■ Project Purpose
Systematically digitize and integrate Tohoku University’s extensive collection of dialect material (comprised of recordings, questionnaires and field notes dating back to the 1960s) to establish a sustainable infrastructure for long-term preservation and global research access.
■ Key Initiatives
- Digital Integration: Prioritize fragile 1960s audio tapes and link them directly with the corresponding questionnaires and field notes.
- International Standardization: Establish a standardized system of transcription, annotation and metadata practices in collaboration with language documentation experts.
- AI-Assisted Analysis: Incorporate AI tools for morphemic segmentation and automated linguistic glossing.
- Interdisciplinary Reach: Combine descriptive linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics and Japanese historical linguistics.
■ Expected Outcomes
- Publication of an open-access English volume featuring grammatical sketches of six representative Tohoku dialects.
- Establishment of a sustainable Digital Humanities (DH) framework for linguistic resource preservation.
