Publication of interest for persuasive Hebrew learning

A fresh publication from Brill in Leiden has two articles of special interest in relation to the Emdros databases used in the EuroPLOT. Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen describes how he developed the Emdros database management system. Nicolai Winther-Nielsen describes a part of the prehistory of the EuroPLOT in so far as it evolved from experimental work on learning technology and linguistic research based on the Emdros database of the Hebrew Bible.

The new book Tradition and Innovation in Biblical Interpretation. Studies Presented to Professor Eep Talstra on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Studia Semitica Neerlandica), edited by Wido Th. van Peursen and Janet W. Dyk (http://www.brill.nl/tradition-and-innovation-biblical-interpretation#DESREAD_1), celebrates the work of professor of Old Testament and Bible and Computing&Humanities Eep Talstra. Pioneering innovative corpus-driven research of the Hebrew Bible in 1977, he started developing pascal programs at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and then established the Werkgroep Informatica research project which developed syntactic programs for linguistic analysis of the Hebrew Bible. This innovate corpus-driven research has had many valuable applications, including persuasive learning from annotated text corpora.

The first article is Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen's "On Biblical Hebrew and Computer Science: Inspiration, Models, Tools, and Cross-Fertilization", p. 261-276: He traces the history behind the database of the Werkgroep Informatica of the Vrije Universiteit (WIVU) through the 1994 dissertation of Crist-Jan Doedens. Sandborg-Petersen's prize winning dissertation from 2008 developed the Hebrew Bible database into an Emdros database in a Aalborg University project on the collected works of pastor, poet and playwright Kaj Munk, and this database is used in the EuroPLOT.

The second article is Nicolai Winther-Nielsen's "Persuasive Hebrew Exercises: The Wit of Technology-Enhanced Language Learning", p. 277-298: Tracking the role of learning technology in Hebrew language learning courses, it describes how several of Ulrik Sandborg-Petersen's programs were used in course development since 2004. These programs are now developed into the commercial Paradigms Master Pro as well as the open source grammar and syntax tool Linguistic Tree Constructor. This experimental work also formed the core in a partner project with programmer Claus Tøndering who developed the Ezer Emdros-based Exercise Tool - 3ET, using the Emdros database of the Hebrew Bible for generating random exercises for language learners. The 3ET is now developed into EuroPLOT's PLOTLearner tool for persuasive language learning.