African Languages Lexicon Project (ALLEX)

• Host: The Norwegian Documentation Project
• URL: http://www.edd.uio.no/allex/
• Partners:
  • Department of African Languages and Literature, University of Zimbabwe
  • Department of Linguistics, University of Gothenburg
  • Department of Scandanavian Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Oslo

Description: "The African Language Lexicon Project (ALLEX) emerged in conjunction with the Standard Shona Corpus. The Corpus was created as a source in the development of the Shona Dictionary, which also will draw on previous dictionaries such as Hannan's and Duramazwi's. ALLEX involves researchers at the universities of Zimbabwe, Gothenburg, and Oslo, and the Norwegian Documentation Project.

The project uses the TEI customizations that were prepared for the LE-Parole project as its starting point. Additional adjustments have been made in order to cover oral material.

The project began in 1992. The first phase was financed by the Norwegian Universities' Committee for Development Research and Education (NUFU) through the University of Oslo, and the Swedish Development Agency (SIDA) in Sweden, through the University of Gothenburg. The second phase of the project is financed by the same institutions, but NUFU in Norway is the major partner.

Corpora of spoken and written Ndebele and Shona, and dictionaries in these languages, are now available. The next phase of the project will concentrate on the production of advanced and specialist dictionaries and glossaries in Shona and Ndbele, and a range of bilingual dictionaries."

Daniel Ridings

Contact: Daniel Ridings

Email: ridings@ling.gu.se