29.686, Calls: Comp Ling, Gen Ling, Morphology, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology/Poland

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-686. Mon Feb 12 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.686, Calls: Comp Ling, Gen Ling, Morphology, Text/Corpus Ling, Typology/Poland

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Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 14:59:26
From: Aleksandrs Berdicevskis [aleksandrs.berdicevskis at lingfil.uu.se]
Subject: Measuring Language Complexity

 
Full Title: Measuring Language Complexity 
Short Title: MLC 

Date: 15-Apr-2018 - 15-Apr-2018
Location: Torun, Poland 
Contact Person: Aleksandrs Berdicevskis
Meeting Email: aleksandrs.berdicevskis at lingfil.uu.se
Web Site: http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_index.html 

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; General Linguistics; Morphology; Text/Corpus Linguistics; Typology 

Call Deadline: 28-Feb-2018 

Meeting Description:

Measuring Language Complexity (MLC) is a workshop held at the Faculty of
Languages NCU (Collegium Humanisticum, Bojarskiego 1, Torun) as a satellite
event of EVOLANG XII in Torun, Poland. 

It aims to bring together researchers from different fields who are interested
in measures of language complexity. To ensure comparability and
reproducibility, participants are required to measure - with their metric of
choice - the linguistic complexity of a predefined set of 37 language
varieties belonging to 7 families. The results, as well as their mutual
agreement/disagreement will be discussed at the workshop.


Final Call for Papers:

An influential line of thinking within evolutionary linguistics is that
languages change in response to socioecological pressures, i.e. adapt to their
environmental niches. Language complexity is a common parameter to test for
such adaptation. It is, however, notoriously difficult to define and measure.
Virtually every study of complexity uses its own operationalization and
measure. On one hand, this diversity is beneficial for the field, since an
intricate phenomenon is being studied from different angles. On the other
hand, the comparison of different studies is inhibited. This is particularly
problematic if different measures yield different conclusions, since there
currently is little consensus about how measures themselves can be evaluated
and compared. 

To overcome this, we organize a shared task (shared tasks are widely used in
computational linguistics) on linguistic complexity, namely: Measure and
compare the complexities of a set of 37 language varieties of 7 families
(http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_data.html, submissions covering only a part
of the sample may also be considered). The participants are free to choose
whether they want to measure just one facet of complexity (e.g.
phoneme/grapheme inventory, morphology, word order), or try to develop an
overall complexity measure. The complexity measure can be based on any
conceivable metric. The submissions, however, have to clearly state: 1) what
exactly is being measured (e.g. overspecification, lexical diversity,
irregularity, verbosity, opacity etc.); 2) how the measure is calculated, and
the theoretical rationale behind the method; 3) the resulting value for each
language. 

See further details at the workshop website:
http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_index.html




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