Linked Data In Linguistics

The explosion of information technology has led to substantial growth of web-accessible linguistic data in terms of quantity, diversity and complexity. These resources become even more useful when interlinked with each other to generate network effects. The general trend of providing data online is thus accompanied by newly developing methodologies to interconnect linguistic data and metadata. This includes linguistic data collections, general-purpose knowledge bases (e.g., the DBpedia, a machine-readable edition of the Wikipedia), and repositories with specific information about languages, linguistic categories and phenomena. The Linked Data paradigm provides a framework for interoperability and access management, and thereby allows to integrate information from such a diverse set of resources. The contributions assembled in this volume illustrate the band-width of applications of the Linked Data paradigm for representative types of language resources. They cover lexical-semantic resources, annotated corpora, typological databases as well as terminology and metadata repositories. The book includes representative applications from diverse fields, ranging from academic linguistics (e.g., typology and corpus linguistics) over applied linguistics (e.g., lexicography and translation studies) to technical applications (in computational linguistics, Natural Language Processing and information technology). This volume accompanies the Workshop on Linked Data in Linguistics 2012 (LDL-2012) in Frankfurt/M., Germany, organized by the Open Linguistics Working Group (OWLG) of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN). It assembles contributions of the workshop participants and, beyond this, it summarizes initial steps in the formation of a Linked Open Data cloud of linguistic resources, the Linguistic Linked Open Data cloud (LLOD).

This is the first monograph on the emerging area of linguistic linked data. Presenting a combination of background information on linguistic linked data and concrete implementation advice, it introduces and discusses the main benefits of applying linked data (LD) principles to the representation and publication of linguistic resources, arguing that LD does not look at a single resource in isolation but seeks to create a large network of resources that can be used together and uniformly, and so making more of the single resource. The book describes how the LD principles can be applied to modelling language resources. The first part provides the foundation for understanding the remainder of the book, introducing the data models, ontology and query languages used as the basis of the Semantic Web and LD and offering a more detailed overview of the Linguistic Linked Data Cloud. The second part of the book focuses on modelling language resources using LD principles, describing how to model lexical resources using Ontolex-lemon, the lexicon model for ontologies, and how to annotate and address elements of text represented in RDF. It also demonstrates how to model annotations, and how to capture the metadata of language resources. Further, it includes a chapter on representing linguistic categories. In the third part of the book, the authors describe how language resources can be transformed into LD and how links can be inferred and added to the data to increase connectivity and linking between different datasets. They also discuss using LD resources for natural language processing. The last part describes concrete applications of the technologies: representing and linking multilingual wordnets, applications in digital humanities and the discovery of language resources. Given its scope, the book is relevant for researchers and graduate students interested in topics at the crossroads of natural language processing / computational linguistics and the Semantic Web / linked data. It appeals to Semantic Web experts who are not proficient in applying the Semantic Web and LD principles to linguistic data, as well as to computational linguists who are used to working with lexical and linguistic resources wanting to learn about a new paradigm for modelling, publishing and exploiting linguistic resources.

Making diverse data in linguistics and the language sciences open, distributed, and accessible: perspectives from language/language acquistiion researchers and technical LOD (linked open data) researchers. This volume examines the challenges inherent in making diverse data in linguistics and the language sciences open, distributed, integrated, and accessible, thus fostering wide data sharing and collaboration. It is unique in integrating the perspectives of language researchers and technical LOD (linked open data) researchers. Reporting on both active research needs in the field of language acquisition and technical advances in the development of data interoperability, the book demonstrates the advantages of an international infrastructure for scholarship in the field of language sciences. With contributions by researchers who produce complex data content and scholars involved in both the technology and the conceptual foundations of LLOD (linguistics linked open data), the book focuses on the area of language acquisition because it involves complex and diverse data sets, cross-linguistic analyses, and urgent collaborative research. The contributors discuss a variety of research methods, resources, and infrastructures. Contributors Isabelle Barrière, Nan Bernstein Ratner, Steven Bird, Maria Blume, Ted Caldwell, Christian Chiarcos, Cristina Dye, Suzanne Flynn, Claire Foley, Nancy Ide, Carissa Kang, D. Terence Langendoen, Barbara Lust, Brian MacWhinney, Jonathan Masci, Steven Moran, Antonio Pareja-Lora, Jim Reidy, Oya Y. Rieger, Gary F. Simons, Thorsten Trippel, Kara Warburton, Sue Ellen Wright, Claus Zinn

A guide to principles and methods for the management, archiving, sharing, and citing of linguistic research data, especially digital data. "Doing language science" depends on collecting, transcribing, annotating, analyzing, storing, and sharing linguistic research data. This volume offers a guide to linguistic data management, engaging with current trends toward the transformation of linguistics into a more data-driven and reproducible scientific endeavor. It offers both principles and methods, presenting the conceptual foundations of linguistic data management and a series of case studies, each of which demonstrates a concrete application of abstract principles in a current practice. In part 1, contributors bring together knowledge from information science, archiving, and data stewardship relevant to linguistic data management. Topics covered include implementation principles, archiving data, finding and using datasets, and the valuation of time and effort involved in data management. Part 2 presents snapshots of practices across various subfields, with each chapter presenting a unique data management project with generalizable guidance for researchers. The Open Handbook of Linguistic Data Management is an essential addition to the toolkit of every linguist, guiding researchers toward making their data FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference of the CLEF Initiative, CLEF 2013, held in Valencia, Spain, in September 2013. The 32 papers and 2 keynotes presented were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in this volume. The papers are organized in topical sections named: evaluation and visualization; multilinguality and less-resourced languages; applications; and Lab overviews.

Statistical analysis is a useful skill for linguists and psycholinguists, allowing them to understand the quantitative structure of their data. This textbook provides a straightforward introduction to the statistical analysis of language. Designed for linguists with a non-mathematical background, it clearly introduces the basic principles and methods of statistical analysis, using 'R', the leading computational statistics programme. The reader is guided step-by-step through a range of real data sets, allowing them to analyse acoustic data, construct grammatical trees for a variety of languages, quantify register variation in corpus linguistics, and measure experimental data using state-of-the-art models. The visualization of data plays a key role, both in the initial stages of data exploration and later on when the reader is encouraged to criticize various models. Containing over 40 exercises with model answers, this book will be welcomed by all linguists wishing to learn more about working with and presenting quantitative data.

The chapters in this innovative book introduce the quantitative analysis of linguistic survey data with specific reference to the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS). Topics covered include: the relation of sociolinguistics to the original conception of LAMSAS; the adaptation of LAMSAS to the needs of computerization and the research methods envisioned; the mechanics involved in computerizing LAMSAS; how to handle and analyze the data in the database management system; the creation of categories for analysis; and the logic of statistical testing.