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Preface
On behalf of the programme committee for the ‘Lesser Used Languages and
Computer Linguistics’ conference (LULCL 2005), we are pleased to present the
proceedings, which contain the papers accepted for presentation at the Bolzano
meeting on 27th-28th October 2005. The contributions published in this volume deal
with the main aspects of lesser used languages and their support through computer
linguistics, ranging from lexicography to terminology for lesser used languages, and
from computational linguistic applications in general to more specific resources such
as corpora. Some papers deal specifically with Translation Memory Systems, online
dictionaries, Internet Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) or Language for
Specific Purposes (LSP).
The choice of the conference theme was strongly influenced by the ambition
to give lesser used languages an opportunity for visibility without taking into
consideration the official number of speakers, but rather the range of technological
resources available for each language. Even though some languages do indeed count a
considerable number of speakers, technology support may be almost nonexistent. It is
therefore remarkable how much has been done in the last decades for languages with
few speakers. The Zimbar speakers are the smallest community represented at the
conference, which counts about 2230 speakers living in Luserna, Roana, Mezzaselva
and Giazza. Despite the small number of native speakers, there are major projects
running on this Germanic language. The first project described here (cf. Bidese et al.)
foresees the storage of Cimbrian textual material in the TITUS Corpus (‘Thesaurus
of Indo-European Textual and Linguistic Materials’), while the second one provides
the guidelines for the Zimbarbort. The latter is a new project on the preservation of
the Zimbar language, during which a database of lexical entries will be created (cf.
Panieri). Both projects represent a substantial contribution to the preservation of
language: through the recovery and storage of textual data they enable researchers
to carry out linguistic analyses from several points of view.
Sparseness of data is one of the main characteristics that many lesser used languages
share with Zimbar. This influences both the choice of methodology and, of course, the
results. Clau Solèrs keynote contribution reflects very well what happens when, for
example, specialised terminology has to be elaborated within a small language. The
lack of native terminology for many LSPs and the influence of bigger official languages,