18.2495, Calls: Computational Ling.Psycholinguistics,Sociolinguistics/UK

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-2495. Fri Aug 24 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.2495, Calls: Computational Ling.Psycholinguistics,Sociolinguistics/UK

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1)
Date: 24-Aug-2007
From: Charlotte Gooskens < c.s.gooskens at rug.nl >
Subject: Measuring Linguistic Relations Between Varieties

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:51:50
From: Charlotte Gooskens [c.s.gooskens at rug.nl]
Subject:  Measuring Linguistic Relations Between Varieties
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Full Title: Measuring Linguistic Relations Between Varieties 

Date: 04-Aug-2008 - 08-Aug-2008
Location: Leeds, United Kingdom 
Contact Person: Charlotte Gooskens
Meeting Email: c.s.gooskens at rug.nl

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics; Psycholinguistics; Sociolinguistics 

Call Deadline: 31-Oct-2007 

Meeting Description:

During the Thirteenth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology 4-8
August 2008 (Methods XIII), a workshop on measuring linguistic relations between
closely related varieties is organized. Details about Methods XIII are available
from the conference website, at www.leeds.ac.uk/english/methods.htm. 

Content:  Measuring linguistic relations between closely related varieties

This workshop focuses on measuring linguistic relations between dialects of a
language or between closely related languages. There has been a long interest in
measuring linguistic relations, especially in measuring the similarity between
varieties. Two main approaches can be distinguished. On the one hand, behavioral
data has been elicited through intelligibility tests or by asking for judgments
of linguistic affinity in perception experiments (the judgment of whether a
dialect is like one's own).  On the other hand, computational methods have been
developed in the field of dialectometry.  These methods have been applied to
linguistic data directly, without intervening subjective judgment, and have been
used successfully to measure dialect distances and to make dialect maps.  As it
turns out, some of the latter, computational measures correlate significantly
with the former, perceptual measures of affinity.  Other computational measures
appear to predict intelligibility between closely related languages to a high
extent. 
    In this workshop we are interested in studies concerned with both approaches
to measure linguistic similarity. We are especially interested in studies which
aim to relate the two approaches. 

Examples of possible research topics are: 

- similarity measurements at different linguistic levels (lexical, phonetic,
phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic); 
- the relative contribution of different linguistic levels to the perception of
varieties and their similarity or ''strangeness'';
- intelligibility measurements; 
- perceptual distances (of ''strangeness'');
- dialectometric measurements;  
- laymen's intuitions about similarity;  
- correlation between linguistic measurements and geographical distance or other
extralinguistic conditions; 
- role of tones and prosody in linguistic relations; 
- validation of computational estimates of intelligibility through behavioral
experiments; and the significance of asymmetric intelligibility.

Keynote speaker: Prof. Vincent J. van Heuven, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Organizers: Renée van Bezooijen, Charlotte Gooskens, Sebastian Kürschner, Prof.
John Nerbonne, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.  

Format: We will integrate the full-day workshop into the conference tightly,
e.g. using the same schedule and announcing the workshop talks individually in
the conference program, facilitating switching from other sessions to this workshop.

Publication: We have organized similar workshops at the last 'Methods', and the
proceedings have appeared as special issues of Computing in the Humanities and
Literary and Linguistic Computing. We shall investigate opportunities for
publishing the refereed proceedings of this workshop as well.

Abstracts: Please send abstracts of up to 300 words excluding bibliography,
preferably as PDF, to Charlotte Gooskens c.s.gooskens at rug.nl no later than 31
October 2007.






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