hlt: current and recent research & development in the netherlands 2001-2008 jan odijk 24 nov...

HLT:Current and Recent Research & Development in the Netherlands

2001-2008

Jan Odijk

24 Nov 2008

Overview

• Earlier History

• Instruments & Programmes

• Players and their Projects

• Concluding Remarks

Earlier History

• MT Projects in the 80’s– Eurotra (EU, 1985- ca.1990)– Distributed MT (BSO, 1984-ca.1990)– Rosetta (Philips, 1985-1992)

Emerging Community

Earlier History

• CLIN (Computational Linguistics in the Netherlands) initiated in 1990– After TIN (Linguistics in the Netherlands)– But no association

• Yearly informal conference– no or little pre-selection

• Yearly Proceedings– Selection of reviewed articles

• http://www.let.rug.nl/~vannoord/clin/clin.html

Earlier History

• Community further strengthened by common projects in the 90’s– Priority Programme LST centered around

public transportation information services (OVIS)

– Corpus Gesproken Nederlands (Spoken Dutch Corpus), together with Flanders

Overview

• Earlier History




Instruments

• NWO Pionier• NWO Vernieuwingsimpuls

– Veni, Vidi, Vici– http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_4YJDQ3

• EZ Bsik– Increase knowledge and research capacity for 5 selected

areas (incl. ICT)– For mixed public/ private consortia that bundle

knowledge, expertise and innovative capacity – http://www.senternovem.nl/BSIK/

• EC (IST)

Overview

• Earlier History




IMIX

• Name: Interactive Multimodal Information Extraction

• Duration: 2001-2008• Budget: 2M€

– 4 small programmes, 3 post-doc projects– demonstrator

• URL: http://www.nwo.nl/IMIX • Funding: NWO

IMIX Goals

• Aims to develop knowledge and technology needed

• To find specific answers to specific questions in Dutch-language documents

• using multiple modalities at the input and output sides

STEVIN

• Name: STEVIN• Duration: 2004-2011• Budget: 11.4M€

– 19 R&D projects

– 14 demonstration projects

– Networking activities, educational activities, …

• Funding: Netherlands 2/3 & Flanders 1/3 • http://taalunieversum.org/taal/technologie/stevin/

STEVIN Goals

• contribute to the further progress of HLT for the Dutch language– realise an appropriate digital language infrastructure for

the Dutch language– carry out strategic research in the domains of language

and speech technology, in particular in areas for which there is a large demand from specific applications and technologies;

– create networks and core research areas; – promote the embedding of research and educate new

generations of experts; – encourage demand and knowledge transfer.

CATCH

• Name: Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage

• Duration: 2005-??• Budget: 6M€ until 2008 and 3M€ in 2008

– Currently 10 running projects

• URL: http://www.nwo.nl/catch • Funding: NWO + OCW. Cultural heritage

institutes contribute in kind (2.8M€ so far)

CATCH Goals

• Aims to develop generic methods and techniques– cutting across the areas of the humanities and

computer science, – aiming to facilitate an interaction with cultural

heritage institutions.

IOP MMI

• Name: Innovation-oriented Research Programme (IOP) Man Machine Interaction

• Duration: 1999-2003 (phase 1); 2004-2007• Budget: ??• URL:

http://www.senternovem.nl/iopmensmachineinteractie/index.asp

• Funding: EZ (Min. of Economic Affairs)

IOP MMI Goals (phase 2)

• focus on the Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Intelligent Systems – Which dynamic knowledge (of one another)

should systems and users acquire and apply in order to optimally achieve their goals

CLARIN-NL(?)

• Name: Common Language Resource and Technology Infrastructure - Netherlands

• Duration: 2009-2014

• Budget: 22M€ requested

• URL:

• Funding: OC&W (ESFRI)

CLARIN-NL Goals

• CLARIN-NL aims to design, construct, validate, and exploit – a research infrastructure that is needed to

provide a sustainable and persistent eScience working environment

– for researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS)

– who want to make use of language resources and technology.

Overview

• Earlier History




Amsterdam (UvA)

• Institute: Informatics Institute

• Core Topics: – Information Retrieval– Question Answering

• Key people– Maarten de Rijke

Amsterdam (UvA)

• QASSIR (NWO, 2006-2010)– Question Answering as Semistructured Information

Retrieval

• EfFoRT (NWO, 2006-2010)– Effective Focused Retrieval Techniques

– UvA, (Twente)

• MultiMATCH (EU, 2006-2009)– Multilingual/Multimedia Access To Cultural Heritage

– 11 partners from Europe incl. UvA

Amsterdam (UvA)

• MuNCH (CATCH, (2005-2009)– Multimedia aNalysis for Cultural Heritage.– UvA, Beeld & Geluid (B&G), Digitaal Erfgoed Nederland

• MuSeUM (CATCH, 2005-2009)– Multiple-collection Searching Using Metadata.– UvA, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Rijksbureau voor

Kunsthistorisch Documentatie, Municipal Archives Rotterdam

• A Model Checking Approach to Query Evaluation on XML Documents (NWO, 2004-2008)

• .•

Amsterdam (UvA)

• FactMine (IMIX, 2004-2007)– Fact and Ontology Mining for Question

Answering– UvA, DFKI, Antwerpen, Erasmus MC

• AID (Dutch Government, 2004-2008)– Adaptive Information Disclosure.

Amsterdam (UvA)

• ITEQA (NWO, 2004-2007)– Inference for Temporal Question Answering.

• DuOMAn (STEVIN, 2008-2011)– Dutch Online Media Analysis– UvA, Groningen, Gent, TrendLight, GridLine

• DAESO (STEVIN), Cornetto (STEVIN), KYOTO (EU IST), CLARIN-NL

Amsterdam (UvA)

• Institute: ILLC

• Topics– Data Oriented Parsing (DOP)

• Key Persons:– Remko Scha– Rens Bod– Khalil Sima’an

Amsterdam (UvA)

• U-DOP (NWO VICI, 2006-2011)– Unsupervised Learning with the DOP Model

• DOP and Unsupervised Grammar Induction (NWO, 2004-2007)– Unsupervised stochastic grammar induction

from unlabeled data

• DOP and Learning Stochastic Tree-Grammars (NWO, 2003-2006)

Amsterdam (VU)

• Department: Language and Communication

• Core Topics: – Computational Lexicology

• Key people– Piek Vossen

Amsterdam (VU)

• Cornetto (STEVIN, 2006-2008)– Combinatorial and Relational Network as Toolkit for

Dutch Language Technology

– VU, UvA, Leuven, Irion

• KYOTO (EU FP7 ICT, 2008-2011)– Knowledge Yielding Ontologies for Transition-based

Organization

– VU, 8 other European partners

• CLARIN

Groningen

• Department: Centre for Language and Cognition/ Computational Linguistics

• Core Topics:– Syntax and Parsing

• Key people– John Nerbonne– Gertjan van Noord– Gosse Bouma

Groningen

• Alpino (NWO PIONIER, 2000-2005)– Algorithms for Linguistic Processing

• QADR (IMIX, 2004-2008)– Question Answering for Dutch using Dependency

Relations– Groningen, Spectrum

• COREA (STEVIN, 2005-2007)– Coreference Resolution for Extracting Answers– Groningen, Antwerpen, Language and Computing

•

Groningen

• LASSY (STEVIN, 2006-2009)– Large Scale Syntactic Annotation of written Dutch– Groningen, Leuven

• SCRATCH (CATCH, ??-??)– SCRipt Analysis Tools for the Cultural Heritage– Groningen, Nationaal Archief

• D-COI (STEVIN), IRME (STEVIN), DAISY (STEVIN), DuOMAn (STEVIN), PaCo-MT (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL

Nijmegen

• Institute: Centre for Language and Speech Technology

• Core Topics:– Speech Processing– Language Resource Development

• Key people– Lou Boves, Nelleke Oostdijk, Helmer Strik,

Henk van den Heuvel

Nijmegen

• NORISC (IMIX, 2004-2007)– Next generatiOn template based Recognition for

Interactive man-machine Speech Communication

• COMIC (EU IST, 2002-2005)– COnversational Multimodal Interaction with

Computers

• MATIS (IOP-MMI, ??-??)– Multimodal Access to Transaction and Information

Services

Nijmegen

• D-COI (STEVIN, 2005-2006)– Dutch Language Corpus Initiative– Nijmegen, Tilburg, Twente, Groningen, Utrecht,

Leuven, Polderland• SoNaR (STEVIN, 2008-2011)

– STEVIN Nederlandstalig Referentiecorpus– Nijmegen, Tilburg, Twente, Utrecht, Leuven, Gent

• JASMIN-CGN (STEVIN, 2005-2007)– Extension of CGN with speech of children, non-

natives, elderly and human-machine interaction– Nijmegen, Leuven, Talkinghome

Nijmegen

• ACORNS (EU, 2008-2010)– Acquisition of Communication and Recognition Skills

– “Intends to […] create an artificial agent that is capable of acquiring human verbal communication behaviour “

– Nijmegen, 5 other European partners

• Avoiding the ham in hamster (NWO VENI 2006-2010)– Modelling the use of non-segmental information in

human spoken-word recognition

Nijmegen

• BATS (ICTRegie, IBBT, 2008-2012)– Topic and Speaker Tracking in Broadcast

Archives – Nijmegen, Leuven

• SPEX– Speech Processing Expertise Centre– Collection, Annotation & Validation– ELRA Speech Validation Centre

Nijmegen

• Autonomata TOO (STEVIN, 2008-2010)– Autonomata Transfer of Output – Nijmegen, Gent, Utrecht, TeleAtlas, Nuance

• DISCO (STEVIN, 2008-2011)– Development and Integration of Speech technology into

COurseware for language learning– Nijmegen, Linguapolis Antwerpen, Taal- &

Communicatiecentrum Nijmegen, Polderland

• Autonomata (STEVIN), MIDAS (STEVIN), NBest (STEVIN), Praat (STEVIN), SPRAAK (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL, A Propos (IOP-MMI)

Soesterberg

• Institute: TNO Defense & Security

• Core Topics:– Speech Processing– Speech Technology Evaluation

• Key people– David van Leeuwen

Soesterberg

• NBest (STEVIN, 2006-2008)– Northern and Southern Dutch Benchmark

Evaluation of Speech recognition Technology– TNO Soesterberg, Nijmegen, Twente, Leuven,

Gent. Delft

• SPRAAK (STEVIN)

Tilburg

• Institute: Tilburg Centre for Creative Computing, Induction of Linguistic Knowledge (ILK) Research group

• Core Topics:– Machine-learning– Memory-Based learning

• Key people– Antal van den Bosch

Tilburg

• ROLAQUAD (IMIX, 2004-2008)– Robust Language Understanding in Question-

Answering Dialogue– Tilburg, Textkernel

• Implicit Linguistics (NWO VICI, 2005-2009)– Machine Learning of Text-to-Text Processing,

• A Propos (IOP MMI, 2006-2009?)– Proactive Personalization for Professional Document

Writing– Tilburg, Nijmegen, industrial partners

Tilburg

• MITCH (CATCH, 2007-2009?)– Mining for Information in Texts from the

Cultural Heritage– National Museum of Natural History, Tilburg

• D-COI (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL, SoNaR (STEVIN)

Tilburg

• Institute: Communication and Cognition

• Core Topics:– Communication and Cognition– Language Generation– Multimodality

• Key people– Emiel Krahmer

Tilburg

• IMOGEN (IMIX, 2004-2008)– Interactive Multimodal Output Generation– Tilburg and Twente

• Bridging the gap between psycholinguistics and computational linguistics (NWO VICI, 2007-2011)– Generation of referring expressions

• DAESO (STEVIN, 2006-2009)– Detecting and Exploiting Semantic Overlap– Tilburg, Antwerpen, Amsterdam (UvA), Textkernel

Tilburg

• TUNA (EPSRC (UK), 2003-2007)– Towards a Unified Algorithm for the

Generation of Referring Expressions– Aberdeen, Open University (UK), Tilburg

• FOAP (NWO Vidi, 2003-2007)– Functions of Audio-Visual Prosody

Tilburg

• Institute: Communication Information Sciences

• Core Topics:– Computational Semantics and Pragmatics– Dialogue Theory– Multimodal Interaction

• Key people– Harry Bunt

Tilburg

• Paradime (IMIX, 2004-2008)– Parallel Agent-based Dialogue Management

Engine

Twente

• Institute: Human Media Interaction

• Core Topics– Multimodality– Speech Recognition

• Key people– Franciska de Jong, Anton Nijholt– Arjan van Hessen, Roelof Ordelman

Twente

• AMI (EU IST, 2004-2006)– Augmented Multi-party Interaction– IDIAP (CH) and 11 other partners incl. Twente

• M4 (EU IST, 2002-2005)– MultiModal Meeting Manager– Sheffield and 8 other partners incl. Twente

• DRUID (Telematica ??-2003)– Multimedia Indexing & Retrieval on the basis of Image

Processing & Language and Speech Technology– TNO TPD, TNO TM, Twente, CWI

Twente

• SAFIR (EU, 2003-2007)– Speech Automatic Friendly Interface Research– 17 European partners incl. Twente

• Angelica (NWO Meervoud (?), 2003-2007)– A Natural-Language Generator for Embodied,

Lifelike Conversational Agents

Twente

• Pidgin (EZ, 2002-2004)– Self-learning Cross Lingual Interface– Twente, Irion, Carp, New Law Facilities

• Choral (CATCH, 2005-2009)– Access to Oral History– Twente, Municipal Archives Rotterdam. Radio

Rijnmond, Erasmus University Rotterdam• MultimediaN (Bsik, 2004-2008)

– MultimediaN/N5– Multiple research groups and 20+ industrial partners

Twente

• VIDIAM (IMIX, 2005-2008)– Dialog Management and the Visual Channel

• AMIDA (EU, 2006-2009)– Augmented Multi-party Interaction with

Distance Access– AMI consortium

Twente

• MESH-EU (EU, 2006-2009)– Multimedia Semantic Syndication for Enhanced News

Services– Twente and 10 other European partners

• MediaCampaign (EU, 2006-2009)– Discovering, inter-relating and navigating cross-media

campaign knowledge– Twente and 7 other European partners

• D-COI (STEVIN), NBest (STEVIN), SPRAAK (STEVIN), SoNaR (STEVIN), CLARIN, CLARIN-NL

Utrecht

• Institute: UIL-OTS• Core Topics

– Networks– Language Technology for e-Learning– Linguistic Resources– LR and LT Infrastructure

• Key people– Jan Odijk– Steven Krauwer– Paola Monachesi– Gerrit Bloothooft

Utrecht

• ELSNET (EU, 1991-Current)– A Europe-based forum dedicated to human language technologies

aiming to advance R&D in human language technologies in Europe • LT4eL (EU IST, (2005-2008)

– Language Technology for eLearning– Utrecht and 11 other European partners

• LTfLL (EU IST, (2008-2011)– Language Technology for LifeLong Learning– Open University and 8 other European partners incl. Utrecht

• IRME (STEVIN, 2005-2007)– Identification and lexical Representation of Multiword Expressions– Utrecht, Groningen, Van Dale

Utrecht

• CLARIN (EU ESFRI, 2008-2010)– Common LAnguage Resource and technology Infrastructure– Utrecht, Nijmegen, and 35+ other partners

• FlaReNet (EU IST 2008-2011)– Fostering Language Resources Network– Pisa, Utrecht, ILSP Athens, ELDA, LIMSI, Vienna, Barcelona

• CLARIN-NL (submitted to OC&W, 2009-2014)– Common LAnguage Resource and technology Infrastructure,

Netherlands part– Utrecht, Nijmegen, UvA, VU, Twente, Groningen, Tilburg and

many others • ISLE (EU IST), Autonomata (STEVIN), D-COI

(STEVIN), SoNaR (STEVIN), Autonomata TOO

Overview

• Earlier History




Concluding Remarks

Solid Community Largely complementary, some overlap

But always close collaboration Overall the situation in the Netherlands for LST

research and development is pretty good esp. in comparison to other countries The situation is getting more difficult

large thematic programmes instead of specific technologies The options for fundamental research are limited

and decreasing

Thank You

For Your Attention

Do NOT Go Beyond This Slide

Older or Marginally Related

• CHOICE (CATCH)– semi-automatic semantic annotation and

employing context information for ensuring continuous access to the cultural riches.

– B&G, VU, Telematica, MPI, ICN

Older or Marginally Related

• STITCH (CATCH)– Semantic Interoperability to Access Cultural

Heritage– KB, VU, MPI