[Indic-computing-users] Appeal for help

[Niladri S. D. <ni...@is...>]

Dear Friends,

Kindly allow me to put an appeal in this forum for your kind help.

This is to inform you all that I have completed writing a book on Corpus 
Linguistics and Language Technology with close reference to the Indian 
languages (the salient features of the proposed book is mentioned below), 
which, after extensive evaluation, is accepted for publication by the 
Dravidian Linguistics Association (DLA) of the International School of 
Dravidian Linguistics (ISDL), Kerala, India.

However, unfortunately, the project is withheld due to the paucity of 
fund. Initial estimation suggests that completion of the project will cost 
around rupees one lakh in Indian currency. My honest and sincere 
confession is that I am too poor to provide the proposed amount (purely in 
literal sense).

I that case I solicit your valued suggestions. Kindly advise me if there 
is any funding agency (within India and abroad) to whom I can formally 
apply for the funding support. In this context let me inform you that I 
have committed to donate 50% of the royalty to the Bangiya Sahitya 
Parisad, Kolkata while the remaining 50% will go to the country school - 
the place where the corner-store of my formal education was set up.

I eagerly wait for your kind help. Thank you for bearing with me.

With best regards,

Sincerely,

Niladri Sekhar Dash
 
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% Dr. Niladri Sekhar Dash (MA,NLP,PhD,CCP)		%
%(Specialised in: Corpus Linguistics, Lexical Semantics,% 
% Bangla Linguistics, and Lexicography)			%
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% Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit		%
% Indian Statistical Institute                  	%
% 203, Barrakpore Trunk Road                    	%
% Kolkata 700108, West Bengal, INDIA            	%
% =============================				%
% Phone (O): (91)(33) 2575-2858/2858			%
% Phone (R): (91) (33) 2477-3337			%
% FAX: (91) (33) 25776680/3035				%
% Email: ni...@is...				%
% Email: ns...@ya...				%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

FEATURES OF THE PROPOSED BOOK

The book is entirely based on the results obtained from the empirical 
analysis of a large Bangla corpus of written texts. This is arguably the 
first book, which explores the language with close reference to a corpus 
database - which has been never attempted before. It presents many new 
linguistic features, which are not observed earlier. Also, it records many 
new findings, which can challenge the authenticity and validity of the 
observations made by earlier scholars. The volume is an outcome of my 
rigorous research and investigation with this corpus for more than twelve 
years. A small section of my doctoral dissertation is merged to give a 
complete shape to the work.

The book has the following features.

First, the book addresses the question of text corpus generation, 
processing and use both in linguistic research and application. Both from 
descriptive and applied perspectives, it describes various issues 
considered in the generation and processing of a text corpus. In brief, it 
describes the history of corpus-based language study, present scenario of 
corpus generation, types of corpus, issues of corpus generation, 
techniques for corpus processing, and the use of corpus in general 
linguistics and language technology. Thus, both the theoretical and 
applicational issues related to corpus linguistics are addressed with due 
illustrations. In essence, it focuses on the research into naturally 
occurring texts complemented with qualitative and functional 
interpretation of corpus-based findings. 

Second, the results of quantitative and qualitative analysis obtained from 
corpus can enrich the process of description, evaluation, and application 
of a language. New findings and evidences, obtained from corpus, can also 
substantiate other disciplines of social science, which are related with 
life, language, and society. This book also addresses this issue to show 
how the findings from corpus can help us to explore the intricacies 
involved in the life and society of the users of a particular language.

Third, the topics discussed in this book have strong relevance in Indian 
context. Over the years, the corpus-based language study has markedly 
changed the trends of language research and education. Unfortunately, it 
has failed to create any impact in India in spite of its quick progress in 
other countries. The Government of India has recently initiated some 
efforts for the generation of corpus in Indian languages with an aim at 
using these in language technology research and application. This book 
will be highly relevant and useful in the present Indian context of 
corpus-based language study, and will provide a direction for future works 
both in linguistics and language technology.

Fourth, the book highlights how corpus-based language study has opened up 
many new avenues of linguistic research and application in English and 
other languages of the world. Although, the Indians people feel the 
requirement of language corpus, they are not aware about the methods of 
corpus generation and utilisation. To overcome the deficiency, the book 
argues for the generation of corpus in Indian languages to be utilised in 
various fields of linguistic study. It also argues for the development of 
language processing tools and systems, which can be used in various 
domains of language technology. In essence, it provides both the linguists 
and the language technologists, a handful information with regard to the 
design and development of text corpus, basic methods of corpus processing, 
use of corpus in linguistics research, education, and language technology.

Fifth, people working in the area of natural language processing, 
computational linguistics, language technology, phonology, morphology, 
lexicology, lexicography, descriptive linguistics, historical linguistics, 
sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language teaching, semantics, 
dialectology, pragmatics, discourse, stylistics, and others will find this 
book useful for relevant information and analysis.

Sixth, the book also considers the requirement of the undergraduate and 
postgraduate students, and research scholars dealing with corpus 
linguistics and language technology in Indian languages. For them, it is a 
useful reference book for acquiring primary information about the field, 
in general. It has the resource and information to fulfil the pressing 
need of the academic field, at least partially. 

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