2023Q3 Reports: SIGEL

Sarah Moeller and Aditi Chaudhary

SIGEL is ACL's special interest group on Endangered Languages.

MEMBERSHIP

SIGEL was officially approved on Oct. 4, 2019. After 3.5 years, its membership has stayed around 100-115. Members must actively renew membership yearly. After a recent renewal, membership is currently at 91.

WORKSHOP (ComputEL-6)

Following up on five preceding events, we organized, in fully online format, the 6th instance of the Workshop on the Use of Computational in the Study of Endangered Languages ComputEL-6 (https://computel-workshop.org/computel-6/)) on March 5-6, 2023, "co-located" with the the 8th International Conference on Language Documentation & Conservation (http://ling.lll.hawaii.edu/sites/icldc/) (ICLDC 8), a virtual conference.

We received 24 submissions as papers or extended abstracts for the online event. We expanded to two full days from last year. After a thorough review process, 19 submissions were selected to be presented and 18 were selected to published in the ACL Anthology.

As we had done previously, we welcomed all the participants of the main conference, in this case ICLDC, to take part in ComputEL-6 virtually encourage as broad participation as possible. There was no fee for attendance to lower the threshold for participants from institutions with lesser resources or without an institutional affiliation, which is often the case with less-resourced language communities. Despite the online format, we had an audience of approx. X participants at any given time.

Repeating the success of the previous year, we organized a Special Session on Justice Through Technology (https://computel-workshop.org/computel-6/special-theme-justice/). This session matched the theme of ICLDC8 "Centering Justice in Language Work". We received X extended abstracts, of which we accepted 4 presentations. All presentations were by groups exhibiting collaboration between the three constituencies of SIGEL, namely computational linguists, documentary linguists, and members of endangered language communities.

The Organizing Committee for ComputEL-6 consisted of some members of the SIGEL Executive Board as well as other SIGEL members. The committee included representatives of our three constituencies (computational linguists, community members, documentary/descriptive linguists):

• Atticus Harrigan, University of Alberta (chair)
• Daisy Rosenblum, The University of British Columbia (Special Session chair)
• Ryan Henke, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Special Session chair)
• Aditi Chaudhary, Google
• Sarah Moeller, University of Florida, Gainesville
• Alexis Palmer, University of North Texas
• Shruti Riwjani, Carnegie Mellon University
• Antti Arppe, University of Alberta

The Program Committee for ComputEL-5 can be found in: https://computel-workshop.org/computel-6/scientific-committee/

We intend to hold the seventh ComputEL at an ACL event in 2024. We plan to recruit a program chair and additional co-organzers from our membership.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

In October 2022, we organized the first of the Speaker Series for SIGEL, which was well attended. We have continued this activity with irregular events over the rest of this year. The next events will focus on developing orthographies, fonts, and keyboards for new writing systems.

ENDORSEMENTS

During the last 12 months, we did not endorse any other events.

COMMUNICATIONS

SIGEL WEBSITE

We have set up SIGEL's website (https://acl-sigel.github.io/). Our website contains information about our previous and planned future activities, as well as our governance (Executive Board) and up-to-date membership.

TWITTER ACCOUNT

We have created a twitter account (@acl_sigel) for disseminating information relevant to SIGEL. It is maintained by a volunteer member.

MAILING LISTS

We have created a Google email for SIGEL: acl.sigel@gmail.com - and a Google Group for the entire SIGEL membership: sigel@googlegroups.com - and for the SIGEL Executive Committee: sigel-ec@googlegroups.com

GOVERNANCE

At the last election for SIGEL in fall 2022, the following persons had been elected for two-year terms, from January 2023 until January 2025.

EXECUTIVE Committee

• President: Sarah Moeller, University of Florida, Gainesville
• Secretary: Aditi Chaudhary, Google
• Members-At-Large:
  • Alexis Palmer, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Hilaria Cruz, University of Louisville
  • Jordan Lachler, University of Alberta
  • Lane Schwartz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • Antti Arppe, University of Alberta (Past President)

ELECTIONS

The next elections are due to take place by winter 2024.