Prof Gilles Maurice de Schryver

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Prof. Dr. Ing. Gilles-Maurice de Schryver
MSc (IH-BME), MA (UGent), PhD (UGent)

   
Position: Extraordinary Professor
E-mail: gschryver@uwc.ac.za
Tel: +27 (0)21 959 2367
Room: D130
Fields of study/research: Metalexicography, Computational Linguistics, African Languages
Subjects taught: N.A.

Background:
Born on 15 September 1971 in Sint-Amandsberg, Belgium, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver holds an MSc in microelectronic engineering (1995), an MA in corpus lexicography (1999), and a PhD in computational linguistics (2005). He is primarily interested in how technology can 'come to the rescue' of (human) languages, and insists on obtaining practical and user-friendly tools as tangible outcome(s). He compiled and published his first corpus-based dictionary in 1997 (for Cilub'), and since then technology-driven metalexicography has remained his main interest within the broader field of computational linguistics. Also in 1997, he came to South Africa for the first time, and he has been coming back ever since: First as a regular research fellow in the African languages department at the University of Pretoria, and currently as an extraordinary professor in the Xhosa department at the University of the Western Cape. He combines these visits with his main job as an assistant professor in the department of African languages and cultures at Ghent University in Belgium. In 2003 he also co-founded the software company TshwaneDJe HLT. Gilles-Maurice feels strongly about the need for research results to be 'visible' to as wide a community as possible. On average, he reads a conference paper or sees one of his articles published every two to three weeks.

Publications:
Click here for a full list, as well as downloadable versions. The following are both representative and Gilles-Maurice's favourites:

  • Metalexicography: De Schryver, G-M. 2003. Lexicographers' Dreams in the Electronic-Dictionary Age. International Journal of Lexicography 16(2): 143'199.
  • Bantu lexicography: De Schryver, G-M, E. Taljard, M.P. Mogodi & S. Maepa. 2004. The Lexicographic Treatment of the Demonstrative Copulative in Sesotho sa Leboa ' An Exercise in Multiple Cross-referencing. Lexikos 14 (AFRILEX-reeks/series 14: 2004): 35'66.
  • Practical lexicography: De Schryver, G-M. 2005. Concurrent Over- and Under-Treatment in Dictionaries ' The Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal as a Case in Point. International Journal of Lexicography 18(1): 47'75.
  • Linguistics: De Schryver, G-M & E. Taljard. 2006. Locative trigrams in Northern Sotho, preceded by analyses of formative bigrams. Linguistics, An Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences 44(1): 135'193.
  • Computational linguistics: De Pauw, G., G-M de Schryver & P.W. Wagacha. 2006. Data-Driven Part-of-Speech Tagging of Kiswahili. In Sojka, P., I. Kopecek and K. Pala (eds.). 2006. Text, Speech and Dialogue, 9th International Conference, TSD 2006, Brno, Czech Republic, September 11-15, 2006, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI), subseries of Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), volume nr. 4188): 197'204. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.