Small Tools for Cross-Linguistic Research

The workshop Small Tools for Cross-Linguistic Research brought together the creators of computational tools specifically developed for the use of the “ordinary working linguist”, with the following goals: (a) to share information on techniques and practices that might be useful to others; (b) to understand how to support the easy exchange of data among small linguistic applications; and more specifically (c) to discuss the potential for joint initiatives that could address this goal.

The workshop took place in Utrecht, on 15-16 June, 2009. Organizers: Alexis Dimitriadis and Martin Everaert. Financial support for the meeting was provided by the NWO. For more information, please contact Alexis Dimitriadis.

Workshop Programme

Monday, 15 June

Drift 21, room 0.05 (Sweelinckzaal)

09:30	10:00	Arrival & Coffee
10:00	10:10	Opening remarks
10:10	11:05	William Lewis, Microsoft Research	Building a Large Multilingual Resource using (Semi-)Automated Methods: Finding, Enriching, Repurposing
11:05	11:15	Break
11:15	12:10	Mike Taylor, New York University	The database of Syntactic Structures of the World's Languages: Progress report and challenges to date
12:10	13:05	Dik Bakker, University of Amsterdam	Some applications for language typology, and a remark on linguistic data
13:05	14:30	Lunch
14:30	15:25	Alexis Dimitriadis, Utrecht University	What cross-linguistic survey databases have in common (and what they do not)
15:25	15:35	Break
15:35	16:30	Michael Cysouw, MPI-EVA Leipzig	Micropublications: footnotes for the 21st century
16:30	17:25	Harald Hammarström, Chalmers University	Tools and resources for bibliographic data in cross-linguistic research
17:25	17:35	Break
17:35	18:05	Discussion	Topics and problems arising in the day’s talks
19:00		Conference dinner	Restaurant Djakarta, Lucasbolwerk 19

Tuesday, 16 June

Drift 21, room 0.05 (morning) / room 0.03 (afternoon)

09:00	09:55	Dorothee Beermann and Pavel Mihaylov, Norwegian University of Science and Technology	TypeCraft: Linguistic data and knowledge sharing. Open Access in linguistic methodology
09:55	10:50	Sebastian Nordhoff, University of Amsterdam	Grammatical description as a mediator between the corpus and the typologist [Handout]
10:50	11:00	Break
11:00	11:55	Menzo Windhouwer, University of Amsterdam	A TDS perspective on interoperability and sustainability
11:55	12:50	Andreas Witt, Institute for German Language, Mannheim	SPLICR: A web-platform for exploring, querying, and distributing linguistic corpora and other resources
12:50	13:50	Lunch
13:50	14:45	Martijn Wieling and John Nerbonne, Groningen University	Tools for Detecting Geographical and Structural Affinities
14:45	16:00	Discussion	Future directions, needs and opportunities

Workshop webpage: http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/a.dimitriadis/projects/small-tools/.