Scholarship to study Masters Program in Linguistics and Communication Technologies

Institution/Organization: Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Language and Communication Technologies (LCT)
Department:
Web Address: http://lct-master.org

Level: MA / MSc

Duties: Research

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics
Language Technology, Computer Science

Description:

Scholarships available in the Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Language and
Communication Technologies (LCT)

The following consortium of Universities:
1. Saarland University in Saarbruecken, Germany (coordinator)
2. Free University of Bozen - Bolzano, Italy
3. University of Malta
4. University of Nancy 2, France
5. Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
6. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands

are offering the European Masters Program in Language and Communication
Technologies (LCT; http://lct-master.org) under the auspices of the Erasmus
Mundus Program of the European Union
(http://ec.europa.eu/education/external-relation-programmes/doc72_en.htm).

The Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Language and Communication Technologies is
an international distributed Master of Science course. The program involves
studying one year at one of the Universities of the consortium, and completing
the second year with a stay in one of the other partner Universities. After
this, the student will obtain two degrees at the level of Masters with legal
value in each of the countries of issue.

Objectives: The Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Language and Communication
Technologies provides students with profound knowledge and insight into the
various disciplines that contribute to the methods of language and communication
technologies and it strengthens their ability to work according to scientific
methods. Moreover, the students acquire practice-oriented knowledge by choosing
appropriate combinations of modules in Language Technology, Computational and
Theoretical Linguistics, and Computer Science. As such, the European Masters
Program in LCT is designed to meet the demands of industry and research in the
rapidly growing area of Language Technology. It offers education and training
opportunities for future generations of leaders in research and innovation.

Duration: 2 years (120 ECTS credits)
Language of instruction: English

Summary of Study Programme: The course consists of compulsory core modules, as
well as elective advanced modules in Language Technology and Computer Science,
optionally complemented by a project, and completed by a Masters dissertation.

Application Deadlines: Applications to the LCT and the Erasmus Mundus
Scholarships scheme for the academic years 2010-2012 commence on the 15th of
August 2009 and can be made

Applicants must satisfy the following study requirements:
1. a Bachelor degree or equivalent in the area of (Computational) Linguistics,
Language Technology, Cognitive Sciences, Computer Science, Mathematics,
Artificial Intelligence, or other relevant disciplines.
2. Proficiency in English (for non-native speakers) must be certified by one of
the following (for more details, please check
http://lct-master.org/index.php?id=prerequisites):
a. TOEFL score of at least 250 (computer-based test) or 575 (paper-based test).
b. Cambridge Proficiency Exam - pass
c. IELTS - > 6.5
d. Possession of a first degree taught in English
e. Internet-based TOEFL score: 79

Please, note that applicants from countries where English is not the only native
language do need one of the certificates mentioned above.

For detailed info on applications, please, check the web pages:
http://lct-master.org/index.php?id=deadlines

For further information please contact Dr. Valia Kordoni.

Program coordinators:
Prof. Hans Uszkoreit (hansu@coli.uni-sb.de)
Dr. Valia Kordoni (kordoni@coli.uni-sb.de)

Further contacts can be found at:
http://lct-master.org/index.php?id=ap

Application Deadline: 08-Jan-2010

Web Address for Applications: http://lct-master.org/index.php?id=deadlines

Contact Information:
Dr. Valia Kordoni
lct-info@coli.uni-sb.de
Phone:+49 681 302 4682
Fax:+49 681 302 4700

Call for papers: 30th LSN

30th Annual Conference of Linguistic Society of Nepal
Kathmandu
November 26-27, 2009
First Circular (July 2009)

The Annual Conference of Linguistic Society of Nepal is an annually convening, open scholarly forum for scholars who work on the languages of Nepal and all the Himalayan languages as well.
The Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of Nepal (LSN) takes pleasure in announcing the 30th Annual Conference of Linguistic Society of Nepal to be held on November 26-27, 2009 in Kirtipur, Kathmandu.

The main theme for the conference is 'Language endangerment and documentation in Nepal'. We invite abstracts for presentations on topics including, but not limited to:

Phonology
Morphosyntax
Historical Linguistics
Sociolinguistics
Semantics and lexical studies
Mother-tongue education
Indigenous languages
Corpus and computational linguistics
Natural language processing
Typological studies
Field Linguistics
Language Documentation
Applied linguistics

Submission Procedure
Abstracts limited to 500 words should be submitted electronically as MS word (doc.) of PDF file.
Please include your name, affiliation, address and title of your paper in the body of the message, as well as contact information: email, mobile number and land line phone number if possible!

Address for abstract: prasain2003@yahoo.com
Deadline for Abstracts: October 1, 2009

Contact information
The organizers of the 30th LSN can be contacted through: prasain2003@yahoo.com
or Linguistic Society of Nepal
C/o The Central Department of Linguistics,
Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

How to Apply for a Scholarship

The Money Is There, but You Have to Ask for It!

There's a lot of advice out there about the best way to apply for scholarships—how you should "package" yourself in the essay, which extracurricular activities to emphasize, and what color paper to use for your resume. The truth is, much of this advice can vary widely, depending on the author—and what works for one applicant may not necessarily work for another.

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Application Tips

Here are some tips you can use to create solid applications and avoid common scholarship mistakes:

1. Start Researching Scholarships as soon as possible

The more time you can put into a scholarship search, the more options there'll be. You will need time to research scholarships, request information and application materials, and complete applications—plus, some scholarships have deadlines early in the fall of the senior year. You can use our online Scholarship Search to get started.

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Your should create a separate file for each scholarship and file by application date. Keep a calendar of application deadlines and follow-up appointments.

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Blank items will slow down the processing of your application. Your should contact scholarship sponsors with questions on how to fill out any part of the application.

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Make sure you do not go over the length limit for the essay. Another application don't: sending supporting materials that are not requested in the application.

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Type or print application forms and essays.

8. Make Copies of Everything

If application materials are lost, having copies on hand will make it much easier to resend the application quickly.

9. Double-Check the Application

If you are reusing material (such as a cover letter or essay) from another scholarship application, be especially careful you haven't left in any incorrect names or blank fields. He should not forget to sign and date his application.

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Missing deadlines means missing out. Consider using certified mail and/or return receipt. Or send your documents through a fastest medium like DHL. And Relax!

Temples of the Nepal Valley

by Sudarshan Raj Tiwari

Temples are dominant in the ensemble of Kathmandu Valley ’s traditional architecture. The image and visual appeal of the architecture of the Nepal Valley (as Kathmandu Valley used to be known in the past) and the skyline it composed are registered most by the multi-roofed temples. A significant number of these temples follow the Vastushastra, the classical Hindu ritual design principles as handed down from ancient times through oral tradition. But a philosophically and ritually different group of temples, the dyochhen, also line the streets of the Valley, literally merging with the style of the street-side residential architecture. This book presents, for the first time, a thoroughly researched account of the origins, development and detailing of temples of the Nepal Valley from the ancient Kirat period to the times of the Shah, showing how and why the Nepali temple came to be so different from the nagara and dravida styles popular in India, and became the varata style and design mentioned in the Vastushastra.

The book is presented in three sections: the first deals with the background to the uniqueness of the Nepali temple, the second discusses the towns and the sites of the temples, and the last with the development of temple architecture in various historical periods. The tiered temple has been most elaborated in terms of their rituals and symbolism, design principles, materials and methods of construction.

***

Born in Kathmandu in 1950, Sudarshan Raj Tiwari completed his schooling in Kathmandu, passing his School Leaving Certificate examination from Juddhodaya Public High School in 1966. He finished his ISc from Amrit Science College and passed at the top of Tribhuvan University list in 1968. He studied architecture and earned a bachelor’s degree from the School of Planning and Architecture, University of Delhi , in 1973 with a first class and a gold medal. He earned his master’s degree in architecture from the University of Hawaii in 1977, specialising on housing in tropical countries. His interest drew him to the study of Nepali historical architecture, urbanism and culture, which led to a PhD from Tribhuvan University in 1995 for his dissertation on ancient settlements of the Kathmandu Valley .

Prof Tiwari has been part of the faculty of Tribhuvan University ’s Institute of Engineering for more than thirty years, and was Dean of the Institute of Engineering between 1988 and 1992. He has worked at several world heritage sites, including Lumbini, Swoyambhu, Changunarayan and Bhaktapur Durbar Square . He has also consulted on infrastructure for health and education sector projects of the World Bank in Nepal and Afghanistan .

His previous publications include Tiered Temples of Nepal (1988), The Ancient Settlements of the Kathmandu Valley (2001) and The Brick and the Bull (2002).

Ditransitive verbs in Nepali: Overview

Abstract
Although there is some literature on compound and complex verbs (Boyé. 1999, Pokharel 1999, Lohani 2003), finite verbs (Genetti 1999), no work has been done on ditransitive verbs and the ways they code three arguments in Nepali. This paper presents the first complete description of ditransitive and double object constructions in Nepali. The linguistic data for this paper was mostly collected following the Questionnaire on Ditransitive Constructions (Malchukov et al. 2007). It describes and analyses the coding properties and different types of syntactic alignment. It also addresses the effect of animacy and definiteness in differential object marking in Nepali.1

Introduction
Nepali is a language in the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family. It is the major Lingua Franca in Nepal. It is also spoken in some parts of India, Bhutan and Burma. Many linguists (e.g. Turner 1931, Abadie 1974, Verma 1992, Klaiman 1987, Masica 1991, Li 2007, and Butt & Poudel 2007) have described it as an ergative or a split ergative language. A general look shows that there is a tense/aspect split in the distribution of ergative case in Nepali.2 The agent (A) of a transitive verb is always marked with ergative marker when it is in perfective or in past tense. However, it is not only restricted with in the past and perfective domain, it is further extended to (Masica 1991, Li 2007) certain non-past forms as well. According to Li, the ergative marker is optionally used with the simple present tense, the present progressive tense, the past progressive tense, the past habitual tense, and with the simple future tense. In the same way, it also appears with few intransitive subjects (S).

Most of the grammatical operations like agreement, case assignment, reflexivization, subject raising, object raising and one of the nominalization strategies are controlled by the subject or the agent (Kärkkäinen 1994).

Syntactic alignment
Nepali ditransitive patterns are primarily encoded by case marking and clearly follow the indirective alignment. In other words, there is indirect object alignment in Nepali where the recipient (R) is treated differently from the monotransitive patient (P) and theme (T), i.e. T = P R. The theme (T) is encoded in the same way as P; it usually bears unmarked nominative case. Nepali is similar to German and other Indo-European languages in this regard. The basic syntactic pattern is A S = P.
There is no effect on indexing the full NP or the independent personal pronoun.

Case and agreement
The table in (1) shows the summary of the Nepali case paradigm. There are very few core cases like -le for Ergative, -lai for dative, and -ko for genitive. The most of the grammatical relations are shown by postpositions which mark obligue arguments. As shown in the table (1), -ma is used for locative, bata for ablative, le for instrumental and sãga for comitative. The A arguments of the transitive clauses are obligatorily marked with the ergative marker -le when it is in perfective, while the S argument of an intransitive clause remains unmarked. The dative marker -lai is used on both the patient (P) and Recipient (R) arguments of monotransitive and ditransitive verbs only when the P and R arguments are animate, and definite.

There is no object agreement in Nepali. In standard Nepali, the verbs usually agree with subject in person, number, gender and honorific hierarchy. However, the gender and honorific agreement is gradually vanishing in the modern varieties of Nepali.

The summary of case marking is as follows: with transitive and ditransitive verbs a definite animate P and R are dative marked and the T is in the nominative. In the case of primary object, the animate P and R are in the dative while the T is in the instrumental. In the direct object constructions, the case is rather different--both the animate and inanimate P and T are nominative, but the R or the most goal like argument gets the locative case.

The following examples illustrate the ergative, dative and nominative marking in the A, the P and the R.

The most basic neutral order of arguments in a ditransitive or a double object construction in Nepali is the Recipient (R) preceding theme (T).

a. mai-le gita-lai kalam di-ẽ
1s-ERG G-DAT pen[-NOM] give-PST.1s
‘I gave Gita a pen’.