This is the initial funding of a 36-month cooperative agreement to fund the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC). Under this funding, the LDC will create new databases and improve infrastructure to continue and improve its work of creating, publishing and distributing data for research on human language technology. Improved speech and text data resources will be created in three areas: multilingual speech, multilingual and parallel text, and human-computer interaction. The LDC will publish and distribute these resources using the same approach of the many databases already in its catalogue. In addition, the LDC proposes to provide improved Internet-based access for its members to essentially its entire archive of data, except where license agreements stand in the way. This access would encompass both WWW-based search and retrieval of modestly sized pieces of the data, and also (on an experimental basis) wide-area remote file mounting for access to entire databases. Significant LDC cost-sharing is proposed for all of these activities, including the donation of time and facilities as well as the expenditure of case for equipment, license fees and additional needed labor.
