PROJECTSCAPACITY BUILDING IN HUMAN LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGIES WITH A FOCUS ON TOOLS FOR LEXICOGRAPHY Aim of the project The aim of this project is to address the need of short term capacity building within the field of human language technologies (HLT) with special emphasis on lexicography applications, by facilitating a series of workshops which are to be presented by internationally recognised specialists, in combination with a dedicated support structure. Envisaged outcome of the project After the series of workshops has been concluded, it is envisaged that quite a number of African language specialists will have been exposed to the field of HLT, and given the opportunity to experience hands-on computational implementations of state-of-the-art approaches. This will give participants the opportunity to make informed decisions regarding HLT fields in which they (and possibly their post-graduate students) would be interested in specialising. Simultaneously direct contact with the international specialists in the field will be facilitated for purposes of further training. WORKSHOP 1: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTATIONAL MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS Workshop 1 was held from 21 - 24 January 2002 in Pretoria, South Africa. PRESENTER: Dr Ken Beesley, Principal Scientist and Computational Linguist, Xerox Research Centre Europe (http://www.xrce.xerox.com/) WORKSHOP 2: FINITE-STATE COURSE Workshop 2 took place from 21 – 25 October 2002 on the Main
Campus of the University of South Africa, Pretoria. During this
course participants were instructed hands-on in the use of Xerox
Finite-state tools and techniques to build useful and efficient
programs that process text in natural languages. The emphasis was
on the indigenous languages of South Africa. Presenter: Dr Ken Beesley (Principle Scientist and Computational Linguist, Xerox Research Centre Europe, Grenoble, France) (http://www.xrce.xerox.com/people/beesley.html) Further details to be announced in this space. PROJECT TEAM
(Co-ordinator) |