Summer School on Universal Networking Language
IIT Bombay, June 5-13, 2003.

Introduction
The Universal networking language (UNL) has emerged as a viable medium for information exchange on the internet in the natural languages of the world. This is a knowledge representation scheme that can be used for various text information processing tasks. About 15 research groups across the world- under the co-ordination of the Universal Networking Digital Language (UNDL), Geneva- are working on contributing to this technology. Further information on UNL is available at http://www.unl.ias.unu.edu

To acquaint the research community of the details of the UNL system, a school devoted to UNL is being held at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay from 5th to 13th June, 2003. The faculty will be from the UNDL, Geneva and IIT Bombay. The participants will get an in depth understanding of the system with hand on practice.

Programme

Session I: Introduction to the UNL System

Expected results:

  1. A common threshold of knowledge on UNL among the participants
  2. Integrated working groups harmonizing the members' roles with the UNL development, as specified in the objectives

Contents:

  1. Review of the conceptual foundations of the UNL, based on required readings and previous experience
  2. Methodology and materials: Laboratory work style, combining lectures with, discussions, and group exercises on the use of the UNL development set for content development. A given topic (e.g., agriculture) is assigned to each group, which will be considered as a "finished" UNL document at the end of the course
  3. Group structure and work assignments


Materials:

  1. Required reading material will be provided in advance
  2. Lab environment: computers, LAN, UNL software

Session II: Universal Words and Knowledge Bases

Expected results:

  1. Correct understanding of UWs and KB
  2. Develop necessary entries in the UW Dictionary and UNL KB for the corpus in the various Languages

Content:

  1. Integrated presentation of UWs
  2. KB and the role of Master Dictionary

Materials:

  1. UW Guidance manual
  2. Universal Words and UNL KB- how to define UWs
  3. UNL KB Specifications

Session III: Universal Parser

Expected results:

  1. Understanding of appropriate UNL expressions for sentences
  2. Understanding the usage of Universal Parser
  3. UNL documents of the assigned items of the corpus

Content:

  1. Explanation of the Universal Parser and the tags function and how to write UNL documents using tags
  2. Learn how to express the meaning of sentences in UNL

Materials:

  1. Universal Parser Manual
  2. UNL Manual Session IV: Deconverter (language generator engine)

Expected results:

  1. Deconversion rules for the corpus
  2. Language dictionaries
  3. Correct generation of the corpus in each language

Content:

  1. General explanation on deconversion rules
  2. How to make rules for deconversion for each language
  3. How to develop language dictionaries linked to UNL KB

Materials:

  1. DeCo Specifications
  2. DeCo Manuals

Session V: Enconverter (language analyzer)

Expected results:

  1. Corpus for enconversion post edited from deconversion result
  2. Development of additional entries of UW Dictionary, UNL KB and Language Dictionaries
  3. Enconversion rules for the corpus
  4. Correct generation of UNL expressions

Content:

  1. General explanation on enconversion
  2. How to make rules for enconversion for each language

Materials:

  1. EnCo Specifications
  2. EnCo Manuals

Application procedure

Please send your intent of participating in this course with a brief resume describing your current institution, basic qualification and experience (if any). Candidates with exposure to Natural Language Processing and Linguistics will be given preference.

Please send this information by email to icukl2002@cse.iitb.ac.in
attn: Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya.

The last date of receiving the application is April 30, 2003. Those selected will be required to pay a registration fee of Rs. 1000/- (Rs. One thousand only/-). This will cover admission to lectures and laboratories, course notes, working lunch and two coffee repasts for all days of the school (5th to 13th June).

Course Co-ordinator:

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, IIT Bombay
Dr. Hiroshi Uchida, UNDL Foundation Geneva

Advisors:

Prof. M.G.K. Menon, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Bombay
Prof. Ashok Misra, Director, IIT Bombay
Prof. Della Senta, Director, UNDL Foundation, Geneva