Corpora: CFP: Web-Based Language Documentation and Description

[Steven Bird]

			CALL FOR PARTICIPATION


	   Web-Based Language Documentation and Description

		Philadelphia USA, 12-15 December 2000

		http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/


	     Institute for Research in Cognitive Science
		      University of Pennsylvania

 Organizers: Steven Bird (U Penn) and Gary Simons (SIL International)


[The full version of this abridged CFP is available from the above page.]

This workshop will lay the foundation of an open, web-based
infrastructure for collecting, storing and disseminating the primary
materials which document and describe human languages, including
wordlists, lexicons, annotated signals, interlinear texts, paradigms,
field notes, and linguistic descriptions, as well as the metadata
which indexes and classifies these materials.  The infrastructure will
support the modeling, creation, archiving and access of these
materials, using centralized respositories of metadata, data, best
practice guidelines, and open software tools.

BACKGROUND

Recent years have witnessed dramatic advances in the mass storage and
web delivery technologies, making it possible to house virtually
unlimited quantities of speech data online, and to disseminate this
data over the web.  The development of XML and Unicode greatly
facilitate the interchange and reuse of structured multimodal and
multilingual data and the development of interoperating software
tools.  These developments are having a pervasive influence on the way
primary linguistic data are gathered, stored, analyzed and
disseminated, as demonstrated by the initiatives surveyed on the
linguistic exploration page (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/),
and the papers presented at the Linguistic Exploration Workshop at
the Chicago LSA Meeting (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/LSA/).

CHALLENGES

With these new technological opportunities are concomitant needs
and challenges for modeling, creating, archiving and accessing data:

I   Data Models.  A diverse range of data types are required in language
    documentation and linguistic fieldwork, including word lists,
    lexicons, annotated signals, writing system documentation,
    interlinear texts, paradigms, field notes, and linguistic
    descriptions.  We need flexible and general models for these data
    types (including links between them), and good ways to represent
    information which is either partial, uncertain, evolving, or
    disputed.  We need to develop a consensus in the community
    regarding best practice for modeling these kinds of data, to
    ensure maximal reusability of data and software.

II  Data Archives.  Whether just the private collection of a single
    researcher or a large and centralized repository, language data
    needs to be stored and reused.  To support this, we need durable
    and open storage and interchange formats that embody the best
    practice consensus.  We need to convert (parochial) 8-bit
    character codings to Unicode, using a general tool for character
    conversion along with a host of conversion tables for specific
    character sets.  We also need to convert markup into the best
    practice formats we have defined.  We need a mechanism to support
    durable citation of data, so that document authors do not need to
    duplicate all the data they reference just to be sure that the
    links will not break.  More generally, we need a metadata standard
    for indexing the resources, regardless of format and availability,
    and a wide-coverage index conforming to the standard, so that
    someone interested in a particular language or region can find all
    the electronic resources that are pertinent to it, without having
    to determine how each of several different archives have named and
    classified their holdings.

III Data Creation.  Now that mass storage is so inexpensive,
    researchers are creating large amounts of digital data covering
    the types listed above.  Both the number and scale of these
    collection efforts are growing rapidly.  We need software tools
    supporting data creation, conforming with best practice, and
    covering primary collection of textual data (wordlists, texts) and
    recordings (audio, video, physiological), along with transcription
    and annotation of the primary materials conforming to a broad
    range of descriptive and analytical practices.

IV Data Access.  Once data has been created and archived, there exist
    a variety of access modes.  A region of data is identified by
    browsing, by launching a query, or by following a reference.  The
    selection is displayed according to appropriate conventions and
    styles, or converted into some other form (e.g. for statistical
    analysis and visualization).  The selection may be corrected,
    imported into a document, analyzed, and annotated, leading to the
    creation of secondary data and/or the elicitation of new primary
    data.  We need to develop suitable delivery mechanisms including
    stylesheets, conversion tools, indexing methods, and query
    languages, which encompass the needs for security and privacy.  We
    need standard application programming interfaces and a library of
    reusable components, to support the development of software for
    new modes of access.


Many of the activities listed above are already underway; the lure of
the technology is great despite the lack of infrastructure.  However,
it is beyond the capacity of any single individual or institution to
develop this infrastructure of standards and tools on their own.  There
is a pressing need for close cooperation between these initiatives, so
that scarce human, software and data resources are used optimally.

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES

This workshop will lay the foundation of an open, web-based
infrastructure for collecting, storing and disseminating the primary
materials which document and describe human languages.  The
infrastructure will support the modeling, creation, archiving and
access of these materials, using centralized respositories of
metadata, data, best practice guidelines, and open software tools.

To meet this goal, we have identified three main objectives which can
be substantially achieved at the present time:

Objective 1: to develop a comprehensive framework which identifies all
    the infrastructural needs, designates appropriate roles for
    existing results as pieces of an overall solution, and sets out a
    coordinated response to the remaining challenges.

Objective 2: to found centralized repositories (and nominate existing
    ones) for housing components of the infrastructure, so that data,
    tools, formats and standards can be collected, indexed, and made
    available to the community.

Objective 3: to begin construction of the repositories, by identifying
    the contribution of past and present activities by the
    participants and by other individuals and institutions, and
    by gathering the results and their documentation.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The workshop will include paper presentations and working sessions to
develop the infrastructure.  Interested members of the community are
invited to participate in the workshop.  There is a limit on available
places, and participants will be identified on the basis of submitted
abstracts.  Funding is available for authors of accepted papers.

Abstracts.  One page abstracts are invited which describe substantive
contributions to the repositories, or which discuss concrete problems
for web-based language documentation and description, and describe
possible solutions.

Papers.  Authors of accepted abstracts will be asked to prepare a
2-3,000 word paper plus associated materials.

Address submissions to: Steven.Bird at ldc.upenn.edu, Gary_Simons at sil.org

Timetable.

Friday 1 September     Abstract deadline
Friday 29 September    Acceptance notification
Friday 24 November     Paper deadline
12-15 December         Workshop

IMPORTANT: FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Intending authors should consult the EXTENDED CFP, available from the
linguistic exploration page (http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/).
To be sure of receiving future announcements, please subscribe to the
LINGUISTIC-EXPLORATION mailing list, referenced from that page.

--
Steven Bird                    Gary Simons
University of Pennsylvania     SIL International
Steven.Bird at ldc.upenn.edu      Gary_Simons at sil.org
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/sb    http://www.sil.org/SIL/roster/simons.htm