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil etc., are under its impact. Social science subjects like Economics, Psychology, Law undoubtedly contributes quite a lot to the situation, particularly the study of Stock Markets have become the talk of the town and there is an upsurge in issues concerning corporate law and one wonders what Linguistics or Language studies could essentially contribute to this particular phenomenon? But, if we analyse the changing phenomenon due to the impact of globalization and liberalization in a state like Karnataka or Kerala, you find contradictions. Sometime back, particularly during Gokak movement there was an anti-English agitation and a hue and cry for implementation of Kannada at all level (probably we could term it as an indigenization movement), watch dog committee was set up for implementation of Kannada and still there are stalwarts of Kannada, who plead for effective implementation of Kannada at all levels. This led to even scrapping of English at all levels and grants were denied if schools teach in English. Consequent to this, there were mushrooming of CBSE schools and many parents admitted there children to such schools. Then the takers of Kannada were poor people in the urban places and the rural folks. But the onslaught of globalization has brought a different scenario now, there seems to be reversal trend. The government wanted to introduce English from first standard (Now the Government of Karnataka has actually introduced English from 1 st standard). Recent agitations in Karnataka see that there are different groups emerging, some want English to be introduced

A universal method for typing indian scripts and other scripts

Abstract: A universal method for typing all Indian scripts and other scripts using a standard English keyboard has been developed. This method called LIPIKAAR is such that anyone already proficient in typing on an English keyboard (QWERTY or any other) can start typing in a script of his choice. The IPIKAAR method is applicable for all Brahmi based scripts: Devnagari, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Punjabi and for Perso Arabic based Scripts: Urdu, Sindhi & Kashmiri. The resulting overlay is universal in nature and can be adapted for many other scripts of the world.

History of medieval Kerala

Abstract: Mr V K R Menon 1908-1952 was scion of the erstwhile Cochin royal family, his father being the ruler of Cochin. This work contains his 19 articles on a variety of subjects such as old Malayalam, art and architecture, music and paintings, and epigraphy and ayurvedic treatment against snake poison.

Multilingual Computing in Malayalam : Embedding the Original Script of Malayalam in Linux and Development of KDE Applications

Abstract: Indic Language Computing can be fully realized only through embedding vernacular scripts in operating systems. With the advent of OTF (Open Type Font) embedding local scripts in OS compliant with Unicode has become a reality taking computing beyond word processing. Microsoft has already come to this field strongly by embedding Devanagari in MS Windows. Compared to the closedness of Microsoft OS, free and open environment of Linux is ideal for the early accomplishment of multilingual computing. This paper describes initiatives of Rachana team in embedding Malayalam script in GNU/Linux operating system. Modules are added for KDE with its rendering engine QT so that the original exhaustive character set of Malayalam developed by Rachana is embedded fully in compliance with Unicode. For the first time, prospects are open to create DBMS and information systems using Malayalam script. Computing in Malayalam language is being initiated in the true sense only now. The procedures set up by Rachana-GNU/Linux is highly beneficial to the goals of INFLIBNET in fulfilling a total integrated bibliographic control of Indian literature in their native scripts.