Editing Tools for Digital Epigraphy

The Maya hieroglyphic script, an indigenous graphic notation system in the Americas, presents a formidable decipherment challenge. Approximately 40 per cent of its approximately one thousand known signs remain elusive owing to limited comprehension of the Classic Mayan language. Spanning modern-day south-eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras, the Classic Maya civilization left over ten thousand inscriptions, primarily detailing the lives of political elites. The ‘Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan’ project endeavours to unveil the script’s mysteries via an online text database and dictionary at https://classicmayan.org. Collaborative digital humanities methodologies and tools empower insights into the Maya’s cultural and historical legacy. The project catalogues inscribed artefacts and images in the virtual research environment TextGrid and the ‘Maya Image Archive (MIA)’, enhancing accessibility and collaboration. It further converts Maya hieroglyphic texts into machine-readable XML/TEI format and employs a novel sign classification framework. A new linguistic tool facilitates linguistic analysis and translation, enriching our understanding of Classic Mayan language and culture. Furthermore, the project compiles a vast repository of digitized Maya culture-related images and textual data, accessible online. As of 2024, it focuses on hieroglyphic texts from specific regions, with ongoing transliteration, transcription, and linguistic analysis. This digital approach not only facilitates dynamic Maya script research but also offers a platform for comprehensive source material evaluation and publication.

<h3>Introduction</h3><br> <p>OntoNotes Release 5.0 is the final release of the OntoNotes project, a collaborative effort between <a href="http://www.bbn.com/" rel="nofollow">BBN Technologies</a>, the <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/" rel="nofollow">University of Colorado</a>, the <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/" rel="nofollow">University of Pennsylvania</a> and the <a href="http://www.isi.edu/home" rel="nofollow">University of Southern Californias Information Sciences Institute</a>. The goal of the project was to annotate a large corpus comprising various genres of text (news, conversational telephone speech, weblogs, usenet newsgroups, broadcast, talk shows) in three languages (English, Chinese, and Arabic) with structural information (syntax and predicate argument structure) and shallow semantics (word sense linked to an ontology and coreference).</p><br> <p>OntoNotes Release 5.0 contains the content of earlier releases -- OntoNotes Release 1.0 <a href="http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2007T21" rel="nofollow">LDC2007T21</a>, OntoNotes Release 2.0 <a href="http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2008T04" rel="nofollow">LDC2008T04</a>, OntoNotes Release 3.0 <a href="http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2009T24" rel="nofollow">LDC2009T24</a> and OntoNotes Release 4.0 <a href="http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2011T03" rel="nofollow">LDC2011T03</a> -- and adds source data from and/or additional annotations for, newswire (News), broadcast news (BN), broadcast conversation (BC), telephone conversation (Tele) and web data (Web) in English and Chinese and newswire data in Arabic. Also contained is English pivot text (Old Testament and New Testament text). This cumulative publication consists of 2.9 million words with counts shown in the table below.</p><br> <table><br> <tbody><br> <tr><br> <td>&nbsp;</td><br> <td>Arabic</td><br> <td>English</td><br> <td>Chinese</td><br> </tr><br> <tr><br> <td>News</td><br> <td>300k</td><br> <td>625k</td><br> <td>250k</td><br> </tr><br> <tr><br> <td>BN</td><br> <td>n/a</td><br> <td>200k</td><br> <td>250k</td><br> </tr><br> <tr><br> <td>BC</td><br> <td>n/a</td><br> <td>200k</td><br> <td>150k</td><br> </tr><br> <tr><br> <td>Web</td><br> <td>n/a</td><br> <td>300k</td><br> <td>150k</td><br> </tr><br> <tr><br> <td>Tele</td><br> <td>n/a</td><br> <td>120k</td><br> <td>100k</td><br> </tr><br> <tr><br> <td>Pivot</td><br> <td>n/a</td><br> <td>n/a</td><br> <td>300</td><br> </tr><br> </tbody><br> </table><br> <p>&nbsp;</p><br> <p>The OntoNotes project built on two time-tested resources, following the <a href="http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC99T42" rel="nofollow">Penn Treebank</a> for syntax and the <a href="http://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu/LDC2004T14" rel="nofollow">Penn PropBank</a> for predicate-argument structure. Its semantic representation includes word sense disambiguation for nouns and verbs, with some word senses connected to an ontology, and coreference.</p><br> <h3>Data</h3><br> <p>Documents describing the annotation guidelines and the routines for deriving various views of the data from the database are included in the documentation directory of this release. The annotation is provided both in separate text files for each annotation layer (Treebank, PropBank, word sense, etc.) and in the form of an integrated relational database (ontonotes-v5.0.sql.gz) with a Python API to provide convenient cross-layer access.</p><br> <p>It is a known issue that this release contains some non-validating XML files. The included tools, however, use a non-validating XML parser to parse the .xml files and load the appropriate values.</p><br> <h3>Tools</h3><br> <p>This release includes OntoNotes DB Tool v0.999 beta, the tool used to assemble the database from the original annotation files. It can be found in the directory tools/ontonotes-db-tool-v0.999b. This tool can be used to derive various views of the data from the database, and it provides an API that can implement new queries or views. Licensing information for the OntoNotes DB Tool package is included in its source directory.</p><br> <h3>Samples</h3><br> <p>Please view these samples:</p><br> <ul><br> <li><a href="desc/addenda/LDC2013T19.cmn.jpg" rel="nofollow">Chinese</a></li><br> <li><a href="desc/addenda/LDC2013T19.ara.jpg" rel="nofollow">Arabic</a></li><br> <li><a href="desc/addenda/LDC2013T19.eng.jpg" rel="nofollow">English</a></li><br> </ul><br> <h3>Updates</h3><br> <p>Additional documentation was added on December 11, 2014&nbsp; and is included in downloads after that date.&nbsp;</p><br> <h3>Acknowledgment</h3><br> <p>This work is supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, GALE Program Grant No. HR0011-06-1-003. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.</p></br> Portions © 2006 Abu Dhabi TV, © 2006 Agence France Presse, © 2006 Al-Ahram, © 2006 Al Alam News Channel, © 2006 Al Arabiya, © 2006 Al Hayat, © 2006 Al Iraqiyah, © 2006 Al Quds-Al Arabi, © 2006 Anhui TV, © 2002, 2006 An Nahar, © 2006 Asharq-al-Awsat, © 2010 Bible League International, © 2005 Cable News Network, LP, LLLP, © 2000-2001 China Broadcasting System, © 2000-2001, 2005-2006 China Central TV, © 2006 China Military Online, © 2000-2001 China National Radio, © 2006 Chinanews.com, © 2000-2001 China Television System, © 1989 Dow Jones & Company, Inc., © 2006 Dubai TV, © 2006 Guangming Daily, © 2006 Kuwait TV, © 2005-2006 National Broadcasting Company, Inc., © 2006 New Tang Dynasty TV, © 2006 Nile TV, © 2006 Oman TV, © 2006 PAC Ltd, © 2006 Peoples Daily Online, © 2005-2006 Phoenix TV, © 2000-2001 Sinorama Magazine, © 2006 Syria TV, © 1996-1998, 2006 Xinhua News Agency, © 1996, 1997, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania