Essex Gateway to Arabic Linguistics Resources Project Kakia Chatsiou (achats @ essex.ac.uk) 9 th Language and Computation Day 08 th October 2010
Essex Gateway to Arabic Linguistics Resources Project
Kakia Chatsiou (achats @ essex.ac.uk)9th Language and Computation Day08th October 2010
Outline
• About the project• Project Objectives• Deliverables• Completed Deliverables• Website Organisation• Demonstration• Next steps
About the project
• Funded by a departmental research incentive scheme 2009-2010 with project title “Creating Resources in support of research in Arabic”
• Duration of 6 months• 2 principal investigators (Sonja
Eisenbeiss & Louisa Sadler)• 1 research assistant (myself) with the
help of Georgia Chatsiou on web and accessibility issues
Project Objectives
• To create infrastructure to support research and teaching on Arabic (and Semitic) in the dept of Language and Linguistics
• To facilitate collaboration between staff and students in the dept and open up routes for collaboration with researchers in other sites.
• To further enhance the visibility of the Dept and the University as a centre for research on Arabic
• To build links across departments and sectors in the university
Deliverables
• Creation of a website for tools and resources on Arabic linguistics (incl. resources for theoretical, computational, psycholinguistic research)
• Compilation of a searchable bibliography of works on Arabic (and Semitic) linguistics
• Investigation into availability and usability of existing corpus resources & associated tools for Arabic
• Wiki for news and discussions (to aid information sharing)
• Establishment of a (rudimentary) document repository of dissertations and other materials
Completed Deliverables (1)
• Website with tools and resources on Arabic• Bibliography (currently 944 entries and
counting) in .bib and .html searchable format
• Alphabetic list of corpus resources with additional information where available such as language variety, medium (written/spoken), adult/child corpus, encoding, size, compiler, availability and licensing, associated tools/corpora, other notes
Completed Deliverables (2)
• Incorporation of the Arabic Syntax Wiki for information exchange within Essex (information was restructured and design was modified to match departmental theme)
• Establishment of a list of dissertations on Arabic awarded by the department between 1982-2010 with links to the Albert Sloman Library records and .bib entries. A bibliography of all is also available for download from the same page.
Website Organisation
• Part of the departmental pages (one of the limitations as well); additional internal navigation menu added on the right
• Pages include: Arabic@Essex, Corpora, Dictionaries, Useful Tools, Bibliography, Dissertations, Conferences, Funding, Research, Jobs, Journals
Demonstration
http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/research/arabic/
Next Steps
• Internal testing of the current version of the website (within the department & friends); after incorporating any changes, dissemination to mailing lists/partners
• Maintain and enhance the bibliography• Complete Project Documentation• Follow up and acquire Arabic PhD
dissertations from Alumni