The Institute of Linguistics, and the Institute of History and Philology will open an exhibition, October 15, entitled Language in Space and Time. The exhibition celebrates the achievements and successful entry into a second phase of the Language Archive Project, an extensive digital archiving project that has been carried out cooperatively by the two Institutes since 2001. Media are welcome to attend the opening ceremony.

In the past, linguistic records were preserved in written form on materials such as shells and bones, bronze, bamboo, stone, paper, silk, and so on. Nowadays, digitization methods can be used to reproduce and annotate these records, and multimedia methods can be used to record and further analyze oral language.

The Language in Space and Time exhibition features five sub-projects of the Language Archive Project that are divided into two main themes: Taiwan indigenous languages and Han languages. Through an information search system created especially for this exhibition, the similarities and differences among 36 lexical items (vocabulary items) common to each language are explored.

The ongoing Language Archive Project currently includes the Pre-Qin Oracle Bone, Bronze, Bamboo and Wood Inscriptions Language Materials Archive, the Old Chinese Tagged Corpus Project, the Min and Hakka Language Archives Project, A Socio-phonetic Study of Spoken Taiwan Mandarin Project, and the Formosan Language Archive Project.

The exhibition will be held on the 2nd Floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building, Academia Sinica until March 31, 2010, every Monday to Friday 9:00am to 17:00 pm.

Related website: http://digiarch.sinica.edu.tw/exhibition.jsp

Attachment: Schedule of the Opening Ceremony of the Exhibition "Language in Space and Time"
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Venue: International Conference Hall, Building for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica.
              No.128, Sec.2, Academia Road, Nankang, Taipei
Schedule:
10:00-10:30  Opening Ceremony
             Address by Dr. Jackson T. Sun, Director of the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica
             Address by Dr. Cheng-hwa Tsang, Associate Director of the Institute of History and Philology,
             Academia Sinica
             Address by Academician Dr.Yung-fa Chen, Director, Taiwan e-learning and Digital Archives Program and
             NDAP, Academia Sinica
             Address by Dr. Elizabeth Zeitoun, Director of the Language Archive Project
10:30-11:00  Exhibition visit
11:00--      Tea

Media Contacts:
Yu Wen Betty Lin, Digital Archives Service Extension Office, Academia Sinica (Tel)2652-5277, (Fax)2652-5280,(M)0939-696-862,Betty168@gate.sinica.edu.tw
Ms. Mei-Hui Lin, Public Relations Office, Central Office of Administration, Academia Sinica (Tel) 886-2-2789-8821, (Fax) 886-2-2782-1551, (M) 0921-845-234
mhlin313@gate.sinica.edu.tw

Release Unit : Publlic Relations Office