CFP: Web-Based Language Documentation and Description

[Steven Bird (by way of Nicholas Ostler)]

			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