“Russian 20th Century Literature Digital Library for Language Teaching”

Serge Yablonsky St. Petersburg Transport University root@russicon.spb.su

Digital libraries are important in language learning, in teaching of linguistics and in computer-assisted language learning (McEnery and Wilson 1993). Today in the stage of preparation is the RUSSIAN XX CENTURY LITERATURE digital library -- the Russian text corpus with works of more than 200 Russian 20th Century writers. The texts are taken from printed resources, CD-resources and Internet. The chief distinction of the digital library is its strong connection with the set of Russian electronic dictionaries and language processing tools, particularly dependent on the language processor Russicon (Belyaev, B.M., Surcis, A.S., Yablonsky, S.A., 1993; Yablonsky, S.A., 1990; Yablonsky, S.A., 1994; Yablonsky, S.A., 1997, a, 1998,1999). Every word of the linguistically encoded corpus simultaneously is the entry word of mentioned dictionaries. By connecting the Language Processor Russicon and dictionaries to Russian digital library one may view language learning aids as performing of (Yablonsky S.A., 1994; Yablonsky S.A., 1997, a, b, 1998):

reading of Russian text accessible via digital library;
getting on-line help for every word in the texts that provides the following facilities: a morphological parse, lemma, the entry to the word in the set of dictionaries (in a bilingual X/Russian dictionary, in explanatory monolingual Russian one etc.);
automatic generation and verification of different variants of inflection paradigms for the word (containing only one correct variant) and verification of the right answer;
automatic generation and verification of prefix(s), stem(s), suffix(s), ending, lemma for given word form after learner's input;
automatic generation of test texts with lacunas and verification of them after learner's input etc.

References

A. McEnery A. Wilson. “The role of corpora in computer-assisted language learning.” Computer Assisted Language Learning. 1993. 6: 233-48.

B. M. Belyaev A. S. Surcis S. A. Yablonsky. “Russian Language Processor RUSSICON: Design and Applications..” Proceedings of the East- West Artificial Intelligence Conference (EWAIC-93), Moscow. : , 1993. 175-180.

S. A. Yablonsky. “Russian Language Processor RUSSICON.” Actual problems of computer linguistics, Tartu, Estonia. : , 1990.

S. A. Yablonsky. “Application of the Russian Language Processor Russicon in Language Learning.” Proceedings of the ED-MEDIA '94 World conference on educational multimedia and hypermedia, Vancover. : , 1994. 778.

S. A. Yablonsky. “New Capabilities for Russian and Ukrainian Language Learning Based on the Language Processor Russicon.” Language Teaching and Language Technology. Ed. Sake Jager John Nerbonne Arthur van Essen. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1997.

S. A. Yablonsky. “Russicon Slavonic Language Resources and Software.” Proceedings of the First International Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation, Granada, Spain. Ed. A. Rubio N. Gallardo R. Castro A. Tejada. : , 1998. 141-147.

S. A. Yablonsky. “Development of Russian Language Learning System on the WWW.” Abstracts of the International conference The Future of the Humanities in the Digital Age, September 25-28, Bergen, Norway. : , 1998. 123-127.

S. A. Yablonsky. “Russian Written Language Corpora Development.” Proceedings of the International Seminar Dialog99, May 30-June 8, Tarussa, Russia. : , 1999.