Workshop on ‘Advanced Course in Computational Linguistics’

Advanced Course in Computational Linguisticst:

The Ten-day workshop on Advanced Course in Computational Linguistics is a joint programme organized by the Department of Dravidian & Computational Linguistics, Dravidian University, Kuppam and Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. The workshop started started on 16th morning with the inaugural function. Prof. G. Lakshminarayana, Vice Chancellor, Dravidian University presided over the function. Prof. K.V. Madhu Murthy, Head, Department of Computer Science & Engineering S.V. University was the chief guest.

Dr. M.C. Kesava Murty, Coordinator of the workshop introduced the aim and goals of workshop and welcomed the gathering. He bought it to the notice that this is the second workshop the department is hosting under the able leadership of the Vice Chancellor.

In his inaugural address, Vice Chancellor stressed the importance of mother tongues and shared his experience of his recent visit to China and emphasized the need of development of Language Technology for Indian languages and that the studens and scholar should take it up in the patriotic fervor. He expressed his desire to see a workable machine translation system in near future.

Prof. K. V. Madhu Murthy in his keynote address reviewed the status of language technology development in India and the necessity of developing technological tools for the Indian languages. Even though there are attempts from the software giants but so far they have not reached the grossroot level. He has mentioned that there is no free online software available for the Indian languages in spite of the attempts from the premier institutes in our country.

Prof. G. Balasubramanian, Head, Department of Dravidian & Computational Linguistics, Dravidian University proposed vote of thanks. He also thanked the Vice Chancellor for his special interest in the department and his support and guidance in running the progammes of the department.

In the afternoon session Mr. S. Viswanathan, Senior consultant, Capgemini, Chennai introduced the participants PERL programming followed by practical session in the NLP lab for giving hands-on experience for the participants.

Day 2 (17/3/08) Dr. S. Arulmozi exposed the participants the differences between theoretical and linguistics and Computational Linguistics touching upon the application areas and introduced the basic commands in linux operating system.

Day 3 (18/3/08) Dr. P. Umarani, Research Associate from Pittsburg University explained the theories behind knowledge representation and reasoning and Prof. G. UmaMaheshwar Rao, Centre for Applied Linguistics and Translation Studies, University of Hyderabad gave a tutorial on Scripts and Scripting languages.

Day 4 (19/3/08) Dr. P. Umarani gave a lecture on Semantic classes and Dialogue Analysis and in the afternoon Prof. G. UmaMaheshwar Rao taught the participants the different ways of doing Morphological Modelling. Participants practiced on Morph and PERL programming till very late in the night. Christphor Mala, a participant chipped in the same night introduced introducing PERL to the participants drawing examples from Telugu language.

Day 5 (20/3/08) Dr. P. Umarani explained about the intelligent tutoring system, Discourse Analysis. In the afternoon session Prof. G. UmaMaheshwar Rao explained about the parts of speech tagging for Machine Translation System in Indian languages.

Day 6 (21/3/08) Dr. Amba Kulakarni, Reader Department of Sanskrit Studies explained in detail Machine Translation Engine and Morphological Modelling of different languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Hindi. Dr. P.Umarani explained intricacies involved in developing Word Sense Disambiguation Module.

Day 7 (22/3/08) Mr. P. Sreekumar gave a lecturer on language Technology Policy and implementation. Dr. M.C. Kesava Murty in the afternoon session introduced Word Sense Disambiguation in the Machine Translation System.

Day 8 (23/3/08) A visit to Kotilingala and Bangaru Tirupati in the morning and refreshed the participants from the hectic schedule. Evening the participants worked on their projects.

Day 9 (24/3/08) Dr. L. Sobha, from Anna University, KB Chandrasekhar Research Centre joined us and explained in detail differences between information retrieval and extraction. She also detailed about their project on Information Extraction. Mr. Rakesh Ambati, participant in his short tutorial revisited the history of linux and gave a pinch of GNU-GPL. Night was so young and participants stressed the need for one more final session on Named Entity Recognition which enlightened all the participants from 9.30 pm-11.00 pm in the night.

On the final day of workshop Prof. M. Ganesan from Annamalai University gave Valedictory address and Prof. G. Lakshminarayana was the president of the Valedictory session.

Overall, about we had 20 tutorial sessions and a few practical sessions. Totally, 23 participants (1 faculty and 22 students) drawing from Banaras Hindu University, Bharathiar University, Osmania University, University of Hyderabad and Kakatiya University took part in the workshop. Department faculty Dr, G. Balasubramanian, Dr. S. Arulmozi, Mr. P. Sreekumar, Dr. Ganesan Ambedkar, Dr. B. Hemananda and Dr. Malleswara Rao were helpful in conducting the tutorials and practical sessions through out the workshop days.

Workshop on ‘Speech Sciences’

LDC-IL Workshop On Speech Science:

The LDC-IL Workshop in Speech Sciences was an advanced training course in phonetics/acoustics. It was held from March 10 to 21, 2008 . Most of the participants of the workshop had basic knowledge of phonetics. The first week of the workshop was meant for lectures and demos whereas in the 2nd week participants were involved in practical activities such as data recording, sound perception, transcription, reading of spectrogram etc. The workshop began with the introductory lecture on phonetics in which the main components of phonetics, such as articulation, air-stream mechanism, phonation and ori-nasal process were discussed in detail. However, the main emphasis of the workshop was on acoustics. Prof. Peri Bhaskar Rao who was specially invited for the workshop, discussed the following topics in detail:

1. General introduction to Acoustics--- it included description of sinusoidal and complex waves; analog vs. digital signal; frequency; fundamental frequency; amplitude; formants, formant transition, VOT, and source and filter theory.
2. Recording techniques
3. Sound segmentation and introduction to speech synthesis
4. Acoustic characteristics of various sounds
5. Acoustic cues to various types of phonations
6. voiceless resonants
7. Analysis of tones

The participants were exposed to the software such as Multi speech, wave surfer, PRAAT, Real time spectrograph, video phonetics and Real time pitch, used for speech analysis.

During the second week the participants were involved in practical activities. They were asked to provide relevant data from their respective mother tongues; they had several sessions for sound perception, description and transcription. They were also involved in spectrogram reading so that they could differentiate between various consonants and vowels by using acoustic cues.

Participants List

Sl. No.	Name of the Participant	Designation	Language
1	Akhan Khamrang	Resource Person	Tangkhul
2	Anjali Sinha	Resource Person/faculty	Hindi
3	Apinao R. Leisan	Resource Person	Tangkhul
4	Arpita Ray	Resource Person CIIL	Bangla
5	Arundhati Sengupta	Resource Person CIIL	Bangla
6	Atiqua Bano	Research Scholar	Phom
7	Barika Khyriem	Lecturer	Khasi
8	Bashisha Nongrum	Resource Person	Khasi
9	Curiously Bareh	Research Associate	Pnar
10	G. Bharadwaja Kumar	Resource Person	Telegu
11	Gangjam Khoiyang	Resource Person	Nokte
12	Geyi Ete	Resource Person	Galo
13	Gautam Sukumar	Resource Person/faculty	Tamil
14	Hishey Lachungpa	Resource Person	Bhutia
15	John S. Borang	Resource Person	Adi (padam)
16	Jugendra Pegu	Resource Person	Mising
17	K. Roluahpuia	Resource Person	Mizo
18	Kailadbou Daimai	Resource Person	Liangmai
19	Koninglee Wanglar	Resource Person	Monsang
20	Lachmi Cheda	Resource Person	Nyishi
21	M.S. Richonshong Chiru	Lecturer	Chiru
22	Nending Ommo B.	Resource Person	Apatani
23	Parman Singh	Resource Person	Hindi
24	P. Pusparani Devi	Research Scholar	Manipuri
25	Sharmistha Chakraborty	Resource Person	Bangla
26	T. Sochemla Chang	Resource Person	Chang
27	Th. Chandramani Singh	Resource Person	Manipuri
28	Wanglit Mongchan	Resource Person NELD	Nokte
29	Winston Cruz	Resource Person/faculty	Tamil

Selection Workshop / Test conducted at CIIL, Mysore from 17th – 21st March 2008

Sl. No.	Position	No. of Positions	Total No. of applications received	No. of candidates shortlisted & called for Workshop/Test at CIIL, Mysore .	No. of candidates attended	No. of candidates selected based on the recommendations of the Selection Committee
1.	Professor-cum-Project Director	1	7	3	1	1
2.	Reader/Research Officer	2	27	12	7	2
3.	Senior Lecturer/ Junior Research Officer	3	59	38	24	3
4.	Lecturer / Resource Person	5	114	94	64	5
5.	Senior Technical Officer	20	64	38	19	16
6.	Junior Technical Officer	8	74	55	25	5
7.	Maintenance Personnel- Sales and Promotion	1	8	3	3	1
8.	Maintenance Personnel- Accounts	1	32	12	10	1
9.	Maintenance Personnel- General	1	26	7	5	1
	Total	42	411	262	158	35