gf-core/doc/gf-summerschool.txt

GF Resource Grammar Summer School
Gothenburg, 17-28 August 2009
Aarne Ranta (aarne at chalmers.se)

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==News==

An on-line course //GF for Resource Grammar Writers// will start on
Monday 20 April at 15.30 CEST. The slides and recordings of the five
45-minute lectures will be made available via this web page. If requested,
the course may be repeated in the beginning of the summer school.


==Executive summary==

GF Resource Grammar Library is an open-source computational grammar resource
that currently covers 12 languages.
The Summer School is a part of a collaborative effort to extend the library 
to all of the 23 official EU languages. Also other languages
chosen by the participants are welcome.

The missing EU languages are: 
Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Maltese, Portuguese, Slovak, and Slovenian. There is also more work to
be done on Polish and Romanian.

The linguistic coverage of the library includes the inflectional morphology
and basic syntax of each language. It can be used in GF applications
and also ported to other formats. It can also be used for building other
linguistic resources, such as morphological lexica and parsers.
The library is licensed under LGPL.

In the summer school, each language will be implemented by one or two students 
working together. A morphology implementation will be credited
as a Chalmers course worth 7.5 ETCS points; adding a syntax implementation 
will be worth more. The estimated total work load is 1-2 months for the
morphology, and 3-6 months for the whole grammar.

Participation in the course is free. Registration is done via the courses's
Google group, [``groups.google.com/group/gf-resource-school-2009/`` http://groups.google.com/group/gf-resource-school-2009/]. The registration deadline is 15 June 2009.

Some travel grants will be available. They are distributed on the basis of a
GF programming contest in April and May.

The summer school will be held on 17-28 August 2009, at the campus of 
Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.


[align6.png]

//Word alignment produced by GF from the resource grammar in Bulgarian, English, Italian, German, Finnish, French, and Swedish.//

==Introduction==

Since 2007, EU-27 has 23 official languages, listed in the diagram on top of this
document. There is a growing need of linguistic resources for these 
languages, to help in tasks such as translation and information retrieval. 
These resources should be **portable** and **freely accessible**.
Languages marked in red in the diagram are of particular interest for 
the summer school, since they are those on which the effort will be concentrated.

GF (Grammatical Framework, 
[``digitalgrammars.com/gf`` http://digitalgrammars.com/gf])
is a **functional programming language** designed for writing natural
language grammars. It provides an efficient platform for this task, due to
its modern characteristics:
- It is a functional programming language, similar to Haskell and ML.
- It has a static type system and type checker.
- It has a powerful module system supporting separate compilation 
  and data abstraction.
- It has an optimizing compiler to **Portable Grammar Format** (PGF).
- PGF can be further compiled to other formats, such as JavaScript and
  speech recognition language models.
- GF has a **resource grammar library** giving access to the morphology and
  basic syntax of 12 languages.


In addition to "ordinary" grammars for single languages, GF
supports **multilingual grammars**. A multilingual GF grammar consists of an 
**abstract syntax** and a set of **concrete syntaxes**. 
An abstract syntax is system of **trees**, serving as a semantic
model or an ontology. A concrete syntax is a mapping from abstract syntax 
trees to strings of a particular language.

These mappings defined in concrete syntax are **reversible**: they
can be used both for **generating** strings from trees, and for
**parsing** strings into trees. Combinations of generation and
parsing can be used for **translation**, where the abstract
syntax works as an **interlingua**. Thus GF has been used as a
framework for building translation systems in several areas
of application and large sets of languages.



==The GF resource grammar library==

The GF resource grammar library is a set of grammars usable as libraries when
building translation systems and other applications. 
The library currently covers
the 9 languages coloured in green in the diagram above; in addition, 
Catalan, Norwegian, and Russian are covered, and there is ongoing work on
Arabic, Hindi/Urdu, Polish, Romanian, and Thai.

The purpose of the resource grammar library is to define the "low-level" structure
of a language: inflection, word order, agreement. This structure belongs to what
linguists call morphology and syntax. It can be very complex and requires
a lot of knowledge. Yet, when translating from one language to 
another, knowing morphology and syntax is but a part of what is needed. 
The translator (whether human
or machine) must understand the meaning of what is translated, and must also know
the idiomatic way to express the meaning in the target language. This knowledge
can be very domain-dependent and requires in general an expert in the field to
reach high quality: a mathematician in the field of mathematics, a meteorologist
in the field of weather reports, etc.

The problem is to find a person who is an expert in both the domain of translation
and in the low-level linguistic details. It is the rareness of this combination
that has made it difficult to build interlingua-based translation systems.
The GF resource grammar library has the mission of helping in this task. 
It encapsulates the low-level linguistics in program modules 
accessed through easy-to-use interfaces.
Experts on different domains can build translation systems by using the library, 
without knowing low-level linguistics. The idea is much the same as when a 
programmer builds a graphical user interface (GUI) from high-level elements such as
buttons and menus, without having to care about pixels or geometrical forms.


===Missing EU languages, by the family===

Writing a grammar for a language is usually easier if other languages
from the same family already have grammars. The colours have the same
meaning as in the diagram above.

Baltic:
#RED Latvian #ERED
#RED Lithuanian #ERED

Celtic: 
#RED Irish #ERED

Fenno-Ugric: 
#RED Estonian #ERED 
#GRAY Finnish #EGRAY 
#RED Hungarian #ERED

Germanic: 
#GRAY Danish #EGRAY
#RED Dutch #ERED
#GRAY English #EGRAY
#GRAY German #EGRAY
#GRAY Swedish #EGRAY

Hellenic:
#RED Greek #ERED

Romance:
#GRAY French #EGRAY
#GRAY Italian #EGRAY
#RED Portuguese #ERED
#YELLOW Romanian #ERED
#GRAY Spanish #EGRAY

Semitic:
#RED Maltese #ERED

Slavonic:
#GRAY Bulgarian #EGRAY
#RED Czech #ERED
#YELLOW Polish #ERED
#RED Slovak #ERED
#RED Slovenian #ERED






===Applications of the library===

In addition to translation, the library is also useful in **localization**,
that is, porting a piece of software to new languages. 
The GF resource grammar library has been used in three major projects that need
interlingua-based translation or localization of systems to new languages:
- in KeY, 
  [``http://www.key-project.org/`` http://www.key-project.org/],
  for writing formal and informal software specifications (3 languages)
- in WebALT,
  [``http://webalt.math.helsinki.fi/content/index_eng.html`` http://webalt.math.helsinki.fi/content/index_eng.html],
  for translating mathematical exercises to 7 languages
- in TALK [``http://www.talk-project.org`` http://www.talk-project.org],
  where the library was used for localizing spoken dialogue systems 
  to six languages


The library is also a generic **linguistic resource**, 
which can be used for tasks
such as language teaching and information retrieval. The liberal license (LGPL)
makes it usable for anyone and for any task. GF also has tools supporting the
use of grammars in programs written in other 
programming languages: C, C++, Haskell,
Java, JavaScript, and Prolog. In connection with the TALK project, 
support has also been
developed for translating GF grammars to language models used in speech
recognition (GSL/Nuance, HTK/ATK, SRGS, JSGF).



===The structure of the library===

The library has the following main parts:
- **Inflection paradigms**, covering the inflection of each language.
- **Core Syntax**, covering a large set of syntax rule that
  can be implemented for all languages involved.
- **Common Test Lexicon**, giving ca. 500 common words that can be used for
  testing the library.
- **Language-Specific Syntax Extensions**, covering syntax rules that are
  not implementable for all languages.
- **Language-Specific Lexica**, word lists for each language, with
  accurate morphological and syntactic information.


The goal of the summer school is to implement, for each language, at least
the first three components. The latter three are more open-ended in character.


==The summer school==

The goal of the summer school is to extend the GF resource grammar library
to covering all 23 EU languages, which means we need 15 new languages.
We also welcome other languages than these 23, 
if there are interested participants.

The amount of work and skill is between a Master's thesis and a PhD thesis.
The Russian implementation was made by Janna Khegai as a part of her
PhD thesis; the thesis contains other material, too.
The Arabic implementation was started by Ali El Dada in his Master's thesis,
but the thesis does not cover the whole API. The realistic amount of work is
somewhere between 3 and 8 person months, 
but this is very much language-dependent.
Dutch, for instance, can profit from previous implementations of German and
Scandinavian languages, and will probably require less work.
Latvian and Lithuanian are the first languages of the Baltic family and
will probably require more work.

In any case, the proposed allocation of work power is 2 participants per
language. They will do 1 months' worth of home work, followed
by 2 weeks of summer school, followed by 4 months work at home. 
Who are these participants?


===Selecting participants===

Persons interested to participate in the Summer School should sign up in
the **Google Group** of the course,

[``groups.google.com/group/gf-resource-school-2009/`` http://groups.google.com/group/gf-resource-school-2009/]

The registration deadline is 15 June 2009. 

Notice: you can sign up in the Google 
group even if you are not planning to attend the summer school, but are
just interested in the topic. There will be a separate registration to the
school itself later.

The participants are recommended to learn GF in advance, by self-study from the 
[tutorial http://digitalgrammars.com/gf/doc/gf-tutorial.html]. 
This should take a couple of weeks. An **on-line course** will be
arranged on 20-29 April to help in getting started with GF.

At the end of the on-line course, a **programming assignment** will be published.
This assignment will test skills required in resource grammar programming.
Work on the assignment will take a couple of weeks.
Those who are interested in getting a travel grant will submit
their sample resource grammar fragment 
to the Summer School Committee by 12 May.
The Committee then decides who is given a travel grant of up to 1000 EUR.

Notice: you can participate in the summer school without following the on-line
course or participating in the contest. These things are required only if you
want a travel grant. If requested by enough many participants, the lectures of
the on-line course will be repeated in the beginning of the summer school.

The summer school itself is devoted for working on resource grammars.
In addition to grammar writing itself, testing and evaluation is
performed. One way to do this is via adding new languages 
to resource grammar applications - in particular, to the WebALT mathematical
exercise translator.

The resource grammars are expected to be completed by December 2009. They will 
be published at GF website and licensed under LGPL.

The participants are encouraged to contact each other and even work in groups.



===Who is qualified===

Writing a resource grammar implementation requires good general programming
skills, and a good explicit knowledge of the grammar of the target language. 
A typical participant could be 
- native or fluent speaker of the target language
- interested in languages on the theoretical level, and preferably familiar
  with many languages (to be able to think about them on an abstract level)
- familiar with functional programming languages such as ML or Haskell
  (GF itself is a language similar to these)
- on Master's or PhD level in linguistics, computer science, or mathematics


But it is the quality of the assignment that is assessed, not any formal
requirements. The "typical participant" was described to give an idea of
who is likely to succeed in this.


===Costs===

The summer school is free of charge. 

Some travel grants are given, on the basis of a programming contest, 
to cover travel and accommodation costs up to 1000 EUR
per person.

The number of grants will be decided during Spring 2009, and the grand
holders will be notified before the beginning of June.

Special terms will apply to students in
[GSLT http://www.gslt.hum.gu.se/] and
[NGSLT http://ngslt.org/].





===Teachers===

A list of teachers will be published here later. Some of the local teachers 
probably involved are the following:
- Krasimir Angelov
- Robin Cooper
- Håkan Burden
- Markus Forsberg
- Harald Hammarström
- Peter Ljunglöf
- Aarne Ranta


More teachers are welcome! If you are interested, please contact us so that
we can discuss your involvement and travel arrangements.

In addition to teachers, we will look for consultants who can help to assess 
the results for each language. Please contact us!



===The Summer School Committee===

This committee consists of a number of teachers and informants, 
who will select the participants. It will be selected by April 2009.


===Time and Place===

The summer school will
be organized at the campus of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg,
Sweden, on 17-28 August 2009.

Time schedule:
- February: announcement of summer school
- 20-29 April: on-line course
- 12 May: submission deadline for assignment work
- 31 May: review of assignments, notifications of acceptance
- 15 June: **registration deadline**
- 17-28 August: Summer School
- September-December: homework on resource grammars
- December: release of the extended Resource Grammar Library


===Dissemination and intellectual property===

The new resource grammars will be released under the LGPL just like 
the current resource grammars,
with the copyright held by respective authors.

The grammars will be distributed via the GF web site.



==Why I should participate==

Seven reasons:
+ participation in a pioneering language technology work in an 
  enthusiastic atmosphere
+ work and fun with people from all over Europe and the world
+ job opportunities and business ideas
+ credits: the school project will be established as a course at Chalmers worth
  7.5 or 15 ETCS points per person, depending on the work accompliched; also 
  extensions to Master's thesis will be considered (special credit arrangements
  for [GSLT http://www.gslt.hum.gu.se/] and [NGSLT http://ngslt.org/])
+ merits: the resulting grammar can easily lead to a published paper (see below)
+ contribution to the multilingual and multicultural development of Europe and the
  world
+ free trip and stay in Gothenburg (for travel grant students)


==More information==

[Course Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/gf-resource-school-2009/]

[GF web page http://digitalgrammars.com/gf/]

[GF tutorial http://digitalgrammars.com/gf/doc/gf-tutorial.html]

[GF resource synopsis http://digitalgrammars.com/gf/lib/resource/doc/synopsis.html]

[Resource-HOWTO document http://digitalgrammars.com/gf/doc/Resource-HOWTO.html]


===Contact===

Håkan Burden: burden at chalmers se

Aarne Ranta: aarne at chalmers se



===Selected publications from earlier resource grammar projects===

K. Angelov.
Type-Theoretical Bulgarian Grammar.
In B. Nordström and A. Ranta (eds), 
//Advances in Natural Language Processing (GoTAL 2008)//, 
LNCS/LNAI 5221, Springer,
2008.

B. Bringert. 
//Programming Language Techniques for Natural Language Applications//.
Phd thesis, Computer Science, University of Gothenburg,
2008.

A. El Dada and A. Ranta.
Implementing an Open Source Arabic Resource Grammar in GF.
In M. Mughazy (ed),
//Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XX. Papers from the Twentieth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Kalamazoo, March 26//
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
2007.

A. El Dada.
Implementation of the Arabic Numerals and their Syntax in GF.
Computational Approaches to Semitic Languages: Common Issues and Resources, 
  ACL-2007 Workshop,
June 28, 2007, Prague.
2007.

H. Hammarström and A. Ranta.
Cardinal Numerals Revisited in GF.
//Workshop on Numerals in the World's Languages//. 
Dept. of Linguistics Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig,
2004.

M. Humayoun, H. Hammarström, and A. Ranta.
Urdu Morphology, Orthography and Lexicon Extraction.
//CAASL-2: The Second Workshop on Computational Approaches to Arabic Script-based Languages//,
July 21-22, 2007, LSA 2007 Linguistic Institute, Stanford University.
2007.

K. Johannisson.
//Formal and Informal Software Specifications.//
Phd thesis, Computer Science, University of Gothenburg,
2005.

J. Khegai. 
GF parallel resource grammars and Russian.
In proceedings of ACL2006 
  (The joint conference of the International Committee on Computational 
  Linguistics and the Association for Computational Linguistics) (pp. 475-482),
  Sydney, Australia, July 2006.

J. Khegai. 
//Language engineering in Grammatical Framework (GF)//.
Phd thesis, Computer Science, Chalmers University of Technology,
2006.

W. Ng'ang'a. 
Multilingual content development for eLearning in Africa. 
eLearning Africa: 1st Pan-African Conference on ICT for Development, 
  Education and Training. 24-26 May 2006, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
2006.

N. Perera and A. Ranta.
Dialogue System Localization with the GF Resource Grammar Library.
//SPEECHGRAM 2007: ACL Workshop on Grammar-Based Approaches to Spoken Language Processing//,
June 29, 2007, Prague.
2007.

A. Ranta.
Modular Grammar Engineering in GF.
//Research on Language and Computation//, 
5:133-158, 2007.

A. Ranta.
How predictable is Finnish morphology? An experiment on lexicon construction.
In J. Nivre, M. Dahllöf and B. Megyesi (eds),
//Resourceful Language Technology: Festschrift in Honor of Anna Sågvall Hein//,
University of Uppsala,
2008.

A. Ranta. Grammars as Software Libraries.
To appear in
Y. Bertot, G. Huet, J-J. Lévy, and G. Plotkin (eds.),
//From Semantics to Computer Science//,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.

A. Ranta and K. Angelov.
Implementing Controlled Languages in GF.
To appear in the proceedings of //CNL 2009//.