1. Bertus van Rooy Research Unit: Languages and Literature in the South African Context North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus (PUK) South Africa E-mail: Bertus.VanRooy@nwu.ac.za Research trends Cape Town; 25 November 2008

2. Bertus van Rooy Shared advantages Government support (if not always $$$) Established networks, inter-institutional collaboration in projects Organizational initiatives (NTU, various committees under DAC(ST) in SA) Fair share (or better) of regular research funding in competitive, open(ish) calls for application A couple of flagship projects in early history to raise some profile

3. Bertus van Rooy Shared challenges Student involvement (recruiting, entry-level and doctoral level) Industry involvement (least problematic in NL) Funding for really big projects Smaller languages

4. Bertus van Rooy Differences Longer history of activity in BE, NL Units at most universities in BE, NL, smaller representation in SA Position of speech in Engineering (BE, SA) versus Humanities (NL)

5. Bertus van Rooy Differences (II) LINGUISTIC SCOPE: one versus many languages More focussed research groups in BE, NL; SA groups often tackle larger range of projects (Some) SA groups also function as business units

6. Bertus van Rooy Differences (III) Funding levels: per capita national spending on research Salary components in research projects: fewer full-time researchers in SA (outside Meraka?) ‘Students’ assume more responsibility in SA Overall capacity: numbers and depth of expertise

7. Bertus van Rooy Research themes Targeted, distributed across various institutions in NL, BE (some overlap, leading to some competition, but often in complementary distribution…) –Strong focus on computational linguistic topics South Africa: some targeted projects (computational morphology, dialect, esp. L2 pronunciation modelling) –Many relatively ambitious projects, integrating many components –More work on basic linguistic knowledge base –Resource-scarcity, bootstrapping between languages One versus many languages: more computational versus more linguistic in orientation

8. Bertus van Rooy BLARK Extensive work in BE&NL / NL&BE –Initial BLARK concept –Completing the missing parts (e.g. CGN, other components, more in the pipeline in STEVIN) Relatively more for Afrikaans –BLARK already drawn up –Some parts of the resources collected, but so far mainly tied to projects (no dedicated funding, opportunistic spin-offs from other projects) Relatively less, and differentiated for indigenous official languages –BLARKS not yet drawn up –Available text resources mostly tied to projects (lexicography, Computational Morphology) –Somewhat better for speech (more projects, better funding and distribution of expertise in Meraka)