Workshop on Morphology: Solutions for Language Processing

A workshop on Morphology was organized by the Center for Indian Language Technology (CFILT), CSE Dept., IIT Bombay on March 31, 2005. The workshop was sponsored by the Research and Training Center, Development Gateway Foundation at IIT Bombay. The object of study in morphology is the structure of words and the ways in which their structure reflects their relation to other words. This relation can be within some larger construction such as a sentence and across the total vocabulary of the language. The importance of morphology is in the context of Machine Translation, Information Retrieval, Information Extraction and many such applications, especially for Indian Languages.

 The aim of the morphology workshop was sharing of experiences of researchers in morphology and evolving solutions and future directions for Indian language processing with emphasis on morphology.

The major topics covered in the workshop were (i) lexicology and morphology, (ii) morphology and syntax, (iii) semantics and morphology and (iv) morphology and its applications to language technology. Researchers from IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi, IIIT Hydrabad, CIIL Mysore, University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University Kolkata, Banasthali Vidyapith Rajasthan, Pondicherry University, Goa University and Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata presented their work.

The workshop was inaugurated by Prof. Kartic Khilar, Dean, Research and Development, IIT Bombay in presence of Prof. Sivakumar, Head, CSE Department, IIT Bombay, Prof. Krithi Ramammritham, Head, KReSIT, IIT Bombay and Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Head, CFILT, IIT Bombay. Prof. Sivakumar commenced the workshop by underlining the importance of the language processing research and praising the good work being done at CFILT. Prof. Ramamritham welcomed all the participants.

Prof. Kartic C. Khilar in his addressed praised the efforts of organisers and emphasized the need for advancing and employing knowledge for industry and people, building environment for quality education, promoting research and building an R & D culture.

Prof. Pushpak Bhattacharyya echoed the sentiments of Dr. Om Vikas, Senior, Director and Head, Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL), Department of Information Technology, who is the motive force behind the Indian language technology research and who could not attend the workshop due to unavoidable reasons. Prof. Bhattacharyya spoke about various research activities being conducted at CFILT.

Prof. Vaijayanthi Sarma, H & SS Dept. IIT Bombay gave the keynote speech, titled ‘Morph-logy’. There was also an invited talk by Prof. Malhar Kulkarni, H & SS Dept. IIT Bombay on Introduction to Sanskrit Morphology.

An intensive interaction between theoreticians and practitioners provided a comprehensive perspective to both linguists and computer scientists involved in the field of computational linguistics.

The workshop concluded with a detailed discussion on important issues in the areas of sharing of resources among various research centers, frequent interactions between researchers, working towards bringing India to the forefront of research in NLP and bridging the gap between linguists and computer scientists.

More pictures are available on http://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/morphology/pics/Morphologyworkshop2005CFILTCSEIITBombay/index.html

and http://www.cfilt.iitb.ac.in/morphology/pics/morephotos/index.html