37.3605, Confs: Workshop at ICHL28: Current Trends in Computational Geographical Dialectology (Iceland)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3605. Tue 03 Nov 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3605, Confs: Workshop at ICHL28: Current Trends in Computational Geographical Dialectology (Iceland)

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Date: 02-Nov-2026
From: Tatiana Kachkovskaia [tatiana.kachkovskaia at utu.fi]
Subject: Workshop at ICHL28: Current Trends in Computational Geographical Dialectology


Workshop at ICHL28: Current Trends in Computational Geographical
Dialectology
Short Title: ICHL28
Theme: Current trends in computational geographical dialectology

Date: 26-Jul-2027 - 30-Jul-2027
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland
Contact: Tatiana Kachkovskaia
Contact Email: tatiana.kachkovskaia at utu.fi
Meeting URL: https://ichl28.hi.is/

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics

Submission Deadline: 01-Dec-2026

Current trends in computational geographical dialectology
Organizers:
Outi Vesakoski (outves at utu.fi), University of Turku, Finland
Tatiana Kachkovskaia (tatiana.kachkovskaia at utu.fi), University of
Turku, Finland
Peter Ranacher (peter.ranacher at geo.uzh.ch), PH Graubünden,
Switzerland; University of Zürich, Switzerland
Karl Pajusalu (karl.pajusalu at ut.ee), University of Tartu, Estonia
We are currently in a period of the history of our disciplines where
new digital datasets documenting historical language variation and
dialect diversity are regularly becoming available. These range from
born-digital materials to recently digitalized historical dialect
atlases built upon the work of our analog forebears (linguistic
microtypology of Finnic languages, EstTyp, Norvik et al. forthcoming;
crowdsourced datasets such as Leemann et al., 2018 and Romansh idioms,
forthcoming Grünert et al.; dialect atlases of Japanese, Huisman
forthcoming; Danish, Wichman submitted; Russian, Wichmann, Jonjić &
Naranjo 2026; Finnish Santaharju et al. 2025 etc.). These are arriving
together with evolving computational, and especially geostatistical
approaches which herald a new era in the study of the patterns and
drivers of synchronic and diachronic linguistic variation. This
workshop aims at reaching beyond linguistics only by promoting the
usage of spatial linguistic data in interdisciplinary settings by
showcasing how geostatistical methods could turn the linguistic data
into new measures of human spatial variation.
Following Goebl (2010:435), the overarching aim of dialectology is to
“overcome the apparently uncontrollable chaos of the data from the
linguistic atlas”. Since the compilation of first dialectal atlases
over a hundred years ago (published in Gilliéron 1902-10, Saareste
1938, Kettunen 1940, etc), the “isogloss chaos” has begun to be tamed
with quantitative and computational approaches, and toolkits have
become available with easy-to-use public interfaces such as Diatech
(Aurrekoetxea et al. 2015) and Gabmap (Nerbonne et al. 2011).
Nevertheless, current geospatial methods allow many more possibilities
to extract information from these new datasets of local linguistic
variation. We wish to promote the development of the fields termed
geographical dialectology, dialectometry, spatial dialectology,
geolinguistics, geolinguistic dialectology etc. In this workshop we
want to bring together researchers from a variety of methodological
backgrounds to discuss the current trends in computational
dialectology and dialectometry as well as to explore the potential of
the new methods aimed at taming the “isogloss chaos”.
The workshop aims to cover (at least) three different aspects of
dialectometry: identifying the spatial patterns, studying the drivers
of spatial dialectal patterns and cross-analysing the evolution of the
dialectal landscape in interdisciplinary settings.
Today the statistical methods allow for uncovering the overall spatial
linguistic patterns over individual isoglosses, averaging or pooling
information from multiple, potentially contradictory, isoglosses
(Nerbonne & Kretzschmar 2003; for overview of dialect maps, see the
user interface Dialektkarten). Current trends in the field include
further comparison of linguistic landscapes identified from the
different linguistic domains: Norvik et al. (forthcoming) studied
spatial variation in Finnic languages (subgroups of Uralic languages,
sometimes referred as a dialect continuum) comparing phonetic and
morphosyntactic linguistic features. Their result indicates different
spatial patterns in these two domains.
Geostatistical methods further allow for reaching beyond the areal
patterns and ask why they emerged: what are the mechanisms driving the
observed spatial linguistic variation? These studies are needed to
test a range of hypotheses and assumptions, and to reveal the factors
explaining spatial linguistic variation. For example, contrary to
expectations, the differences between Finnish regional dialects do not
follow the isolation-by-distance hypothesis, but instead the dialects
are more similar as cultural and environmental attributes of the areas
become more alike (Honkola et al. 2018). Instead, Swiss German and
Danish dialectal patterns follow reasonable assumptions: Swiss German
dialects followed the wave model (Romano et al. 2022), and similarity
of Danish dialectal variants were predicted especially with location
in the same island/peninsula (Wichmann, submitted).
Holistic endeavors focusing on studies of human diversity can today
use spatially rich data to cross-analyse linguistic, social, genetic,
cultural or environmental data to reveal parallel patterns or causal
mechanisms behind them. For example, Lynch et al. (2022) reported that
one of the drivers of WW2 Karelian evacuees for staying in Finland was
the similarity of dialect. Also Pichkar and Creanza (2023) had
sociolinguistic take in their study: they found co-location of
dialectal and genetic areas in England and discussed the possibility
that linguistic variation would have affected population contacts
through mate choice. We predict that digital dialectal datasets with
fine-scale spatial variation will allow new ways in using linguistic
data for studies of human diversity and history. An example of novel
use of spatial linguistic variation is Nitch et al. (2025), who used
dialectal areas for modeling spatial patterns in mortality to
infectious diseases in 19th century Finland, exploring whether disease
spread could be better modelled using dialectal areas or
administrative regions as proxies of human population networks (as was
done often with prediction of Covid19 spread).
The workshop aims at presenting the current trends in using fine-scale
spatial linguistic data in linguistic and interdisciplinary settings.
It welcomes contributions within the themes including but not
restricted to: Resolving dialectal landscapes and drivers of the
observed areal patterns; Showcasing cross-analyses of dialectal
variation with extra-linguistic factors; Microtypological or lexical
variation within a language or between sister languages; Geospatial
analyses applied to solve linguistic variation; Human diversity
studies in relation to dialectal landscapes.
Deadline for paper abstracts is 1 December 2026. The maximum length
for the abstract (excluding references) is 500 words. Please submit
your paper via EasyAbs by indicating the workshop 13:
https://easyabs.linguistlist.org/conference/ICHL28/
More info: https://ichl28.hi.is/
References:
Gilliéron, J. (1902-10): Atlas linguistique de la France. 13 vol.
Paris: Champion.
Honkola, T., Ruokolainen, K., Syrjänen, K. J. J., Leino U, Tammi, I,
Wahlberg, N. & Vesakoski, O. (2018): Evolution within a language:
Environmental differences contribute to divergence of dialect groups.
BMC Evolutionary Biology. 18:132.
Kettunen, L. (1940): Suomen Murteet III A. Murrekartasto. Helsinki:
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
Leemann, A., Kolly, M.-J., and Britain, D. (2018): The English
Dialects App: The creation of a crowdsourced dialect corpus.
Ampersand, 5, 1-17.
Lynch, R., Loehr, J., Lummaa, V., Honkola, T., Pettay, J. and
Vesakoski, O. (2022): Socio cultural similarity with host population
rather than ecological similarity predicts success and failure of
human migrations. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 289: 20212298.
Nerbonne, J. and Kretzschmar, W. (2003): Introducing Computational
Techniques in Dialectometry. Computers and the Humanities 37, 245–255.
Nitsch A, Lummaa V, Ketola T, Honkola T, Vesakoski O, Briga M. (2025):
The spatial distribution of pertussis, but not measles or smallpox, in
pre-industrial Finland matches dialects. iScience 28(6), 112530. DOI:
10.1016/j.isci.2025.112530.
Norvik, M., Balodis, U., Metslang, H., Pajusalu, K., Saar, E., Teras,
P. & Vaab, J. (2026): Continuity and change of structural features:
The example of southern Finnic. In: Proceedings of SLE 2026, pp.
656-657
Pichkar, Y., & Creanza, N. (2023): Fine-scale cultural variation
reinforces genetic structure in England. American journal of
biological anthropology, 181(4), 626–636.
Romano, N., RAnacher, P., BAchmann, S and Joost, S. (2022): Linguistic
traits as heritable units? Spatial Bayesian clustering reveals Swiss
German dialect regions. J. of Linguistic Geography 10:11-22.
Saareste, A. (1938): Eesti murdeatlas I vihk. Tartu: Eesti Kirjanduse
Selts.
Santaharju, J., Syrjänen, K., Honkola, T. Seppä, P., Vesakoski, O. and
Leino, U. (2025): Data release: Digitized Dialect Atlas of Finnish by
Lauri Kettunen. Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries
Publications 7 (3).
Wichmann, Søren, Darja Jonjić and Matías Guzmán Naranjo (2026):
Foundations of Russian dialectometry. Russkij jazyk v nauchnom
osveshchenii – Russian Language and Linguistic Theory 51(1): 9-52.
doi: 10.31912/rjano-2026.1.1.
Wichmann, Søren. Submitted. Elements of a Danish dialectometry
Links:
Romansh idioms: https://www.atlas-rumantsch.ch/?idiom=de
Dialektkarten user interface: https://dialektkarten.ch/index.en.html
Estonian microtypology: https://esttyp.ut.ee/
Diatech user interface: http://eudia.ehu.eus/diatech/index
(Aurrekoetxea, G., Santander, G., Usobiaga, I. and Iglesias, A.
(2016): Diatech: Tool for making dialectometry easier. Dialectologia
17: 1-22.
Gabmap user interface (Gapmap.nl; currently no direct access):
Nerbonne, J., Colen, R., Gooskens, C., Kleiweg, P. and Leinonen, T.
(2011): Gapmap - A web application of dialectology. Dialectologia
Special Issue II: 65-89


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