11.0413 new: ELRA; BNC Online; Mathesius lecture

Humanist Discussion Group (humanist@kcl.ac.uk)
Fri, 21 Nov 1997 21:22:52 +0000 (GMT)

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 11, No. 413.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

[1] From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@parallel.park.uga.edu> (153)
Subject: ELRA New Resources

[2] From: Lou Burnard <lou.burnard@computing- (15)
services.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: BNC Online Service

[3] From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@parallel.park.uga.edu> (242)
Subject: Vilem Mathesius Lecture Series 12

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 14:50:13 -0500 (EST)
From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@parallel.park.uga.edu>
Subject: ELRA New Resources

>> From: info-elra@calva.net (Valerie Mapelli)

EUROPEAN LANGUAGE RESOURCES ASSOCIATION
ELRA News
=====================================

*** ANNOUCEMENT OF NEW RESOURCES AVAILABLE FROM ELRA ***

ELRA is happy to announce the update of its catalogue
of Language Resources for Language Engineering and Research.

*************************************
* ELRA-S0034 Verbmobil *
*************************************

This resource consists of spontaneous speech recorded in a dialog task
(appointment scheduling). The German corpus has a total of 13,910
utterances (turns). The BAS edition of the German part is fully
labelled and segmented into phonemic/phonetic SAM-PA by the MAUS
system and partly segmented manually.

New corpora available via ELRA (for the complete list, please contact
ELRA or visit ELRA or BAS Web sites):

VM CD 4.0 - VM40 (1 CD-ROM, original edition)
72 Dialogues, 181 Appointments, 1,588 Turns.

VM CD 4.1 - VM41 (1 CD-ROM, new edition)
72 Dialogues 181 Appointments 1,588 Turns
This new edition contains the transliterations of all dialogues, signal
files with PhonDat 2 Header structure, software and speaker
documentation and partitur files*. All files were evaluated
according to BAS guidelines.

VM CD 5.0 - VM50 (1 CD-ROM, original edition)
101 Dialogues, 256 Appointments, 2,154 Turns.

VM CD 5.1 - VM51 (1 CD-ROM, new edition)
101 Dialogues, 256 Appointments 2,154 Turns.
This new edition contains the transliterations of all dialogues, signal
files with PhonDat 2 Header structure, software and speaker
documentation and partitur files*. All files were evaluated
according to BAS guidelines.

VM CD 6.0 - VM60 (1 CD-ROM, original edition)
American/English and 'Denglish'**. 146 Dialogues, 191
Appointments, 1,828 Turns.

VM CD 6.1 - VM61 (1 CD-ROM, new edition)
American/English and 'Denglish'**. 146 Dialogues, 191 Appointments
1,828 Turns. This new edition contains the transliterations of all
dialogues, signal files with PhonDat 1 Header structure, software and
speaker documentation. All files were evaluated according to BAS
guidelines.

VM CD 7.0 - VM70 (1 CD-ROM, original edition)
68 Dialogues, 238 Appointments, 1,739 Turns.

VM CD 7.1 - VM71 (1 CD-ROM, new edition)
68 Dialogues, 238 Appointments, 1,739 Turns. This new edition
contains the transliterations of all dialogues, signal files with
PhonDat 2 Header structure, software and speaker documentation and
partitur files*. All files were evaluated according to BAS guidelines.

VM CD 8.0 - VM80 (1 CD-ROM, original edition)
American/English 167 Dialogues, 167 Appointments, 1,181 Turns.

VM CD 8.1 - VM81 (1 CD-ROM, new edition)
American/English 167 Dialogues, 167 Appointments, 1,181 Turns.
This new edition contains the transliterations of all dialogues, signal
files with PhonDat 1 Header structure, software and speaker
documentation. All files were evaluated according to BAS guidelines.

VM CD 12.0 - VM120 (1 CD-ROM, original edition)
207 Dialogues, 207 Appointments, 2,154 Turns.

VM CD 12.1 - VM121 (1 CD-ROM, new edition)
207 Dialogues, 207 Appointments, 2,154 Turns. This new edition
contains the transliterations of all dialogues, signal files with
PhonDat 2 Header structure, software and speaker documentation and
partitur files*. All files were evaluated according to BAS guidelines.

VM CD 13.0 - VM13.0 (original edition)
American/English and 'Denglish'** - 90 speakers - 1714 turns -
200 spontaneous dialogues.

VM CD 13.1 - VM13.1 (new edition)
American/English and 'Denglish'** - 90 speakers - 1714 turns -
200 spontaneous dialogues - transliteration.

VM CD 14.0 - VM14.0 (original edition)
97 speakers - 1891 turns - 156 spontaneous dialogues -
transliteration.

VM CD 14.1 - VM14.1 (new edition)
97 speakers - 1891 turns - 156 spontaneous dialogues -
transliteration - PhonDat 2 headers - Partitur Files*.

* partitur files : files describing the different parts which
constitute the corpus - word order, phrase order, etc.
** 'Denglish' : English spoken by Germans.

Price for ELRA members: 76 ECU per CD
Price for non members: 152 ECU per CD

***********************************************
* ELRA-S0044 SPINA Corpus ("Robots Commands") *
***********************************************

This German corpus contains read speech of 22 different speakers (6
male, 16 female). The corpus consists of 10 robot command sentences
and 62 robot command words. Each speaker reads the whole corpus 5
times, except one speaker who reads the sentence corpus 16 times and
the word corpus 51 times. The speakers were recorded at two different
sites in Germany (University of Goettingen, University of Bochum).
The corpus contains a total of 10,810 recorded utterances.

All speakers are within the age of 25-30. Two speakers are non-native
speakers. One file gives information about the speakers (speaker ID,
recording site, sex).

The task for the speaker was to read carefully but fluently. If an
error occurred, the recording was interrupted by the supervisor and
the sentence was repeated. The signal files are raw files without any
header, 16 bit per sample, linear, most significant byte first, 16 kHz
sample frequency.

The orthography of the corpus is given in two distinct files which
contain the prompted words and the prompted sentences as an ordered
list.

The recording conditions are as follows:
Microphone: AKG acoustics, C414B-TL, condensator microphone
omnidirectional, built-in attenuator and high pass filter switched off,
distance to mouth 50 cm.
Environment: Studio Quality, echo cancelled room, about 121 qqm
Preamplifier: John Hardy, M-1
Sampling rate: 48 kHz to DAT recorder, filtered to 16 kHz
Resolution: 16 Bit, most significant byte first

The speech data were digitally filtered to 8 kHz cut-off frequency and
downsampled to 16 kHz.

The corpus consists of 1 volume, total size 266,361 KB uncompressed
data.

The signal of each utterance is stored in a separate file. Symbolic
information like segmentations or labelling (e.g. Phonological
Segmentation of words or Word Segmentation of sentences) are stored
in files with the same prefix but with different extensions.

Price for ELRA members: 76 ECU
Price for non members: 152 ECU

***********************************************************
* ELRA-S0045 German Pronunciation Rules Set - PHONRUL 9.0 *
***********************************************************

PHONRUL is a collection of computer-readable underspecifying
pronunciation rules of standard German. This set describes the most
common known effects in German pronunciation if deviating from the
so-called canonic or citation form of words. The knowledge of this rule
set was derived from empirical analysis of speech corpora as well as
from a multitude of publications about German phonetics. The set does
not contain any dialect-specific rules, however the line between
Standard German and dialects is indistinct. Presently, this rule set is
used at the University of Munich to aid automatic segmentation and
labelling of unknown speech utterances.

The rule set, in its present form, consists of approximately 1,500
complex rules which expand to 5,546 simple replacement rules. The
rule set was designed for extended German SAM-PA, but can be
translated into other alphabets (e.g. Worldbet, IPA) without much
effort.

Price for ELRA members:
o for research use: 76 ECU
o for commercial use: 482 ECU
Price for non members:
o for research use: 152 ECU
o for commercial use: 964 ECU

********************************************
For more information, please contact:
ELRA/ELDA
87, Avenue d'Italie
75013 PARIS
Tel: +33 1 45 86 53 00
Fax: +33 1 45 86 44 88
E-mail: info-elra@calva.net
http://www.icp.grenet.fr/ELRA/home.html
********************************************

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 18:24:27 +0000 (GMT)
From: Lou Burnard <lou.burnard@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: BNC Online Service

I'm very pleased to announce (at last) that the British National Corpus (BNC)
can now be searched online over the internet from anywhere in the world.

The new BNC Online Service allows anyone with access to the internet to:

* search for words, phrases, or patterns in the BNC via a simple web interface

* register for an account on the BNC server (free for twenty days unlimited
usage)

* download the SARA client software needed to talk to this server (also
free: available for Windows3.x or 95 only)

This new service is made possible by the generosity of the British
Library (who run the server); thanks are also due to its ingenious
developers (Scotty Logan and Tony Dodd).

The address of BNC Online is http://thetis.bl.uk/

For more information on the BNC, see http://info.ox.ac.uk/bnc

----------------------------------------------------------------
Lou Burnard http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lou

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 15:45:08 -0500 (EST)
From: "David L. Gants" <dgants@parallel.park.uga.edu>
Subject: Vilem Mathesius Lecture Series 12

>> From: "Conferences in Logic" <lli@Kwetal.ms.mff.cuni.cz>

!!our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this message!!

VILEM MATHESIUS LECTURE SERIES 12

including the conference

"BRIDGES AND INTERFACES: FORM, MEANING, AND FUNCTION"

The Vilem Mathesius Teaching and Research Center in Linguistics and
Semiotics (Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, Prague), will
organize its twelfth Lecture Series in March 1998. The Lecture Series
programme features numerous courses among which courses focusing on
issues in discourse semantics, syntax, and their interaction.

An integral part of the Lecture Series is the international linguistic
conference "Bridges and Interfaces: Form, Meaning, and Function" held at
the occasion of the 650th Anniversary of Charles University. The
conference will take place on March 12 until 14, 1998, and it will focus
on the relationships between form, meaning and function of linguistic
items from the perspective of different theoretical approaches providing
thus a fruitful basis for a discussion of bridges and interfaces between
different linguistic theories.

Below you will find more detailed information on the programme of
the series and the conference.

GRANTS, and REGISTRATION

Applications for grants for students from CEE countries should be
accompanied by a recommendation of the student's professor from his home
university or country. The grants will cover the participation both at
the lectures and at the conference (Lecture Series 12). Normal registration
is USD 350, covering the tuition fee, acommodation, breakfast, and lunches.

IMPORTANT DATES

DEADLINES are as follows:

- Applications for grants should be received at the address below by
DECEMBER 20, 1997
People will be informed whether they have been awarded a grant by
JANUARY 10, 1998
- Normal registrations should be received at the address below by
FEBRUARY 9, 1998
in order to enable us to reserve accommodation for you in time.

CONTACT INFORMATION

For registration, and further information, please contact:

Vilem Mathesius Center
MFF UK - Linguistics
Malostranske nam. 25
118 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic

e-mail: brdickov@ufal.mff.cuni.cz
(cc: hajicova@ufal.mff.cuni.cz)

fax: +420-2-2191 4309
tel:+420-2-2191 4278

************************************************************************

LECTURE SERIES 12

The twelfth cycle of the Vilem Mathesius Lecture Series, organized by
the Vilem Mathesius Centre for Research and Education in Semiotics and
Linguistics (Charles University), will be held in Prague, Czech Republic,=

March 9-20, 1998. The venue will be the Krystal Hotel, J. Marti Street,
Prague 6. The scientific program will consist of the following invited
courses:

Nicholas Asher:
Dynamic Semantics, Discourse Structure and the
Pragmatics Semantics Interface

Vladimir Borschev and Barbara H. Partee:
Integrating the Semantics of Lexicon, Syntax, Discourse
Structure, and Context

W. U. Dressler:
Functional explanation in linguistics

Kai von Fintel:
The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quantifier Domains

Ferenc Kiefer:
Ways of explaining polysemy

Fred Jelinek:
Advanced methods of language modeling for speech
recognition

James D. McCawley:
Notions of Syntactic Structure

James Pustejovsky:
The Logic and Metaphysics of Semantic Universals

Henk van Riemsdijk:
Projections: functional, semi-lexical and lexical
heads

Helmut Schnelle:
The development of language in the brain

Jind=FDich Toman:
Theories of Clitics

Annie Zaenen:
Complex Predicates, a typological approach

The *preliminary* time schedule is as follows. Note that there are
four courses a day, each course lasting 90 minutes.

First week:

Mo 9 Pustejovsky Jelinek Toman Asher

Tu 10 Pustejovsky Dressler Asher Jelinek

We 11 Asher Toman Dressler Jelinek

Thursday - Saturday: "Bridges and Interface: Form, Meaning and
Function". The conference forms an integral part of the Lecture
Series.

Second week:

Mo 16 Partee/ Riemsdijk Kiefer von Fintel
Borschev

Tu 17 Partee/ Riemsdijk Kiefer von Fintel
Borschev

We 18 Riemsdijk McCawley Kiefer Zaenen

Th 19 von Fintel McCawley Partee/ Schnelle
Borschev

Fr 20 McCawley Partee Zaenen Schnelle

************************************************************************

BRIDGES AND INTERFACES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11

17.00-19.00 Registration, hotel Krystal
19.00-22.00 Welcome reception, hotel Krystal

THURSDAY, MARCH 12

8.30- 9.30 Registration
9.30- 9.40 Opening
9.40-10.20 B.Partee and V.Borschev:
Integrating formal, functional and lexical
semantic information: More on the genitive
of negation
10.20-11.00 N.Asher:
Bridges between philosophy and linguistics
in dialogue

coffee break

11.20-11.45 E.Paducheva:
Compositionality principle: A natural
bridge between formal semantics and
cognitive linguistics
11.45-12.10 Y.Tobin:
"Conditionals" in Hebrew and English: the
same or different?
12.10-12.35 B.Rozwadowska:
Event structure - a bridge and an interface

lunch

14.00-14.40 K.von Fintel:
Indicative conditionals in a dynamic
context
14.40-15.20 J.Pustejovsky:
Qualia structure and other named relations

coffee break

15.40-16.05 J.Firbas:
Meaning, form, and function in the theory
of functional sentence perpective
16.05-16.30 L.Duskova:
Interaction between syntactic form and
information structure: Synonymy vs.
differentiation of variant syntactic
realizations of the basic FSP functions
16.30-16.55 B.Gyuris:
Focus, aspect and quantification in
Hungarian: a compositional approach

coffee break

17.15-17.40 V.Vankova:
Reduplicated objects and topic/focus
articulation in Bulgarian and Macedonian
(Formal similarities and functionl
differences)

17.40-18.05 G.-J.Kruijff and I. Kruijffova:
From Functional Generative Description to
File Change Semantics

19.00 CONCERT (chamber music, Liechtenstein Palace,
Malostranske Sq.; preceded by drinks and
refereshments; transport by buses from the
hotel Krystal)

FRIDAY, MARCH 13

9.00- 9.40 J.D.McCawley:
Notions of syntactic structure
9.40-10.20 H.van Riemsdijk:
The decomposition of syntactic categories:
a reapparaisal
10.20-11.00 J.Toman:
Resumptives in Czech

coffee break

11.20-11.45 R.Ruzicka:
Remarks on the interface between core and
periphery
11.45-12.10 P.Kosta:
tba
12.10-12.35 A.Steube:
Weak quantifiers

lunch

14.00-14.40 E.Hajicova:
From constituency to dependency
14.40-15.20 F.Kiefer:
How to combine formal and functional
explanation

coffee break

15.40-16.05 E.Conte:
The role of abstract terms in text
16.05-16.30 J.Tarnyikova:
Sentence adverbials or discourse markers?
16.30-16.55 V.Zabotkina:
Cognitive-pragmatic aspects of neology

coffee break

17.15-17.40 K.von Heusinger:
Intonation meets information structure
17.40-18.05 C.Bartels & A.Merin:
Decision-theoretic semantics for speech
melody

19.00 BANQUET (the Old University Building Carolinum,
Praha 1, Ovocny trh; transport by buses from the
hotel Krystal)

SATURDAY, MARCH 14

9.00- 9.40 P.Sgall:
Freedom of language
9.40-10.20 H.Schnelle:
"Language - the social product deposited in
the brain of each individual"
10.20-11.00 W.U.Dressler:
Early language acquisition and linguistic
theory

coffee break

11.20-11.45 S.Marcus:
At the interface of classical and
nonclassical logic
11.45-12.10 A.V.Bondarko:
Meaning and sense; function; form;
system-environment interaction
12.10-12.35 Zd. Wasik:
On the functions of language and
functionalism from an interdisciplinary
perspective

lunch

14.00-14.40 L.Karttunen:
Rules vs. constraints
14.40-15.05 P.Pognan:
tba
15.05-15.30 Ken-Ichi Kadooka:
Morphological peculiarity in Japanese
onomatopoeia

coffee break

15.50-16.15 E.Wasik:
Zum Funktionsbegriff in der
Sprachsoziologie
16.05-16.30 M.S. Anwar:
Proportions between function and hierarchies
of markedness
16.30-16.55 A.Svoboda:
Janacek's music and modern linguistics
16.55-17.20 P.Chan:
Towards an interface between language and
literature in Hong-Kong EFL classroom

17.20: CLOSING OF THE CONFERENCE: SHERRY HOUR (hotel Krystal)

----------------------------------------------------------
Conferences in Logic, Language and Information
Maintained by: Geert-Jan M. Kruijff, gj@ufal.mff.cuni.cz

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