Lead: The University of Queensland
Large collections of language data have been amassed in Australia but many remain under-utilised or at risk. The Language Data Commons of Australia (LDaCA) will be a sustainable long-term repository for ingesting and curating existing language data collections of national significance. These collections include intangible cultural heritage of the languages of some of the world’s longest continuous cultures in one of the world’s most linguistically diverse regions (Australian Indigenous languages and regional languages of the Pacific), and data which is important for cyber-security (AusTalk, Australian National Corpus, corpora of regional languages), for gauging popular opinions and sentiment (Australian Twitter Corpus), and for emergency communication (languages of the region and some Indigenous languages). This data asset will open up the social and economic possibilities of Australia’s rich linguistic heritage and lay the foundation for the establishment of a broader HASS (Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences) Research Data Commons.