Exploring Language Representation through a Resource Inventory Project

AbstractThe increasing scale of large language models has led some students to wonder what contributions can be made in academia. However, students are often unaware that LLM-based approaches are not feasible for the majority of the world’s languages due to lack of data availability. This paper presents a research project in which students explore the issue of language representation by creating an inventory of the data, preprocessing, and model resources available for a less-resourced language. Students are put into small groups and assigned a language to research. Within the group, students take on one of three roles: dataset investigator, preprocessing investigator, or downstream task investigator. Students then work together to create a 7-page research report about their language.