Infrastructrural Language Resources and International Cooperation Nicoletta Calzolari Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale - CNR - Pisa glottolo@ilc.cnr.it Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03 The ENABLER Mission Language Resources (LR) & Evaluation: central component of the “linguistic infrastructure” LR supported by national funding in National Projects Availability of LRs also a “sensitive” issue, touching the sphere of linguistic and cultural identity, but also with economical and political implications The ENABLER Network of National initiatives, aims at “enabling” the realisation of a cooperative framework formulate a common agenda of medium- & long-term research priorities contribute to the definition of an overall framework for the provision of LRs Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

synergies, economy of scale, convergence & critical mass towards …. Only Combining the strengths of different initiatives & communities Exploiting at best the ‘modus operandi’ of the national funding authorities in different national situations Responding to/anticipating needs and priorities of R&D & industrial communities Promoting the adoption of [de facto] standards, best practices With a clear distinction of tasks & roles for different actors We can produce the synergies, economy of scale, convergence & critical mass necessary to provide the infrastructural LRs needed to realise the full potential of a multilingual global information society Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

ENABLER Network Paris Workshop 28-29 Aug. 2003 European National Activities for Basic LRs http://www.enabler-network.org Priorities for LRs extend the number of languages covered by LRs increase multilingual LRs reduce development time enhance content-interoperability develop new methodologies and tools for LR management, domain and application customisation, data-driven tuning, etc. Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

In Europe ... Role in the 6°FP & new initiatives Language is a specific issue for Europe, with cultural, economical, political implications, even more with the enlargement of EU to new accession countries LR can be a “typical” case where to apply the principle of subsidiarity In the perspective of installing a lasting “Enabling Infrastructure”, discussion on: New instruments in the 6FP: ERA-Net Cooperation among similar national programs: language technologies well fitted for the ERA Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Language Technologies Program LangNet France - LR in French - Technology adaptation to French The Netherlands - LR in Dutch - Technology adaptation to Dutch European Commission - Coordination - Standards / sharability - Generic technology development - Technology evaluation Germany - LR in german - Technology adaptation to German Italy - LR in Italian - Technology adaptation to Italian Spain - LR in Spanish - Technology adaptation to Spanish Norway - LR in Norwegian - Technology adaptation to Norwegian ………... Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Beyond Europe ... ICWLR International Committee of Written LR & Eval. Another initiative of Antonio Zampolli: International forum to formulate a common agenda of medium- & long-term research priorities, to discuss innovative research needs to encourage & support international coordination & cooperation in the field of written LR and technology assessment methodologies Involvement of various ‘continents’, topics, distribution centres On the model of & in cooperation with COCOSDA for Speech Need of bodies where to discuss a broad research agenda & cooperative actions Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Committee possible Role & Tasks Information Dissemination Dissemination of standards Promotion & Coordination Copyright, IPR Enabling Activities Committee & Roadmap (with ELSNET) Political & Strategic Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Resources Landscape Relevant Meta-Dimensions Networks & Associations Distribution Agencies   Information Portals   Metadata infrastructure   Standards   International Coordination Committees Conferences   Journals   Training material / Summer schools Institutions Projects   National Projects … Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Promotion & Coordination Promote development of free, shared LRs Compatible with standards Large repositories of LRs & direct access via catalog Open Architecture/Open Source concept Framework allowing an incremental creation Quality control Clarify links betw. LRs & tools Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

How to go to a framework allowing incremental creation/merging/… "organise" creation/acquisition of multilingual LRs: evaluate different models cope with/affect maintenance organise technology transfer among languages support BLARK (a commonly agreed list of minimal requirements for “national” LRs) launch an international initiative linking Semantic Web & LRs bootstrap this by "opening" a few LRs role of standards Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

Lexical Content Interoperability The Lexical Web Enable global access to lexical information SIMPLE FrameNet WordNet EuroWordNet Intelligent Agents Lexicon XXX Lexicon YYY Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

A new paradigm for a “new generation” of LR/KR? Semantic Lexicon http://www.xxx… Syntactic Lexicon http://www.yyy… Ontology http://www.zzz… corpora MILE Built on the basis of cooperative effort Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03