Welcome to the NEMLAR newsletter. We bring you the latest news on language resources and language technologies for Arabic in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean countries and keep you abreast of the results achieved in the project, upcoming events, and other useful information. A version of this newsletter is also available from: http://www.nemlar.org/Newsletter To subscribe, please send an email to: nemlar@cst.dk If you find this newsletter useful and informative, feel free to forward it to others. The newsletter will appear every quarter. Please send any feedback you may have to: nemlar@cst.dk NEMLAR is a European Commission supported initiative dedicated to surveying the state of the art of language resources for the Arabic language and the needs for such resources - in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean countries. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter Content ------------------ 1. Publication of the report on Survey on Arabic Language Resources and Tools in the Mediterranean Countries 2. The Arabic Language Resources and Tools conference - Call for Participation 3. New language resources, books, papers, software and journals 4. Upcoming Events 5. How to contribute to the NEMLAR network 6. Links 1. Publication of the report on Survey on Arabic Language Resources and Tools in the Mediterranean Countries ****************************************************************************** The NEMLAR project has published a report surveying Arabic Language Resources and Tools in the Mediterranean Countries. The report lists 35 identified institutions and 19 individuals involved in the development of Arabic and language resources, mostly located in the Mediterranean Countries. Also a large number of language resources and tools have been identified: More than 90 LRs including 26 speech databases, 31 lexicons and dictionaries, 26 text corpora and one multimodal database. The report shows that there is a need for Arabic Language Resources and that the need is independent of the type and size of the institutions. Read more in the report which is available at http://www.nemlar.org The project is still interested in more information about other institutions involved in Arabic Language Resources and tools and more language resources than the ones mentioned in the report. In case you have additional information on one or both issues please help us filling in the gaps by completing a survey questionnaire which you will find at http://www.nemlar.org/Survey-questionnaires ********************************************************************* 2. The Arabic Language Resources and Tools conference - Call for Participation ****************************************************************************** The international conference on Arabic Language Resources and Tools is organised by the NEMLAR consortium on 22-23 September 2004, Cairo, Egypt. Language Resources (LRs) are recognised as a central component of the linguistic infrastructure, necessary for the development of language technology applications and products, and therefore for research and industrial development. In this conference we will focus on Arabic language technology and on the necessary language resources and tools for both research and commercial development of language technology for Arabic. Multilingual language technology is also in the focus, as well as general methodologies. Evaluation of modules and systems is another field which is closely related to language resources, because language resources are used to perform the evaluation. Substantial mutual benefits will be achieved by addressing these issues through international collaboration. For this reason, the conference is organised at the international level. The conference is held under the auspices of H.E. prof. Ahmad Nazeef, the Egyptian minister of Information & Telecommunications Programme Committee, Co –chairs Khalid Choukri, ELDA – Evaluations and Language Resources Distribution Agency, France Bente Maegaard, CST – Center for Sprogteknologi, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Local Organising Committee, Co –chairs Muhsin Rashwan, Cairo University, Egypt Muhammad Atiyya, The Engineering Company for Computer Systems Development, RDI, Egypt Main sponsors Sakhr, Egypt ELRA - European Language Resources Association, Luxembourg Supported by The INCO-MED programme, the European Commission Registration Early registration before July 15th 2004 For more information please see conference web site: http://www.nemlar.org ********************************************************************* 3. New language resources, books, papers, software and journals *************************************************************** Resource: • Arabic Tree bank part 3 is available from the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC). For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/tree.txt Books: • Saul Levin: Semitic and Indo-European II - Comparative morphology, syntax and phonetics. For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/semitics.txt • Fatima Sadiqi and Moha Ennaji: A Grammar of Amazigh (Berber). For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/Grammar_amasigh.txt • Wallace Erwin: A Short Reference Grammar of Iraqi Arabic. For more information see http://www.press.georgetown.edu/ • M. Ennaji, A. Makhoukh, H. Es-saiydy, M. Moubtassime, S.Slaoui: Grammar of Moroccan Arabic. For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/new_ma_grammar.txt • Fatima Badry: Acquiring The Arabic Lexicon - Evidence of Productive Strategies and Pedagogical Implications Academica press. For more information see www.academicapress.com Article: • New Article on Arabic Superlative: Definiteness and number ambiguity in the superlative construction in Arabic. For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/definiteness.txt Software: • SEMAP|trans™ v4.0 - Latest Arabic-English Machine Translation software release. For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/translation.txt • New Audio CD for Cowell's Syrian Arabic Grammar. For more information see http://www.press.georgetown.edu/ Visit the NEMLAR web site for more information: http://www.nemlar.org ********************************************************************* 4. Upcoming Events ****************** • The first joint international conference on Arabic language and linguistics, Oxford, July 30-31 2004. For more information see http://www.nemlar.org/Events/oxford.txt • Workshop on Computational Approaches to Arabic Script-based Languages, Coling 2004, 28 August 2004, Switzerland. For more information see http://members.cox.net/karinem/COLING2004 • Arabic Language Resources and Tools conference, September 22-23 2004, Cairo, Egypt. For more information see http://www.nemlar.org ********************************************************************* 5. How to contribute to the NEMLAR network ****************************************** If you wish to contribute to the work of the NEMLAR project you may fill in the survey questionnaire about your language resources and/or the industry needs for language resources. Visit the NEMLAR web site in order to answer the survey questionnaire: http://www.nemlar.org/Survey-questionnaires ********************************************************************* 6. Links ******** • ELRA distributes Arabic resources: http://www.elra.info • Link to Arabic NLP technologies at RDI (to be found under the submenu item 'Arabic NLP' under the main menu item 'Technologies'): http://www.RDI-eg.com • The Faharis Site, list of Arabic web resources: http://www.faharis.net • Visit the Linguist List related to Arabic language: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/arabic-l.html • List of pointers to Arabic and other Semitic NLP and Speech sites: http://www.elsnet.org/arabiclist.html • Lists of websites with theses dealing with Arabic human language technologies http://www.biomath.jussieu.fr/ATALA/these/#Idx3 http://www.technolangue.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe or unsubscribe, please send an email to: nemlar@cst.dk This newsletter is published by the NEMLAR project (http://www.nemlar.org) and produced by Center for Sprogteknologi. To contact the project co-ordinator: Center for Sprogteknologi (CST) Project Co-ordinator: Bente Maegaard Tel: +45 35 32 90 74, Fax: +45 35 32 90 89 email: nemlar@cst.dk