Corpora: CFP: Linguistic Database Workshop

[Steven Bird]

		   IRCS WORKSHOP ON LINGUISTIC DATABASES

			University of Pennsylvania
			     Philadelphia, USA
			    11-13 December 2001

	       http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/annotation/database/


			       Organized by:
	       Steven Bird, Peter Buneman and Mark Liberman
	      Department of Computer and Information Science,
       Department of Linguistics, and the Linguistic Data Consortium
			University of Pennsylvania

		 Funded by the National Science Foundation



CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND PROPOSALS

Linguistic databases are digital repositories of structured information
intended to document natural language and natural communicative
interaction.  Over the last decade, linguistic databases have come to stand
at the center of empirical research in the language sciences, and in the
development of new human language technologies.  Like genomic databases,
linguistic databases are complex, evolving and richly annotated
repositories, and pose interesting challenges for efficient representation,
indexing and query.  And like most scientific databases, linguistic
databases have made little use of standard database technology.

The goals of the workshop are to take stock of existing research in
linguistic databases, to identify the key problems, and to explore
applications of current database research to these problems.  More broadly,
the workshop will help define the research questions of a new "linguistic
database community" and initiate the ongoing interchange of relevant
problems and results between this community and the database community at
large.

The workshop is expected to attract participants from a range of
specialties including databases, linguistics, computational linguistics,
annotation and markup.  There will be tutorial-style presentations on
relevant models in each of these areas.

The workshop will address a selection of the following topics:

MODELS
* models for text databases, speech databases, multimodal databases,
  typological databases, geographical databases (language maps),
  and metadata repositories
* relational, object-oriented and semi-structured models for
  representing linguistic annotations
* representations for specific linguistic datatypes (e.g. databases of
  aligned parallel text)
* modelling temporal and (geo)spatial structure
* critical analysis of existing linguistic databases
* special problems for systematic data representation posed by
  linguistic fieldwork

LANGUAGES
* query of multilayer annotations
* linguistic applications/extensions of XML query languages
* analysis of existing ad hoc query languages
* queries over temporal and (geo)spatial structure

OTHER TOPICS
* database support (e.g. what standard database technology has proven
  worthwhile for linguistic databases?)
* systematic methods for populating linguistic databases
* appropriate indexing methods for linguistic strings and structures
* archiving and preservation
* metadata standards serving as finding aids for linguistic databases
* data provenance / data lineage
* annotation servers


PROGRAM

The program will have a varied format, designed to maximize
cross-fertilization among the various specialties, and to allow
extended open discussion.  Components of the program will include:

* tutorials on relevant models from linguistics, databases
  or annotation, e.g. the structure of lexical entries,
  semi-structured query languages, models of text and signal annotation
* panel sessions on annotated text and lexicons (and possibly others),
  with position papers and panel discussion,
  to evaluate competing approaches
* full papers reporting new research
* demonstrations of systems for creating and/or managing
  linguistic data

TIMETABLE

Expressions of interest are welcome anytime, please see the form on the
workshop website.  If you have any suggestions concerning the workshop,
please email the organizers.

FRIDAY 14 SEPTEMBER
  Proposals for tutorials and position papers - please email the organizers
FRIDAY 14 SEPTEMBER
  Abstracts for papers (400 words) and demonstrations (200 words)
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 30
  Final papers (10 page limit)

Registration will be open in September.  Please note that participation
will be limited by space.

PROCEEDINGS

The papers will be published in web and hardcopy form (the latter just
for workshop attenders).  Papers submitted in HTML should be written
with the hardcopy version in mind, so a text string which anchors a
hyperlink should be directly interpretable, rather than e.g. "visit
this link".

VENUE

The workshop will be held at the Institute for Research in Cognitive
Science (IRCS) at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia,
USA.  Workshop sessions will take place in IRCS conference rooms,
located on the fourth floor of 3401 Walnut Street, adjacent to the
university campus, which is two miles west of the city center.  The
main meeting rooms will be equipped with the usual presentation
facilities, including projection and audio facilities.

SPONSORSHIP

The workshop is being funded by some NSF grants to the University of
Pennsylvania.  There will be no registration fee, and hotel accomodation
will be covered for presenters.

USEFUL WEBSITES

http://db.cis.upenn.edu                    Database Research at Penn
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/annotation/       Linguistic Annotation
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/      Linguistic Exploration
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~ircs/            IRCS homepage
http://www.talkbank.org/                   NSF TalkBank Project
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/sb/isle.html      NSF ISLE Project
http://www.language-archives.org/          Open Language Archives Community
http://www.upenn.edu/philadelphia/         Philadelphia
http://www.facilities.upenn.edu/visitUs/   Getting to Penn

ORGANIZERS

Steven Bird      http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/sb/
Peter Buneman    http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~peter/
Mark Liberman    http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/