Call for papers: International Workshop on Resources and Tools in Field Linguistics (endangered languages) -- DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS 02/15/02

[Scott McGinnis]

            Announcement and Call for Papers
	 -----------------------------------

         International Workshop on Resources and Tools
                      in Field Linguistics

=======================================================

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 15 February 2002 
Notification of Acceptance: 15 March 2002
Submission of Final Workshop Papers: 12 April 2002

Workshop: 26-27 May 2002
Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain

There is general recognition that many of the world's
languages are rapidly losing speakers. This onstitutes
loss of a rich cultural heritage, a loss which future generations will
deeply regret. Considerable efforts have been made to halt this decline
and revitalize these languages; but the decline of these languages is
now so far advanced that a majority of presently existing languages will
become extinct within this century. If this heritage is to be preserved
in any sense, then there must be a serious effort towards documenting
and archiving linguistic data on these languages, so that reconstruction
of the essentials of such languages is possible in posterity, along with
the living cultural environment in which they presently function.

The urgency of this task has changed the direction of
field linguistics, and imposed on it completely new requirements. The
highest priority can no longer be placed upon the simple publication of
field-work, even when based on careful, in-depth analysis of linguistic
phenomena. To preserve as much as possible of the cultural heritage of
these languages, we need instead multimedia recordings, which are
accompanied by carefully designed linguistic annotations. And we must
utilize for this purpose technologies which guarantee long-term access
to all the many facets of the 
material. In addition, the advent of the
World-Wide-Web requires that the archived resources be available in new
ways, and in conformance with the most widely adopted emergent
standards. If this effort is to be successful, it must also include good
relations with the members of the indigenous communities which provide
the data, and a close cooperation between linguists and the engineers
who provide the technology.

A number of important new initiatives, for example
AILLA, DOBES, E-MELD, LACITO, and ASEDA, have begun
work along these lines. There also exist other
institutions, such as the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics,
which began still earlier the task of storing valuable recordings, and
their accompanying added linguistic value.

The workshop will be held as a pre-conference workshop
of the 3rd International Conference on Language
Resources and Evaluation (LREC), which has expanded
its scope to include field linguistics. We expect
to have special sessions at the conference dedicated
to the special needs and problems of field
Linguistics. LREC is unique amongst conferences
world-wide, in that it brings together experts of
diverse
expertise, who both create and maintain language
resources. The LREC announcement text
(www.lrec-conf.org) indicates that the conference has
an extended scope and a broad view of what constitutes
language resources. In addition, the LREC conference
includes exhibitions and training courses, which we
expect participants of the proposed workshop would
find very useful indeed.

As part of the LREC conference, the primary goal of
the workshop is dedicated to structural and
technological issues involved in language
documentation including its cultural background, and
in ways of accessing archived data. Deeper linguistic
aspects of the documentation endeavor and its
attendant legal and ethical aspects can only be
touched briefly. We mention here a few keywords which
indicate the scope of the workshop:

Media Formats
Digitization Methods
Project Workflow Schemes
Metadata for Resource Retrieval
Long-Term Archiving Strategies
Annotation Structures and Formats
Interlinear Text Formats
Character Encoding Guidelines
Language Encoding Guidelines
Linguistic Encoding Guidelines
Dictionary Structures and Formats
Typology Databases
Geographic Information Systems
Integration of Field Notes
Data Types in language documentation
Web-based Archive Access
Tools for language documentation
User Interfaces for Native Speakers

The workshop will be organized so as to provide time
for large projects to inform interested researchers
about the methods they use and their experiences so
far. It will further provide time and space for other
projects to describe how they document languages.
Panel and discussion sessions will allow interested
researchers to raise questions and comment on the
methods chosen.

The goals of the workshop are:

(1) To improve our understanding of the methods to be
applied when documenting language data, with a special
focus on languages which are in danger of becoming
extinct; and (2) To discuss methods which have
already been applied by different projects and which
hold promise.

Workshop Organizers
- -----------------
Peter Austin, Melbourne University
Helen Dry, Eastern Michigan University
Peter Wittenburg, Max-Planck-Institute for
Psycholinguistics

Important Dates
- -------------
Abstract Submissions		15 February 2002
Notification of Acceptance	15 March 2002
Final Versions			12 April 2002
Workshop				26-27 May 2002

Abstract Submission 
- ----------------- 
Submitted abstracts should consist of about 400 words.
The abstracts should be submitted electronically as
PDF, PS, RTF, or plain text files to the following
address: lrec-workshop at mpi.nl. The deadline for
submitting the abstracts is February 15th. The
notification of acceptance will be sent by March 15th
2002.

Paper Submissions and Proceedings 
- -------------------------------
There is one month between the notification of
acceptance and submission of a workshop paper. Papers
have to be submitted electronically to the same
address (lrec-workshop at mpi.nl) as PDF, PS, RTF, or
plain text files. There will be proceedings of this
workshop which will be made available free to all
participants at the beginning of the workshop.

Organizational Matters 
- -------------------- 
For all questions with respect to the content of this
workshop, please send emails to lrec-workshop at mpi.nl.
Since this workshop will be embedded in the LREC
conference all emails with respect to organizational
and financial questions can be addressed to the
official LREC email address as well:
lrec at ilc.pi.cnr.it. Forms for registration,
accommodation reservation etc will be found on the
LREC web-site:http://www.lrec-conf.org.

For current information about the workshop see:http://www.mpi.nl/lrec.

The participation fees for this workshop will be 90
EURO for conference participants and 140 EURO for the
others. The first day of the workshop will be
supported by funds from ISLE and DOBES. The fees
cover a copy of the proceedings.

Program Committee
- ---------------
Anthony Aristar		
Peter Austin			
Steven Bird			
Bernard Comrie		
Helen Dry			
Arienne Dwyer		
Dafydd Gibbon		
Nikolaus Himmelmann	
Terry Langendoen		
Stephen Levinson		
Kazuto Matsumura		
Patrick McConvell		
Tony McEnery		
Boyd Michailovsky		
Ulrike Mosel			
Peter Muysken		
David Nash			
David Nathan			
Randy LaPolla			
Hans-Jürgen Sasse		
Gunter Senft			
Gary Simons			
Peter Wittenburg