Special Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR0354513
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$20,000.00
Summary
The Computational Processing of Human Language. Language is what makes us distinctly human; consequently, language attracts interest from many fields of research, particularly linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. Moreover, language is the primary medium for the storage and dissemination of knowledge, a fact that has drawn many computer scientists to attempt to process, analyse and understand language. This network will bridge the many disciplines that are concerned with language, ex ....The Computational Processing of Human Language. Language is what makes us distinctly human; consequently, language attracts interest from many fields of research, particularly linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. Moreover, language is the primary medium for the storage and dissemination of knowledge, a fact that has drawn many computer scientists to attempt to process, analyse and understand language. This network will bridge the many disciplines that are concerned with language, explore new ways in which computational models inform our understanding of human languages, and exploit new opportunities for applying theories of language in the development of human language technologies.Read moreRead less
New methodologies for representing and accessing resources on endangered languages: a case study from South Efate. Linguists produce material which has immense cultural significance as it is often the only record of endangered cultures. With new technologies come new ways of working with indigenous languages. This APD will develop an innovative methodology for documenting and archiving data from a language of the Pacific. It will do this by linking a dictionary, texts, audio, video, images and a ....New methodologies for representing and accessing resources on endangered languages: a case study from South Efate. Linguists produce material which has immense cultural significance as it is often the only record of endangered cultures. With new technologies come new ways of working with indigenous languages. This APD will develop an innovative methodology for documenting and archiving data from a language of the Pacific. It will do this by linking a dictionary, texts, audio, video, images and a grammar to facilitate presentation of both the data and its analysis to speakers, fellow linguists, and the general public. The methodology developed in this APD will result in innovative linguistic data management techniques conformant to emerging international standards.Read moreRead less
ARC Research Network for Enabling Human Communication. The Human Communication Network promotes interdisciplinary research in speech, language, and sound by and between humans and machines. The network connects leading and emerging researchers across disciplines, exploits previously unrecognised intersections, supports interdisciplinary graduate training and exchanges, provides database storage infrastructure, and consults with industry and government to set, not follow, research agendas. By ge ....ARC Research Network for Enabling Human Communication. The Human Communication Network promotes interdisciplinary research in speech, language, and sound by and between humans and machines. The network connects leading and emerging researchers across disciplines, exploits previously unrecognised intersections, supports interdisciplinary graduate training and exchanges, provides database storage infrastructure, and consults with industry and government to set, not follow, research agendas. By generating an explosion of new approaches and knowledge, the network will build Australia's reputation as a leader in communication science and technology via advances in automatic speech recognition, distress call monitoring, hearing prostheses, web interfaces, and data retrieval and data mining systems.Read moreRead less
Special Research Initiatives - Grant ID: SR0567353
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$98,035.00
Summary
An Intelligent Search Infrastructure for Language Resources on the Web
. Language occupies a central role on the web: most content is expressed in language, and most access takes place via natural language search. Today, investigation of human language depends on access to this vast store of language data. This project will develop new infrastructure for accessing language resources, namely a language-aware search engine. Language technologies will be employed to classify web content, and a ....An Intelligent Search Infrastructure for Language Resources on the Web
. Language occupies a central role on the web: most content is expressed in language, and most access takes place via natural language search. Today, investigation of human language depends on access to this vast store of language data. This project will develop new infrastructure for accessing language resources, namely a language-aware search engine. Language technologies will be employed to classify web content, and a special search keyword 'lang:' will constrain search results to be in the specified language. The system will be integrated with major language archives in Australia and overseas, and deployed on the high performance computing infrastructure at Melbourne University's Advanced Research Computing Centre.
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Language engineering in the field: preserving 100 endangered languages in New Guinea. Efforts to preserve the world's endangered linguistic heritage are labour-intensive, and unable to keep up with the pace of language loss. This project investigates a new approach to language preservation, using techniques from language engineering, and leveraging the labour of mother-tongue speakers.
Talking about place: tapping human knowledge to enrich national spatial data sets. Place descriptions are a common way for people to describe a location, but no current tools are smart enough to understand them. Emergency call centres are risking lives, users of navigation or web services are frustrated and addressing these problems costs billions of dollars per year. This project comes with a novel, interdisciplinary approach to automatically interpret human place descriptions and will develop ....Talking about place: tapping human knowledge to enrich national spatial data sets. Place descriptions are a common way for people to describe a location, but no current tools are smart enough to understand them. Emergency call centres are risking lives, users of navigation or web services are frustrated and addressing these problems costs billions of dollars per year. This project comes with a novel, interdisciplinary approach to automatically interpret human place descriptions and will develop novel methods to capture placenames with their meaning for smarter databases and automatic interpretation procedures. This acquired knowledge will be an important step forward for Australia's data custodians and users. Australia's location information industry will gain a significant advantage on a highly competitive global market.Read moreRead less
Online linguistic exploration: deeper, faster, broader language documentation. This project will develop a new online mode for collaborative linguistic research. Linguists will be able to harness the power of natural language processing techniques for their study of the world's languages. A demonstration system will be developed, permitting linguists to locate examples of syntactic constructions in a large database of parsed text, and to explore similarities across different languages. The pr ....Online linguistic exploration: deeper, faster, broader language documentation. This project will develop a new online mode for collaborative linguistic research. Linguists will be able to harness the power of natural language processing techniques for their study of the world's languages. A demonstration system will be developed, permitting linguists to locate examples of syntactic constructions in a large database of parsed text, and to explore similarities across different languages. The project will also encompass a selection of minority languages for which only a small amount of data is available.Read moreRead less
A computational and experimental investigation of reading aloud: Dyslexia, disyllables, and beyond. Australia is a world leader in computational cognitive science, particularly with respect to language processing. This project will help maintain and extend this position. Insights from the project will help us understand the processes that underlie both normal reading and reading disorders, particularly in areas that are comparatively neglected yet extremely important, such as how people read wor ....A computational and experimental investigation of reading aloud: Dyslexia, disyllables, and beyond. Australia is a world leader in computational cognitive science, particularly with respect to language processing. This project will help maintain and extend this position. Insights from the project will help us understand the processes that underlie both normal reading and reading disorders, particularly in areas that are comparatively neglected yet extremely important, such as how people read words of more than one syllable. Given that everyone in Australian needs to learn to read and that acquired and developmental disorders of reading are common, providing the theoretical base on which the processes involved in reading can be understood (and hence learnt and remediated most effectively) is of utmost importance.Read moreRead less
An investigation of meaning negotiation in electronic discourse. This project investigates the use of collaborative electronic exchanges between language students in Indonesian and Queensland schools to enhance language and inter-cultural development. The chief investigators will develop a new model of discourse appropriate to such asynchronous communication (e-mail and forums), as well as investigate developments in technological literacy. Other outcomes will include guidelines for creating pra ....An investigation of meaning negotiation in electronic discourse. This project investigates the use of collaborative electronic exchanges between language students in Indonesian and Queensland schools to enhance language and inter-cultural development. The chief investigators will develop a new model of discourse appropriate to such asynchronous communication (e-mail and forums), as well as investigate developments in technological literacy. Other outcomes will include guidelines for creating practical technology-mediated tasks, and protocols for establishing and maintaining electronic tandem exchanges with a developing country. Results will be reported to the Industry Partner and relevant educational authorities and published in national and international journals such as ARAL, Babel and CALL Journal.Read moreRead less
Doing great things with small languages: Safeguarding Indigenous language material of Australia's region by clever use of new technology. This project will provide a responsible record of Indigenous and endangered languages from both Australia and from Vanuatu. It will build understanding of the cultures in which those languages are spoken and enhance links between Australia and its neighbours by providing access to field recordings made by researchers since the 1950s, thus enhancing Australia's ....Doing great things with small languages: Safeguarding Indigenous language material of Australia's region by clever use of new technology. This project will provide a responsible record of Indigenous and endangered languages from both Australia and from Vanuatu. It will build understanding of the cultures in which those languages are spoken and enhance links between Australia and its neighbours by providing access to field recordings made by researchers since the 1950s, thus enhancing Australia's security. It will also keep Australia at the forefront of the application of new technologies to linguistic research by developing a methodology for language documentation of significance for the discipline as a whole.Read moreRead less