An Analytical Model of Language Resource Sustainability

This paper elaborates on a sustainability model for Language Resources, both at a descriptive and analytical level. The first part, devoted to the descriptive model, elaborates on the definition of this concept both from a general point of view and from the Human Language Technology and Language Resources perspective. The paper also intends to list an exhaustive number of factors that have an impact on this sustainability. These factors will be clustered into Pillars so as ease understanding as well as the prediction of LR sustainability itself. Rather than simply identifying a set of LRs that have been in use for a while and that one can consider as sustainable, the paper aims at first clarifying and (re)defining the concept of sustainability by also connecting it to other domains. Then it also presents a detailed decomposition of all dimensions of Language Resource features that can contribute and/or have an impact on such sustainability. Such analysis will also help anticipate and forecast sustainability for a LR before taking any decisions concerning design and production.