Principles and Practicalities of Corpus Design in Language Retrieval: Issues in the Digitization of the Beynon Corpus of Early Twentieth-Century Sm’algyax Materials

Abstract

This paper describes a pilot project to develop a machine-readable corpus of early twentieth-century Sm’algyax texts from a large collection of handwritten manuscripts collected by the Tsimshian ethnographer and chief William Beynon. The project seeks to ensure that the materials produced are maximally accessible to the Tsimshian community. It relates established principles for corpus design to practical issues in language retrieval, recognizing that the corpus will likely function as an intermediate stage between the original manuscripts and any language materials developed by the community. The paper is addressed primarily to linguists working on language retrieval projects but may also be of use to communities who are working with linguists, as it provides insight into the concerns and preoccupations that linguists bring to such tasks.