idea for a workshop at next ICHL

[Elly Van Gelderen]

And a special issue of Diachronica will be out on 

Quantitative Approaches to Linguistic Diversity
Commemorating the centenary of the birth of Morris Swadesh Special Issue of Diachronica 27:2 (2010)
http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=DIA%2027%3A2

Best, elly 

-----Original Message-----
From: histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu [mailto:histling-l-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of M.T. Biberauer
Sent: Monday, September 06, 2010 7:54 AM
To: Carl Edlund Anderson
Cc: robert ratcliffe; histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
Subject: Re: [Histling-l] idea for a workshop at next ICHL

April McMahon (who I *think* supervised Marisa Lohr's PhD) had a project on relevant aspects of this problem too. This ran 2001-2004 at the University of Sheffield, UK - title: 'Quantitative Methods for Language Classification', with Paul Heggarty, Rob McMahon and Natalia Slaska all being researchers involved in the project. Natalia completed a PhD in 2006, called "Meaning Lists in Lexicostatistical Studies: Evaluation, application, ramifications". The abstract can be found here on the Linguist
List:

http://linguistlist.org/pubs/diss/browse-diss-action.cfm?DissID=12760

(she's left Linguistics, though)

The project produced numerous publications, including a special edition of the Transactions of the Philological Society (103(2) - "Quantitative Methods in Language Comparison") and a 2005 OUP volume, "Language Classification by Numbers", co-written by April and Rob McMahon.

April, who's now in Edinburgh, would probably be a good person to contact in connection with others who have interests in this area.

All the best with this
Theresa 


-- Dr Theresa Biberauer Senior Research Associate: Linguistics Department Director of Studies: Corpus Christi, Lucy Cavendish, Magdalene, St Edmund's and St John's Colleges Bye-Fellow in English and Linguistics: Downing College Cambridge, U.K.

Senior Lecturer Extraordinary
General Linguistics Department
Stellenbosch University, South Africa

OFFICE: Room 145, Raised Faculty Building, Sidgwick Avenue
TELEPHONE: +44 1223 763062

On Sep 6 2010, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:

> About 10 years ago a colleague of mine at grad school was working on 
> something like this, particularly in terms of improving on Swadesh 
> list
> reliance:
>
> Lohr, Marisa (1999). Methods for the Genetic Classification of 
> Languages, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge.
>
> I am not entirely sure how to contact her, but the last I knew, she 
> was lecturing with the Open University in the UK.
>
>Cheers,
>Carl
>
>On 06 Sep 2010, at 05:19 , robert ratcliffe wrote:
>> I realize that Ringe and Kessler and others have made important 
>> strides in this direction. But there is a lot more to do. I would 
>> like for example to get beyond reliance on Swadesh lists to look more 
>> realistically at what comparatists actually do, and to get beyond 
>> evaluation of proposed families to look also at problems involving 
>> proposed cognate sets or proposed correspondences for widely accepted 
>> families that have so far resisted reconstruction.
>> 
>> These problems have been on my mind for a number of years. Is there 
>> anyone else in the world who is interested in them? If so would you 
>> be interested in participating a workshop on this at the next ICHL to 
>> be held in Osaka next July? Please contact me before Sept. 12.
>
>--
>Carl Edlund Anderson
>mailto:cea at carlaz.com
>mailto:cea.unisabana at gmail.com
>mailto:carl.anderson at unisabana.edu.co
>http://unisabana.academia.edu/CarlAnderson
>http://www.mendeley.com/profiles/carl-edlund-anderson/
>Department of Languages & Cultures
>UNIVERSITY OF THE SABANA
>Chía Campus Universitario, Puente del Común Bogotá, Colombia
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>Histling-l at mailman.rice.edu
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>


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