[Lingtyp] Challenges for Computer-Assisted Language Comparison

[Frederic Blum]

Name: Challenges for Computer-Assisted Language Comparison

What: Workshop at the 27th International Conference of Historical 
Linguistics

When: 18. - 22. August 2025


      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.


Invited Contributions

For the workshop that will — pending final evaluation — be organized as 
part of the 27th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in 
Santiago de Chile (18-22 August, 2025), we invite 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 is that we 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 
hope for contributions by computational linguists who share recently 
developed workflows that can be applied to data in historical linguistics.

Contribution Information

Those interested in contributing to the workshop are kindly asked to 
send an abstract to ichl25 at calclab.org, attaching the abstract in the 
form of a DOCX document with an accompanying PDF, in anonymized form, 
providing your name and affiliation in the email. The deadline for this 
is September 30rd. We will then review the contributions with an 
internal team of reviewers and inform all who submitted an abstract 
about the outcome. In case of success, the workshop will be held at the 
ICHL conference in Santiago de Chile. When submitting your abstract in 
DOCX form, please make sure that the abstract has no more than 800 words 
in length, excluding references (see also the official ICHL requirements 
for details at https://ichl27santiago.cl/about-us/"). Abstracts can be 
submitted in English and Spanish. You can find all the information here: 
https://calclab.org/events/ichl27/
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