Terascale Linguistics Initiative

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

The National Science Foundation will support a workshop and a symposium associated with an initiative to support Terascale Linguistics. The workshop will be held in Monterey, CA, on October 25-26, 2003. The symposium is planned for the Linguistic Society of America's annual meeting in Boston, January 8-11, 2004. The workshop in Monterey will include presentations and work sessions, the goal of which is to develop an initiative prospectus. The prospectus will represent the range of interests that Terascale Linguistics serves and show the impacts for future linguistic science. The symposium in Boston will present the leading ideas of the initiative as encapsulated in the prospectus to the field at large. The leading idea of the Terascale Linguistics Initiative is simple: research based on an abundance of data, made available by linguists for linguists, presenting opportunities for advancement in theoretical work and integration of that work both with research from other subfields as well as with results from other disciplines. The aim is to build on the potential for new methods and technologies to catapult research into new realms, re-evaluating the current practice in all aspects of linguistics in light of developments over the past 20 years in theoretical linguistics, computational technology, and data collection and storage. This initiative is broad in scope. It will span research in NSF's Linguistics Program, and it has direct connections to the Human and Social Dynamics Priority Area, as well as to various disciplines represented in the Computer and Information Science Engineering Directorate.