37.3163, FYI: Monthly Online ILFC Seminar: Interactions between Formal and Computational Linguistics

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-3163. Fri Oct 02 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.3163, FYI: Monthly Online ILFC Seminar: Interactions between Formal and Computational Linguistics

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Date: 01-Oct-2026
From: Timothée Bernard [timothee.bernard at u-pariscite.fr]
Subject: Monthly Online ILFC Seminar: Interactions between Formal and Computational Linguistics


Monthly online ILFC Seminar: interactions between formal and
computational linguistics
https://gdr-lift.loria.fr/monthy-online-ilfc-seminar/
The LIFT2 research group is happy to announce the forthcoming sessions
of the ILFC seminar on the interactions between formal and
computational linguistics.
The seminar is held on Zoom. To attend the seminar and get updates,
please subscribe to our mailing list (we now only rarely communicate
through other mailing lists):
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/subscribe/seminaire_ilfc
15 Oct 2026 16:30-17:30 UTC+2: Robin Ryder (Imperial College London)
Title: Bayesian methods for inferring the history of languages
Abstract: : Languages change through time in a manner comparable to
biological evolution. Models have been developed for many aspects of
human languages, including vocabulary, syntax and phonology. The
complexity of these models, as well as the nature of the questions of
interest, make the Bayesian framework quite natural in this setting,
which explains why much of the research in Statistics applied to
Historical Linguistics uses Bayesian methods. I shall present an
overview of various models, starting with Morris Swadesh’s failed
attempts at glottochronology in the 1950s, then looking at some models
developed in the last two decades. I shall go into more detail for a
model of so-called “core” lexical data by a stochastic process on a
phylogenetic tree, with an initial focus on the Sino-Tibetan family of
languages and on the issue of dating the most recent common ancestor
to these languages. This will allow me to discuss issues of model
robustness and validation. I shall conclude with some recent work
about joint estimation of lexical and phonological changes through a
model of random discrete matrices, and its application to the history
of sign languages. If time allows, I will also discuss ongoing work on
the theoretical limits of phylolinguistics.
19 Nov 2026 16:30-17:30 UTC+1: Su Lin Blodgett (Mila)
10 Dec 2026 16:30-17:30 UTC+1: Jonathan Ginzburg (Université Paris
Cité)
14 Jan 2027 16:30-17:30 UTC+1: Sina Zarrieß (University of Bielefeld)
11 Feb 2027 16:30-17:30 UTC+1: James Pustejovsky (Brandeis University)

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
                     General Linguistics




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