CENTRAL INSTITUTE OF INDIAN LANGUAGES

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1st International Conference
In association with
CIIL-Mysore, IIT-Mumbai, IIIT-Hyderabad
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Words unite people. Words can divide nations
they indulge in war of words

• Word-smiths fashion texts
• Word-mongers talk nineteen to the dozen
• Word-lords dont tell you that they
  double-speak
• Word-poets open the inner abyss of lanes
  bye-lanes of meaning
• And so do WordNets

Which is why we are all here!
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Welcome to 1st Global WordNet Conference
MY ADDRESS HAS TWO PARTS

• First, I shall tell you a little about what the
  Indian linguistic scene is like, and what we at
  CIIL have been doing

• Then, we will offer our suggestions on what we in
  India could do in WordNet

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CENTRAL INSTITUTE OF INDIAN LANGUAGES

• maVr mfm gñWmZejm dmJ, maV gaHma

• Initiatives in
• LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGY

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CIIL in the first three decades

• Equipping
• Language
• teachers and
• Analysts
• technologically

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1. An Apex Institution under Languages Division,
MHRD

• In July 2001, 32 years completed
• This 287-people institution works for development
  of Indian languages.
• CIIL has five Centers with Research Groups (16)
  and Service Groups (6).
• 7 Regional Language Centers are at Bhubaneswar,
  Guwahati, Lucknow, Mysore, Patiala, Pune,
  Solan.

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2. Four Main Objectives

• 1. Develops languages by creating content,
  corpus, techniques and technologies.
• 2. Protects Documents Minority Tribal
  languages
• 3. Creates linguistic harmony by teaching 15
  Indian tongues to non-native learners.
• 4. Above all, advices both Central and State
  governments on matters related to language.

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3. Functionality and Multi-disciplinarity

• Although the mainstay are Indian Languages
  Linguistics, the focus of all projects and
  programmes is on developing materials products
  in print, audio, video and computational.

• In addition, there is enough interest in Comp.
  Lit, Education, Language Technology NLP,
  Folklore, Geography, Statistics
  Psychology,Sociology Translation

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4. Coverage of CIIL - sizable

• Archived 118 lgs data
• Creating Voice Corpora
• Studied 80 Tribal lgs
• 35 grammars on-line soon
• Published 490 books
• Cassette Courses in Assamese, Urdu, Bengali
  Kashmiri Marathi
• Radio courses in Hindi through Kannada

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5. Major Publications 490 books all produced
in-house

• 22 Grammars
• 30 Intensive Courses
• 24 2nd Lg Textbooks
• 5 Common Vocab.
• 18 Dictionaries
• 49 Apni Boli (KVS)
• 15 Pictorial Glossaries
• 16 Literacy Books
• 12 Folklore
• 9 Bibliographies

12 Rhymes/Lg Games 16 Proceedings
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6. The Challenge before CIIL Enormous
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A truly plural world of languages

• 1,576 rationalized mother-tongues
• 1,796 other mother-tongues
• 114 languages with 10,000 speakers
• Large variation Hindi (337 m) to Maram of
  Manipur with 10,144
• Large non-scheduled lgs - Bhili (6 m) and Santali
  (5 m)
• 146 radio lgs/69 school lgs /35 lg dailies.

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7. Programs - Modes of Delivery

• 10 months L2 teaching 8000 teachers trained
• Distance Courses in Tamil/Telugu/Bengali/Urdu
• On-line Programs in 15 Indian languages
• Kannada for officials in Karnataka
• Radio courses with AIRs collaboration
• 3-months Courses in Communication
• Orientation for Mother-tongue teachers
• Refresher Courses in Linguistics
• NLP Training modules

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8. Language Technology Further Goals

• Enlargement of 3-million word Corpora
• 100 m word corpora for Hindi-Urdu
• Multilingual multidirectional E- Dictionaries
• On-line Administrative Glossaries
• Lexical databases for MT Programs
• Tagging Corpus Tools
• E-Zines and E-Journals
• Language Information Services
• Anukriti Web-based Translation services

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9 Indian Lgs IT at CIIL

• 132-node LAN set up
• V-SAT through STPI
• Brousing centre
• Has 2400 E-Journals 350 paper journals.
• Collaborating with Schoolnet for electronic
  materials
• New generation Lg Labs
• Focus Visual Phonetics

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10. LIS-India Website

• Type Language Name
• Type Area Name
• Home or http//www.ciil.org/
• General Information
• Language/ Area Profile
• Geolinguistic Sociolinguistic Cultural
  Literary
• Language/Area History
• Genealogical Archaeological Cultural
  Textual
• Language Vitality
• Attitudinal Utilitarian Socio-political
  Referential
• Grammatical Information
• Phonetic Graphemic Phonological
  Morphological Lexical
• Syntactic Semantic Stylistic
• Biblio search

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11. Anukriti A Translation with NBT/SA

• Electronic lexicon
• Corpus tools
• Parallel corpora
• Cultural Glossaries
• Thesauri
• Word finders
• WordNets

• WEB-BASED SERVICE SITE called ANUKRUTI.
• To be maintained with NBT/Sahitya Akademi
• E-journals
• Technological Tools

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12. Bhasha Bharati Project
To be set up in collaboration with

• Sahitya Akademi
• Sangeet Natak Academy
• All India Radio
• Doordarshan
• National Library
• National Archive
• National Book Trust
• Major TV Channels
• Films Division

• Major Newspaper houses
• Numerous Foundations
• Individual writers
• Heirs of writers
• Personal libraries
• Little magazines
• This rich manuscriptorium will display plural
  literary and linguistic landscape of India.

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13. Doctoral Programs under planning

• Already available through 22 Universities
• Linguistics Psychology
• Now being planned in
• NLP
• Folklore/Communication
• Translation
• Indian Gram.Tradition

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14. Future Programs

• Dip in Experimental Phonetics
• Masters by Research in Field Linguistics
• Courses in Statistical Linguistics
• Diploma in Translation Studies
• Dip in Folklore/Comp. Lit. Semiotics
• Internship in Linguistic Geography
• Internship in NLP Corpus Linguistics

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WHAT COULD WE DO TO CREATE AN
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India has already had a strong lexicographical
tradition

• Working on WordNet, therefore, should come
  naturally to us.
• Efforts have already begun as we see in Hindi,
  Tamil, Oriya and a few other languages.
• There does not seem to be any academic
  coordination, however.

• Early 20th century Indian linguistics was
  dominated by studies on sound-system and
  etymologies
• Mid-20th C focussed on word-formation patterns
• Late 20th C emphasized on syntax

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We havent so far worked seriously on Lexical
Semantics

• While Sociolinguistics was a favourite, serious
  Psycholinguistics was almost absent
• Formal Syntax was highly valued, but intricacies
  of Semantics were not so attractive.
• Making of Dictionaries continued throughout, but
  major concerted efforts in each language were
  highly individualistic or had happened long ago.
• While writing softwares or applying them means
  money, and is hence a crowded field, Language
  Technology has so far been neglected.

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So, what do we need to do now?

• Create an Indian WordNet Association
• Work coordinatedly
• Remember to focus on areal semantic features
  because with so much linguistic cultural
  diversity, India is ideal to test and validate
  the concept of WordNet.