Kawenn\'on:nis: the Wordmaker for Kanyen'k\'eha
In this paper we describe preliminary work on Kawenn{\'o}n:nis, a verb conjugator for Kanyen{'}k{\'e}ha (Ohsweken dialect). The project is the result of a collaboration between Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa Kanyen{'}k{\'e}ha immersion school and the Canadian National Research Council{'}s Indigenous Language Technology lab. The purpose of Kawenn{\'o}n:nis is to build on the educational successes of the Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa school and develop a tool that assists students in learning how to conjugate verbs in Kanyen{'}k{\'e}ha; a skill that is essential to mastering the language. Kawenn{\'o}n:nis is implemented with both web and mobile front-ends that communicate with an application programming interface that in turn communicates with a symbolic language model implemented as a finite state transducer. Eventually, it will serve as a foundation for several other applications for both Kanyen{'}k{\'e}ha and other Iroquoian languages.
PDF Abstract
