Constraint Grammer infrastructure at risk
Eckhard Bick
We have bad news from the University of Southern Denmark.
Just as we thought CG was taking wings as a successful and independent
paradigm within language technology, in fact the very day we were having
our Nodalida CG workshop, the Institute of Language and Communication at
SDU decided (under pressure from the faculty and political expenditure
cutting demands) to discontinue it's IT center, where much of our
Constraint Grammar work has been developedand applied, thus effectively
leaving CG to stand on its GrammarSoft leg alone.
Apart from CG development, a lot of infrastructure regarding CG
applications such as VISL (visl.sdu.dk) and the CorpusEye repository
(corp.hum.sdu.dk) will be affected. Given the fact that the IT center's
core functions (development and programming), after previous cuts, cost
less than 360.000 DKK (~ 48.000 EUR) a year, our cost/productivity ratio
is ridiculously low, and we believe this decision to be wrong both from
a national and an international perspective. Even the full cost of ~
0.5-0.6 million DKK (before ITTS closure, and including
coordination/administration), is a figure that is equivalent to or
cheaper than a single professorship.
Of course we will try to save and maintain the existing sites, if
necessary through GrammarSoft hosting or at private expense outside the
university, but we would much prefer to reverse the current decision and
to maintain a stable public CG infrastructure at the University of
Southern Denmark.
Therefore we would be grateful for any show of support, be it financial
or moral contributions.
What we need to maintain current functionality, is average monthly
contributions of 30.000 DKK. There will be a transition period of
probably one year before the decision will be effectuated, but in order
to reverse it we'd need financial commitments before that. One way of
going about it would be to include "external language technology
services" in future project application budgets, or to convince your
institution that a subscription for the use of SDU's language technology
services would be a good idea.
As a lobbying initiative letters and/or phone calls to the Faculty of
the Humanities (Dean Flemming G. Andersen, f...@sdu.dk) or the Danish
Ministry of Science (http://vtu.dk/, http://en.vtu.dk/) would be
appreciated. Just tell them why you think CG, VISL and CorpusEye are a
good idea, and how your own work would be effected if their develpment
were discontinued. If you use VISL for teaching, the Ministry of
Education (http://www.uvm.dk/, http://eng.uvm.dk/) could also be an idea.
Thanks for your help!
Eckhard Bick & Tino Didriksen
--
Eckhard Bick,
cand.med., dr.phil.
University of Southern Denmark
e-mail: eckhar...@mail.dk
web: http://beta.visl.sdu.dk
Janne Bondi Johannessen
We are very shocked to hear this, but the one-year delay gives us reasons for hope. We will write letters to those you suggest during the summer. Although you don't need a lot of money, it is still more than the average university department can give. Our own department exists on a minus 10 mill kr budget, where the leadership has no access to money even to replace anybody as they pass away or retire. If we get money to develop CG-compatible software, we will try to put aside something for you (but it would never be covering the real costs).
Good luck in the meantime,
Janne, Kristin, Anders, André and Joel,
The Text Laboratory
Janne Bondi Johannessen
Professor, The Text Laboratory, ILN, http://www.hf.uio.no/tekstlab/
President, NEALT, http://omilia.uio.no/nealt/
University of Oslo
P.O.Box 1102 Blindern, N-0317 Oslo, Norway
Tel: +47 22 85 68 14, mob.: +47 928 966 34