FINAL call for papers: International Workshop on Resources & Tools in Field Linguistics (focus on endangered languages) - DEADLINE 15 FEBRUARY

[Scott McGinnis]

International Workshop on Resources and Tools in Field Linguistics

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

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

Abstract Submission 
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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
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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: www.lrec-conf.org.

For current information about the workshop see: 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
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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