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ICHL Workshop on "Challenges for Computer-Assisted Language Comparison"
In contrast to purely computational approaches in historical linguistics that try to do without human annotation, computer-assisted language comparison aims to reconcile computational and classical approaches in historical language comparison by providing interactive workflows in which data are passed back and forth between humans and machines (List 2017). Computational approaches are mostly employed to preprocess linguistic data, while interfaces then allow experts to refine and correct computational annotation.
While some workflows and tools have been published that illustrate the benefits of computer-assisted as opposed to purely computer-based or purely manual approaches in historical linguistics (Wu et al. 2020; Hill and List 2017; Segerer and Flavier 2015; Starostin 2000), there remain many tasks in historical linguistics where computational and computer-assisted approaches are lacking so far. These include, for example, semantic reconstruction (Urban 2015), phonological reconstruction (Anttila 1972), and sound law induction and the establishment of relative chronologies (Fortson 2014).
References
Anttila, Raimo. 1972. An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics. New York: Macmillan.
Fortson, Benjamin W. 2014. “Relative Chronology.” In Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics. Volume 3, edited by Georgios K. Giannakis, 219–24. Leiden; Boston: Brill.
Hill, Nathan W., and Johann-Mattis List. 2017. “Challenges of Annotation and Analysis in Computer-Assisted Language Comparison: A Case Study on Burmish Languages.” Yearbook of the Poznań Linguistic Meeting 3 (1): 47–76.
—. 2017. Computer-Assisted Language Comparison. Reconciling Computational and Classical Approaches in Historical Linguistics [Research Project, 2017–2022]. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.3030/715618
Segerer, Guillaume, and S. Flavier. 2015. “RefLex: Reference Lexicon of Africa.” Paris; Lyon. 2015. http://reflex.cnrs.fr.
Starostin, Sergej Anatolévič. 2000. The STARLING Database Program. Moscow: Online ressource; RGGU. http://starling.rinet.ru.
Urban, Matthias. 2015. “Lexical Semantic Change and Semantic Reconstruction.” In The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics, edited by Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans, 374–92. London; New York: Routledge.
Wu, Mei-Shin, Nathanael E. Schweikhard, Timotheus A. Bodt, Nathan W. Hill, and Johann-Mattis List. 2020. “Computer-Assisted Language Comparison. State of the Art.” Journal of Open Humanities Data 6 (2): 1–14.
Last updated on 2025-08-01 20:59.
This website by Johann-Mattis List is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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Call for Papers
Contributions
For the workshop that will be organized as part of the 27th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Santiago de Chile (18-22 August, 2025), we invited contributions from both classical and computational linguistics who present open problems and potential solutions in historical language comparison that have so far not been addressed sufficiently in computer-assisted approaches. Our hope was that we would find a good mix of contributions in which classical linguists present problems that cannot be addressed by computational approaches and illustrate how they solve them manually, while we also hoped for contributions by computational linguists who share recently developed workflows that can be applied to data in historical linguistics.
From the workshop program, we hope it can be seen easily that our hopes were fulfilled, as we think we have assembled a very nice mix of contributions touching problems in both classical and computational linguistics along with potential solutions.
Last updated on 2025-08-01 20:59.
This website by Johann-Mattis List is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. -
Schedule
Time Presenter Talk Chair 9:00 Blum, List, Regúnaga Welcome 9:00 -- 9:30 Herce, Marr Language Change and Zipf's Law of Abbreviation Blum 9:30 -- 10:00 Hammarström Ancestor Distance: A New Approach for Cognate Identification and Sound Change Inference Blum 10:00 -- 10:30 Daniels Regularity and Computational Approaches. Lessons from Minjim Blum 10:30 -- 11:00 Coffee Break 11:00 -- 11:30 Viegas Barros and Porta Clasificación interna de la familia lingüistica chon Regúnaga 11:30 -- 12:00 Brid A Project for an Enlhet-Enenlhet Comparative Database Regúnaga 12:00 -- 12:30 Wren-Hardin Combining Computational and Qualitative Methods for Family-Internal Borrowings Regúnaga 12:30 Blum, List, Regúnaga Final Remarks Last updated on 2025-08-01 20:59.
This website by Johann-Mattis List is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. -
Venue
The Workshop will be organized as part of the 27th International Conference on Historical Linguistics Santiago de Chile, pending additional review after first contributions have been received.
Last updated on 2025-08-01 20:59.
This website by Johann-Mattis List is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. -