CfP Linked Data in Linguistic Typology, deadline January 15

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Linked Data in Linguistic Typology

== Convenor ==
Sebastian Nordhoff

== Date ==
August 15-18, 2013, precise day tbd

== Venue ==
MPI-EVA Leipzig (ALT Theme session)

== Submission deadline ==
JANUARY 15, 2013 (next week)

== Audience ==
Tyopologists and computational linguists

== Call for papers ==
Typology lives on data. Typologists produce, curate, extract, aggregate,  
and analyze data on a daily basis. One major issue is the interoperability  
of digital data thus gathered. This workshop will deal with the  
production, publication, and interlinking of typological data according to  
Semantic Web principles (Linked Open Data).

Several attempts at standardizing typological data have been made, e.g.  
LDS (Comrie & Smith 1977) and GOLD (Farrar and Langendoen 2003). These  
top-down approaches have had some success, but a large scale adoption is  
still wanting. A bottom-up approach as for instance employed by TDS  
(http://tds2.dans.knaw.nl/) and ISO-CAT (http://www.isocat.org/) could be  
more promising as it takes into account the often strong feelings  
linguists have about data categories.

Numerous projects around the world gather heterogeneous typological data,  
but data representation is by and large project-specific and not guided by  
general principles. This often results in serious problems over time,  
including issues with regard to persistence, provenance, interoperability,  
and accessibility.

These problems are well-known in other data-heavy subdisciplines, e.g.  
lexicography and corpus linguistics. The lemon project (McCrae et al.  
2012) tackles these issues for lexicography, OLiA does the same for corpus  
linguistics (Chiarcos 2012). In this workshop, we want to explore in how  
far the solutions developed in the other subdisciplines can be applied to  
typology, building upon more general concepts of interlinking  
heterogeneous data sets in the context of Linked Open Data (Berners-Lee  
2006, Heath & Bizer 2009).

The working group on Open Data in Linguistics of the Open Knowledge  
Foundation has recently started working on interlinking data from various  
subdisciplines (Chiarcos et al. 2012a). The insights and experiences  
gained there can fruitfully be applied to typology, as the integration of  
WALS, WOLD, ASJP, Glottolog, and IDS into the Linguistic Linked Open Data  
Cloud show (Nordhoff 2012, Hellmann et al. forthcoming). Chiarcos et al.  
(2012b) show how such data can then be cross-queried across knowledge  
bases to gain new insights and test hypotheses.

The major advantages of the Linked Open Data approach advocated in  
Chiarcos et al. (2012a) are the potentials of cross-querying data, and the  
possibility of a federated approach to data production (crowdsourcing).

The aim of this workshop is to bring together typologists who create or  
curate large data sets and practitioners of Linked Open Data, to leverage  
the potential of creating a linked data cloud for linguistic typology. We  
welcome presentations about novel techniques of publishing data on the  
web, about interlinking and cross-querying databases, and about federating  
data production.

== References  ==
Berners-Lee, Tim. 2006. Design Issues: Linked Data. July 2006.
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

Chiarcos 2012. Ontologies of Linguistic Annotation: Survey and  
Perspectives. LREC 2012, Istanbul.

Chiarcos, Christian, Nordhoff, Sebastian & Hellmann, Sebastian (eds.).  
2012a. Linked Data in Linguistics: Representing and Connecting Language  
Data and Language Metadata. Heidelberg: Springer.

Chiarcos, Christian, Hellmann, Sebastian & Nordhoff, Sebastian 2012b.  
Linking Linguistic Resources: Examples from the Open Linguistics Working  
Group. In Chiarcos et al. (eds.) 2012a.

Comrie, Bernard & Smith, Norval. 1977. The Lingua Descriptive Studies  
Questionnaire. Lingua 41. 1-74.

Farrar, Scott & Langendoen, Terry. 2003. A linguistic ontology for the  
semantic web. GLOT International 7. 200-203.

Heath Tom & Bizer, Chris. 2011. Linked Data - Evolving the Web into a  
Global Data Space. San Rafael: Morgan & Claypool.

Hellmann, Sebastian, Moran, Steven, Brümmer, Martin, McCrae, John (eds.).  
Forthcoming. Multilingual Linked Open Data. Special Issue of the Semantic  
Web Journal.

McCrae, John, Montiel-Ponsoda, Elena & Cimiano, Philipp. 2012. Integrating  
WordNet and Wiktionary with lemon. In Chiarcos et al. (eds.) 2012a.

Nordhoff, Sebastian 2012. Linked Data for Linguistic Diversity Research:  
Glottolog/Langdoc and ASJP Online In Chiarcos et al. (eds.) 2012a.

== Submission ==
Send your abstract as an e-mail attachment to: ALT10[>>> Please replace  
the brackets with an AT sign! <<<]eva.mpg.de

Subject header: (your name) ALT 10 abstract

Include these things in the body of the email:
authors' names
abstract title
contact information: e-mail, phone, fax
  Note: One individual may be involved in a maximum of two abstracts  
(maximum of one as sole author), regardless of category (oral, poster,  
theme-session talk).

Maximum length: 500 words or 1 single-spaced page.

Please put this information at the top of your abstract:
abstract title
abstract category (oral, poster, oral/poster)
theme session (if applicable)

Format: If at all possible, please send your abstract as a pdf.

Name: Give your pdf a filename similar to the subject header.

Anonymity: Abstracts must be anonymous: do not put your name or other  
identifying information on the abstract. Also, please anonymize your pdf  
by removing identifying information.

== Further information ==
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/2013_ALT10/files/call_for_papers.html
http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/conference/2013_ALT10/files/theme_sessions.html