The Faculty of Computer Technology, Assam down town University (AdtU) successfully organized a 2-Day Workshop on Discourse Analysis for Assamese and Bodo Languages. The event was formally inaugurated with lamp lighting by the Chairperson, Resource Persons, and Patron. Convenor Dr. Dr Jumi Sarmah highlighted the significance of the workshop, marking it as the first of its kind in North-Eastern languages. Prof. shikhar kr. sarma (Dean of Technology & HOD, IT, GU) delivered the Plenary Talk, emphasizing the linguistic richness of Assamese and Bodo and the challenges of capturing discourse structures computationally. Prof. N.C. Talukdar (Vice Chancellor, AdtU) graced the occasion with the Keynote Address, appreciating the initiative.
Eminent resource persons Dr. Sobha L ( Lalitha Devi). Devi and Dr. Vijay Sundar Ram (AU-KBC Research Centre, Chennai) shared insights on EDU, Anaphora, Coherence, NLP, NER, POS Tagging, and Chunking. Dr. Seuji Sharma (Gauhati University) and Dr. Biswajit Brahma (Cotton University) led specialized sessions on discourse markers in Assamese and Bodo respectively. A hands-on training session on an Annotation Tool developed by AU-KBC enabled active participation from research scholars of Gauhati University, Cotton University, IIT Guwahati (Departments of Linguistics, Assamese, Bodo, and Computer Science), along with BCA AIML 5th Semester students of AdtU.
The workshop concluded with feedback collection, certificate distribution, and a note of gratitude by the Convenor. Many participants suggested extending the program to a seven-day format for deeper engagement. Overall, the workshop marked a landmark step toward advancing Computational Linguistics and NLP research for North-Eastern languages, fostering collaboration, documentation, and future knowledge-sharing initiatives.