Essex Gateway to Arabic Linguistics Resources Project

1. Essex Gateway to Arabic Linguistics Resources Project • Kakia Chatsiou(achats @ essex.ac.uk) • 9th Language and Computation Day • 08th October 2010

2. Outline • About the project • Project Objectives • Deliverables • Completed Deliverables • Website Organisation • Demonstration • Next steps

3. About the project • Funded by a departmental research incentive scheme 2009-2010 with project title “Creating Resources in support of research in Arabic” • Duration of 6 months • 2 principal investigators (Sonja Eisenbeiss & Louisa Sadler) • 1 research assistant (myself) with the help of Georgia Chatsiou on web and accessibility issues

4. Project Objectives • To create infrastructure to support research and teaching on Arabic (and Semitic) in the dept of Language and Linguistics • To facilitate collaboration between staff and students in the dept and open up routes for collaboration with researchers in other sites. • To further enhance the visibility of the Dept and the University as a centre for research on Arabic • To build links across departments and sectors in the university

5. Deliverables • Creation of a website for tools and resources on Arabic linguistics (incl. resources for theoretical, computational, psycholinguistic research) • Compilation of a searchable bibliography of works on Arabic (and Semitic) linguistics • Investigation into availability and usability of existing corpus resources & associated tools for Arabic • Wiki for news and discussions (to aid information sharing) • Establishment of a (rudimentary) document repository of dissertations and other materials

6. Completed Deliverables (1) • Website with tools and resources on Arabic • Bibliography (currently 944 entries and counting) in .bib and .html searchable format • Alphabetic list of corpus resources with additional information where available such as language variety, medium (written/spoken), adult/child corpus, encoding, size, compiler, availability and licensing, associated tools/corpora, other notes

7. Completed Deliverables (2) • Incorporation of the Arabic Syntax Wiki for information exchange within Essex (information was restructured and design was modified to match departmental theme) • Establishment of a list of dissertations on Arabic awarded by the department between 1982-2010 with links to the Albert Sloman Library records and .bib entries. A bibliography of all is also available for download from the same page.

8. Website Organisation • Part of the departmental pages (one of the limitations as well); additional internal navigation menu added on the right • Pages include: Arabic@Essex, Corpora, Dictionaries, Useful Tools, Bibliography, Dissertations, Conferences, Funding, Research, Jobs, Journals

9. Demonstration http://www.essex.ac.uk/linguistics/research/arabic/

10. Next Steps • Internal testing of the current version of the website (within the department & friends); after incorporating any changes, dissemination to mailing lists/partners • Maintain and enhance the bibliography • Complete Project Documentation • Follow up and acquire Arabic PhD dissertations from Alumni

11. Questions?