I found the news about planned discontinuation of support for VISL somewhat alarming.
The research and software by Drs Bick and Didriksen has gained a unique standing in the knowledge-based linguistic research community on language engineering and text analysis (support for dozens of languages, many analysis levels, many generic as well as practical text processing applications). Unlike mainstream approaches (typically involving large language models developed and owned by large corporations), VISL, and the linguistic paradigm more generally, enable development of high-quality open-source language models and text tools for natural languages, also those languages for which there are no resources sufficient for generation of large neural models. VISL has had an important role in supporting linguistic diversity and vitalising minority languages worldwide, by enabling production of high-quality software tools (e.g. writer's aids, translation, language learning) and documentation. With continued support for the VISL environment and team, hopefully also arrangements could be negotiated to encourage production of news material and other documentation for the general public. Yours sincerely, Atro Voutilainen Ph.D., Adjunct professor of Language Technology at University of Helsinki ke 10. toukok. 2023 klo 10.26 Diana Santos ([email protected]) kirjoitti: > The news of the discontinuation of SDU’s language technology activities > came as a big shock to > me, at a time when the European Union is actively fostering open access in > R&D and the use of > European products, of which VISLcg is one of the top examples in the > language technology field. > • VISLcg is an extremely powerful tool which I use in my research and for > providing > annotated corpora to the community of computational processing of > Portuguese through > Linguateca. > • It has also been used in my teaching at the University of Oslo, both BA > and MA, for the > last ten years, and it is installed at the Norwegian HPC cluster. > • Recent venues where VISLcg has been essential is in the PhD dissertation > of Bárbara > Ramos, which I co-supervised at PUC-Rio, Brazil; the building of ELTeC-por > (the > Portuguese part of the European Literary Text Collection); and the DIP > challenge (a shared > task for identifying characters in Portuguese literature),see > https://www.linguateca.pt/DIP) > For me it is almost inconceivable to lose access to this open-source > resource. It will seriously > damage R&D in Portuguese, and it will also bring to an end the teaching > setup built around it. > Sincerely, > Diana Santos > Full Professor, Portuguese language, University of Oslo > Leader of Linguateca, an international resource project for Portuguese > > Detmar Meurers <[email protected]> escreveu no dia segunda, > 8/05/2023 à(s) 21:58: > >> Dear Eckhard, dear Tino, >> >> at a time when language technology such as ChatGPT is receiving more >> public attention than ever, so aptly highlighting the importance of >> language data as a reflection of our world(s), the idea to close down >> a language technology group conveys an absurd lack of understanding, >> which we must speak up against. >> >> Especially also considering the fact that for lower resource languages >> (i.e. the vast majority of languages) a brute force approach relying >> solely on vast corpus data is not an option, the tools you have >> developed and supported are crucial building blocks for these >> languages and the European multilangual mission. Just today, Mikel >> Iruskieta and I were talking about CG3-based analyses of Basque for >> research and tool development targeting readability analysis and >> language proficiency classification. >> >> In what form do you plan to document the support - are you collecting >> official letters on letterhead as pdfs? And if you haven't already >> done so, sending a message to a more widely read list may be useful to >> whip up the tsunami of support that your language technology group >> deserves. >> >> All the best, >> Detmar >> >> >> On Mon, May 08, 2023 at 12:45:34PM +0200, 'Eckhard Bick' via Constraint >> Grammar wrote: >> > !-------------------------------------------------------------------| >> > This Message Is From an External Sender >> > This message came from outside your organization. >> > |-------------------------------------------------------------------! >> > >> > Dear all, >> > >> > Motivated by politically forced downsizing requirements, SDU has >> decided to >> > close entire sections of its research and teaching activities. >> Specifically, >> > the Department of Language, Culture, History and Communication has >> decided >> > to discontinue its language technology activities, which concerns the >> > infrastructure and people behind VISL, Corpuseye and CG-based research. >> > >> > If you think this infrastructure is important and should be maintained >> > despite the university's financial situation, please send us a support >> mail. >> > Especially if you have personal or institutional arguments for doing so >> as a >> > user. >> > >> > We will collect your mails and use them to influence the decision >> makers. >> > >> > Best, >> > >> > Eckhard Bick & Tino Didriksen >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > -- >> > Eckhard Bick, >> > cand.med., dr.phil. >> > University of Southern Denmark >> > e-mail: [email protected] >> > web: >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://beta.visl.sdu.dk__;!!KGKeukY!3g-PJSa-l0KPLVJv2FbmtXL7RGh7g2q_vGxEKP2qimPhDN3UmpcCHsa0nw9WMw0D6Qs8IqC_wYiNK3a0pLupVvDsh0ln_715pu9j$ >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Constraint Grammar" group. >> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >> an email to [email protected]. >> > To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/constraint-grammar/6afe14e8-3044-0e3d-7070-b23a387231cf*40mail.dk__;JQ!!KGKeukY!3g-PJSa-l0KPLVJv2FbmtXL7RGh7g2q_vGxEKP2qimPhDN3UmpcCHsa0nw9WMw0D6Qs8IqC_wYiNK3a0pLupVvDsh0ln_yh1ELFt$ >> . >> >> -- >> -- >> Prof. Dr. Detmar Meurers http://purl.org/dm >> Dept. of Linguistics - LEAD Graduate School - SFB 833 - Univ. 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