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<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0cm"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Dear typologists,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0cm"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0cm"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">I would like to propose a workshop for next year’s SLE conference (26-29 August, Osnabrück, Germany). Please find below and attached
the proposal.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0cm"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Background<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">To what degree a given variety of human language is similar to or different from another variety has been a topic of great interest, not only to linguists but also
to the general public. With the advent of big data and computational tools in language science, we can now address this perennial question in ways that were not possible or realistic before. In this proposed workshop, we will venture into the many dimensions
of cross-linguistic distance, the quantifiable degree of dissimilarity between multiple lects (``language'' or ``dialect''), including:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Geographical distance</span></b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">.
Different varieties of the human language are used by human groups residing in different geographical spaces. As such, despite the intangible nature of language, most lects are definable as belonging to a specific spatial range, at least within a given time
frame. It is thus possible to measure the geographical distance between two lects, not only for its own sake but also to compare it to other types of distances.
<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">The most simplistic way of measuring a cross-linguistic geographical distance is to define a given lect as a dot on a surface,
i.e. in two-dimensional coordinate values, and measure the linear distance between two dots. While convenient, this method has the obvious limitations of (i) limiting the dynamic space of a given lect into a unifocal location; and (ii) ignoring all the geographical
barriers between two spaces that make human transport more difficult and non-linear, such as elevated lands, bodies of water, and political borders. To overcome this simplicity, more sophisticated measures of geographical distance are needed, taking into consideration
not only the physical distances between two ends but also the human capacity and willingness to travel those distances.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Genealogical distance. By using the traditional historical comparative method, the lects of a given language
family can be hierarchically classified in terms of when each lect has diverged from which other lect. This hierarchy, often visualized as a tree, make it possible the measure how genealogically close a given lect is to its intrafamilial lect, analogous to
measuring how distant a relative is from a human individual.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Such genealogical distance can be quantified either as a count or continuous variable, depending on whether the estimated time
of familial divergence is in relative or absolute scale. If the temporal data of the divergences are only relatively ordered, i.e. if we only know that lect A has split off from lect B before lect C has from lect B but not when in history these two splits
have happened, we can only quantify the genealogical distances in terms of the number of divergences, or ``layers''. If we do know when they happened, however, with the aid of non-linguistic data from genetics, archaeology, and written history, we are able
to quantify the genealogical distance as a continuous variable, weighing each divergence differently in terms of how far back in time it has happened. Such temporal data, however, are often unreliable, controversial, or unavailable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Typological distance. Human groups using different lects can come into contact and develop conduct-induced
similarities in their lects. Such convergence can occur in all linguistic domains, namely phonology, syntax, and semantics.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:40.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:66.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">
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</span></span></span><![endif]><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Phonological distance. Lects can be compared in terms of which forms they employ to represent concepts. As defined by Joo and Hsu
(accepted), a phonological distance can be intersequential, i.e. between two phonological sequences, such as between English word man /mæn/ and its German cognate Mann /man/ (Heeringa 2024, Do and Lai 2021, etc.). It can also be interstructural, i.e. between
two phonological structures, such as between the English phonemic inventory and the German phonemic inventory (Avram 1964; Eden 2018; Joo and Hsu accepted, e.g.).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:66.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:66.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">
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</span></span></span><![endif]><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Syntactic distance. The increasing number of cross-linguistic databases encoding morphosyntactic parameters, such as the World Atlas
of Language Structures (WALS, Dryer and Haspelmath 2013) and Grambank (Skirgård et al. 2023), allow us to quantify the degree of cross-linguistic grammatical similarity. The parametrical values may be categorical (e.g. the six possible values of ``What is
this lect's basic order of subject, object, and verb?'') or binary (e.g. the logical values of ``Is this lect verb-final?'').<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:66.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">While the parametrical format is a convenient way to retrieve the values from descriptive sources and encode them in a comparable
manner, it has some non-negligible limitations. First, the choice of the parameters is inevitably biased by what aspects of grammar the designer of the database deems important. The parameters may also bear different weights, some being more typologically
significant than others, which is difficult to quantify and code into the database. Moreover, the parameters are also almost always non-independent, such as the Greenbergian universal of the correlation between word order and adpositions, which must always
be controlled for when using the parametrical values for distance measurement. Innovative alternatives are in need in order to overcome and complement such limitations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:66.0pt"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:66.0pt;text-indent:-22.0pt;mso-list:l0 level2 lfo1">
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</span></span></span><![endif]><span dir="LTR"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"> Semantic distance. Semantic properties, due to their qualitative and sociocultural nature, are arguably more difficult for quantitative
comparison than syntax and phonology. Recent advances in computational semantics are helping us to overcome this difficulty. Natural Language Processing techniques like Word2vec enable the quantification of the semantic values of lexical items based on collocational
data retrieved from large corpora. Colexification databases, such as the Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (CLICS, Rzymski et al. 2020), also allow us to measure the distance between two lects in terms of how many colexification patterns they share.
As computational semantics is a rapidly growing field, many possibilities await us to measure semantic distances in various innovative ways.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Call for papers<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">We call for papers that provide new methodologies in measuring any form of cross-linguistic distances. The distance can be at any scale, between genealogically distinct
lects (``languages'') or closely related ones (``dialects''), and in any domain, such as phonology, syntax, lexicon, genealogy, geography, chronology, or demographics. Particularly welcome are studies that compare the distances of different domains and/or
those that compare the distances of the same domain that employ different methodologies.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Please send your provisional abstract (max. 300 words, not including the references) to the convener Ian Joo by 17 November 2026:
<a href="mailto:joo@res.otaru-uc.ac.jp">joo@res.otaru-uc.ac.jp</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">References<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Avram, Andrei (1964). “Sur la typologie phonologique quantitative [On the quantiative phonological typology]”.
In: Revue roumaine de Linguistique IX, pp. 131–134.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Do, Youngah and Ryan Ka Yau Lai (2021). “Accounting for lexical tones when modeling phonological distance”.
In: Language 97.1, e39–e67.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Dryer, Matthew S. and Martin Haspelmath, eds. (2013). WALS Online (v2020.4). Zenodo. url: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13950591.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Eden, S. Elizabeth (2018). “Measuring phonological distance between languages”. PhD thesis. University
College London.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Heeringa, Wilbert Jan (2004). “Measuring dialect pronunciation differences using Levenshtein distance”.
PhD thesis. University of Groningen.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Joo, Ian and Yu-Yin Hsu (accepted). “Phonological distances between Eurasian lects measured via Phonotacticon
1.0 reveal areal patterns”. In: Linguistics.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Rzymski, Christoph et al. (2020). “The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis
of cross-linguistic polysemies”. In: Scientific Data 7.1. doi: 10.1038/s41597-019-0341-x.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:4.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Skirgård, Hedvig et al. (2023). “Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic
diversity and highlights the impact of language loss”. In: Science Advances 9.16, eadg6175. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg6175.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<div style="mso-element:para-border-div;border:none;border-bottom:solid windowtext 1.0pt;padding:0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border:none;padding:0cm"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Looking forward to your contribution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">From Otaru,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif">Ian<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO">
<span lang="EN-US">-</span></span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO"><br>
</span><span lang="KO" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"MS Gothic";color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO">朱 易安</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO"> <br>
JOO, IAN <br>
</span><span lang="KO" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"MS Gothic";color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO">准教授</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO"> <br>
Associate Professor <br>
</span><span lang="KO" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"MS Gothic";color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO">小樽商科大学</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO"> <br>
Otaru University of Commerce<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace:ideograph-numeric ideograph-other"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none;mso-fareast-language:KO"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Apple Color Emoji";color:black;mso-ligatures:none">🌐</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none"> <a href="http://ianjoo.github.io/"><span style="color:#714FBC">ianjoo.github.io</span></a><br>
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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