The Bridge is a suite of apps that supports the reading of Greek and Latin texts by providing vocabulary support and analysis to readers and instructors.
Bridge/Lists
Lists enables students and instructors to generate customized vocabulary lists from its database of Greek and Latin textbooks and texts. A list might include all the vocabulary from a core list, an ancient text, or a textbook. But users can focus on a selection of a list or work and also customize their lists to take into account textbooks that they have used, core lists they have mastered, and texts they have already read. They can also create lists of words that appear in their text and other texts that have read or might read. These lists can then be sorted, searched, and filtered to focus on one or more parts of speech, among other options, and then printed or downloaded in a variety of formats. Launched 2014; current version launched 2020.
Bridge/Lemmatizer
Lemmatizer creates a lemmatization spreadsheet for a Latin or Greek text. You can choose to either upload a text file, or just input text yourself. We will lemmatize all the words that have only one possible lemma, and will return a csv that is almost ready to import. All you have to do is identify the lemmata for the remaining words (usually around 40% of an an average text) and then you will have a text ready to analyze — or import into the Bridge! Launched 2019; current version launched 2020.
Bridge/Oracle
Oracle will allow you to discover readable texts in The Bridge Corpus by revealing the authors, texts, and passages that have the highest percentage of familiar vocabulary. Select the textbooks you’ve used, lists you’ve mastered, and texts
that you’ve read. Then let Bridge/Oracle reveal your next text(s). Launched 2020.
Bridge/Stats (in development)
Stats produces a set of readability statistics for your text (word count, average word length, average sentence length, composite readability score.
Currently in development; anticipated launch 2020.
Bridge/Scribe (in development)
Bridge/Scribe will markup a text to reveal familiar and/or new vocabulary.
For example, if you used the Bridge to create a list of new vocabulary in the first sentence of Caesar’s Bellum Gallicumexcluding the words in the DCC Latin Core, you would see:
Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.
Currently in development; anticipated launch 2021.
enables students and instructors to generate customized vocabulary lists from its database of Greek and Latin textbooks and texts. A list might include all the vocabulary from a core list, an ancient text, or a textbook. But users can focus on a selection of a list or work and also customize their lists to take into account textbooks that they have used, core lists they have mastered, and texts they have already read. They can also create lists of words that appear in their text and other texts that have read or might read. These lists can then be sorted, searched, and filtered to focus on one or more parts of speech, among other options, and then printed or downloaded in a variety of formats.
Would you like to see a list, textbook, or text added to The Bridge? To make a suggestion or to inquire about contributing to the project, please contact us.
Project History
The Bridge was first developed by Julie Ta (Haverford ’16) and Blair Rush (Haverford ’16) in the summer of 2014. Significant revisions were begun in the summer and fall of 2015 by Jack Raisel (Haverford ’17) and Julie Ta, and completed in the summer of 2017 by Byron Biney (Swarthmore ’19) and Dylan Emery (Haverford ’19). The current version of the Bridge was developed by Carter Langen ’22.
Additional administrative, technical, and logistical support was provided by Laurie Allen (Coordinator for Digital Scholarship and Services), Michael Zarafonetis (Digital Scholarship Librarian), Margaret Schaus (Lead Research and Instruction Librarian), Adrienne Lucas (University of Delaware), Jennifer Rajchel (Assistant Director, Tri-Co Digital Humanities), and Archana Kaku (Tri-Co Digital Humanities Program Coordinator, Bryn Mawr College). Initial data for The Bridge was compiled by Florencia Foxley (HC ’13), Emma Mongoven (’14), Vanessa Felso (Bryn Mawr College ’15), and Carman Romano (HC ’16). The Project Director is Bret Mulligan, Associate Professor of Classics at Haverford College.
The development of The Bridge was made possible by the financial support of Haverford College (2014-2016), a Program Grant from the Classical Association of the Atlantic States (2015) a Mellon Digital Humanities Grant (2014-2015).
This work and its byproducts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Credits
Data for some ancient texts were generously provided by the Laboratoire d’Analyse Statistique des Langues Anciennes at the Université de Liège.
The image on the landing page of The Bridge is of the Pont du Gard by Benh LIEU SONG under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. The Bridge and its byproducts are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
