Papers by Dorothy Thunder
When I heard that Carole Gerson was bringing out a book entitled Canadian Women in Print, 1750-19... more When I heard that Carole Gerson was bringing out a book entitled Canadian Women in Print, 1750-1918, I wished that I had been able to read it before submitting the final version of my book manuscript. Gerson is the kind of meticulous front-line researcher-veteran of archives and databases, hunter-down of obscure and illuminating facts-that ordinary literary scholars both revere and rely upon: few can research so thoroughly and interpret so ably. In her latest book, she has written what amounts to the first book-length history (representative rather than comprehensive) of the material practices and publishing strategies of Canadian women to 1918. She does not create a single unified chronology but instead follows various strands in succeeding chapters. The result is a must-read for all students of women's writing in Canada: as useful for its clarifying generalizations as for its effective marshalling and analysis of details, Canadian Women in Print demonstrates why Gerson has been, ever since the publication of A Purer Taste in 1989, such an important scholar in Canadian literary and book history studies. Canadian Women in Print analyzes various dimensions of women's relations to print culture, ranging from their work in the printing and binding of books to their success in finding appropriate publishing venues. Religious conviction often inspired authorship, including the earliest devotional and historical writing by Catholic nuns in New France, translations of the Bible by Mohawk, Métis, and Cree women converts, and missionary reports for home congregations by Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and other foreign missionaries. No less evangelical were the purposes of the many women who wrote school textbooks, temperance articles, domestic manuals, and moral tales for children. But as early as the late eighteenth century in the Maritimes, and slightly later in Upper and Lower Canada, cultural as much as spiritual and social revival motivated women to publish
Computer Assisted Language Learning, 2005
This paper describes the development of an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL... more This paper describes the development of an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) system for learning Arabic. This system could be used for learning Arabic by students at primary schools or by learners of Arabic as a second or foreign language. It explores the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for learning Arabic. The learners are encouraged to produce sentences freely in various situations and contexts and guided to recognise by themselves the erroneous or inappropriate functions of their misused expressions. In this system, we use NLP tools (including morphological analyser and syntax analyser) and error analyser to issue feedback to the learner. Furthermore, we propose a mechanism of correction by the learner which allows the learner to correct the typed sentence independently, and allows the learner to realise that what the error is.
We describe three ongoing projects involving different First Peoples’ languages of Canada (Cree/n... more We describe three ongoing projects involving different First Peoples’ languages of Canada (Cree/nehiyawewin, Dene Sųline, and Nakoda/Stoney) that centre around the recording, transcription, compilation, and analysis of spontaneous oral language use––some narrative, some conversation––using freely available, Unicode-savvy corpus software (in this case, AntConc [Anthony 2014]) and little to no up- front annotation or translation into English. Because these languages are all polysynthetic, lemmatization and POS tagging are either unachievable or excessively time-draining and indeterminate activities. Nevertheless, corpus creation can still continue apace and reap huge benefits using the most basic of corpus tools. These projects are consonant with a growing ethos in language documentation circles that advocate for the value of corpus development alongside more traditional documentary activities (cf. McEnery & Ostler 2000, Woodbury 2003, Crowley 2007, Cox 2011, Mosel 2014, Vinogradov 20...
One avenue for supporting the continued use and revitalization of endangered languages in the cur... more One avenue for supporting the continued use and revitalization of endangered languages in the current, pervasively computerized world is the creation of computational models of the often rich and complex morphology of these languages. Such computational models can be used as a basis for creating a suite of reader’s and writer’s tools, including e.g. (1) an intelligent electronic dictionary that combines the computational model and a lexical database allowing for linking any inflected form with the appropriate dictionary entry, as well as the generation of word paradigms, (2) an intelligent computer-aided language learning application (ICALL) that allows for the dynamic generation of large numbers of exercises combining the entire core vocabulary (up to several thousand of the most common words) and a substantially smaller set of exercise templates, and (3) a spell-checker that supports adherence with one or more existing orthographical conventions, and thus the production of good-qu...
A Sociolinguistics of the South, 2021
Proceedings of the 2014 Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages, 2014
This paper presents aspects of a computational model of the morphology of Plains Cree based on th... more This paper presents aspects of a computational model of the morphology of Plains Cree based on the technology of finite state transducers (FST). The paper focuses in particular on the modeling of nominal morphology. Plains Cree is a polysynthetic language whose nominal morphology relies on prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes. The model of Plains Cree morphology is capable of handling these complex affixation patterns and the morphophonological alternations that they engender. Plains Cree is an endangered Algonquian language spoken in numerous communities across Canada. The language has no agreed upon standard orthography, and exhibits widespread variation. We describe problems encountered and solutions found, while contextualizing the endeavor in the description, documentation and revitalization of First Nations Languages in Canada.
American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology, 1995
Hypertonic activation of NHE1, the ubiquitous Na+/H+ exchanger, plays a central role in cell volu... more Hypertonic activation of NHE1, the ubiquitous Na+/H+ exchanger, plays a central role in cell volume regulation, yet little is known about the underlying mechanism. We probed the osmotic responsiveness of full-length and truncated constructs of NHE1 transfected into cells lacking endogenous antiport activity. The hypertonic stimulation of NHE1 was preserved after heterologous transfection of the full-length NHE1 or of constructs truncated at positions 698 or 703. In contrast, mutants truncated at position 635 (delta 635) failed to respond to osmotic challenge. Transfectants (delta 635) behaved as if constitutively activated, having a permanently elevated cytosolic pH (pHi) under isotonic, unstimulated conditions. The delta 635 mutant displayed H+ binding with high affinity and low cooperativity. Constructs delta 582 or delta 566 had a reduced H+ sensitivity and were therefore inactive at resting pHi. Such cells were unresponsive to osmotic stress near physiological pHi but could be a...
I would like to share some of the experiences I have had as a Cree speaker and language instructo... more I would like to share some of the experiences I have had as a Cree speaker and language instructor who is now becoming a Cree linguist. CILLDI’s Community Linguist Certificate program has provided me with much insight about my language. As a fluent speaker who also studied Cree at the university for 4 years, I was not aware of the importance of morphological structure, meaning, and sentence patterns of nȇhiyawȇwin. The Cree courses I took focused on formal grammar and the rules and functions of nouns, verbs, and sentences in isolation. With the CLC courses, I began to think deeply about how rich nȇhiyawȇwin is and started to understand the complexities of the language and how everything is interconnected. In the CLC classes, we examined word formation patterns and explored ways to coin new words without losing the trail of meaning. For example, in Cree the word for ‘green’ is askihtakwâw and is connected to askiy, the word for ‘mother earth’. In English, what is the word ‘green’ con...
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Papers by Dorothy Thunder