The Institute for Language and Information Technology
(ILIT), a linguistics research center at Eastern Michigan
University, successfully completed its 14th Annual Fund
Drive to raise $55,000. The ILIT completed its drive April
13, a week ahead of schedule.
To see how this year's dedicated crew of students managed
it, visit their imaginative Web site at http://linguistlist.org/donation/fund-drive2007/index.cfm
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LENDING A LANGUAGE HAND: Students and
staff
from The Institute for Language and Information
Technology (ILIT) are all smiles after successfully
completing its 14th Annual Fund Drive. The group
met its $55,000 fundraising goal a week ahead of
schedule. |
The money raised pays for graduate assistantships for
students to work at ILIT's applied unit, long known as
The LINGUIST List, and on ILIT's technology-driven research
projects, some of which are developing tools which will
help address the plight of endangered languages worldwide.
These assistantships attract top graduates, both domestic
and international, to study at EMU.
"Every penny is an investment both in the discipline's
present infrastructure and in its future well-being," said
Helen Aristar-Dry, who along with Anthony Aristar, are
co-directors of ILIT. Both are professors in EMU's
Department of English Language and Literature. Praising
this year's effort by the students, Aristar-Dry said, "It
has been a splendid effort — incredibly creative
and supremely well-organized."
The LINGUIST List is the largest online database
of resources and tools for linguistic researchers in the
United States and worldwide. The List is an Internet network
and research facility that has become the electronic center
of the discipline of linguistics, serving as a central
information resource for the field and as a laboratory
for research and development of language technologies.
Since the LINGUIST List is free, the annual fund drive
plays a key role in maintaining that access.
The LINGUIST Web site has more than 2,000 pages and hosts
a listserve that delivers an average of 117,703 linguistically-related
messages a day.
The two main LINGUIST lists have more than 26,700 subscribers
from 140 countries, but it also hosts 183 more linguistic
lists with a total of 40,000 additional subscribers. It
includes a directory of 14,600 linguists, with details
of the kind of work they do and the languages and areas
they specialize in researching.
In 2006, The LINGUIST List generated 3,700 issues containing
new book announcements, journal table of contents, book
reviews and announcements of jobs worldwide. In addition,
LINGUIST List host services like Ask-A-Linguist, which
lets the general public ask questions of a panel of 60
expert linguists.
Of The LINGUIST List's 20 employees, all but three are
pursuing two-year master's degrees in linguistics and computer
science at EMU. Student editors read, classify and approve
every item and page posted on the Web. In addition, they
communicate regularly with the site's readers, individuals,
departments and publishers.
Anthony Aristar founded the LINGUIST List in Australia
in 1990. In 1991, Helen Aristar-Dry joined him as
co-director. After she joined EMU's English Department
as a linguistics professor that same year, an editing
site was established at EMU. Over the years, the
EMU editing site expanded with the addition of computer
servers and complex databases, written and managed by students.
When ILIT formed last year, it was a natural development
for Aristar to come to EMU from his teaching position at
Wayne State University. This last move unified all operations
of The LINGUIST List and led to the creation of ILIT at
EMU.
ILIT has been prominent in conducting research into
the application of Internet technology to linguistics.
The Institute has initiated a number of projects
in this area, and runs workshops that bring together
linguistic field workers and computer scientists in an
attempt to build collaboration and consensus between these
groups. These projects have been largely funded by grants
from the National Science Foundation.
Among the funded projects are E-MELD, which is devoted
to developing technologies and standards for better
documenting and preserving endangered languages
data; the LL-MAP Project, which is developing a
system for mapping linguistic information against non-linguistic
information through a geographical information system
interface; and the Multi-Tree Project, which is developing
a database of all of the relationships between languages,
allowing the linguistic mapping of human movement
through time.
With the close of this year's fund drive, ILIT/LINGUIST
students are looking forward to being able to concentrate
more on these exciting research opportunities, especially
during the summer.
