1. Infrastructrural Language Resources and International Cooperation
Nicoletta Calzolari
Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale - CNR - Pisa
Special Forum, Beijing, Oct. '03

2. 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

3. 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

4. ENABLER Network Paris Workshop 28-29 Aug. 2003
European National Activities for Basic LRs
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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

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