[parislinguists] Séminaire CRLAO mercredi 04 Février 2015 Johann-Mattis LIST «Computer-Assisted Language Comparison and its Application to Chinese Dialectology»

[S N aaellens@yahoo.com [parislinguists]]

Vousêtes cordialement invités à une communicationdans le cadre du Séminaire du CRLAO sur les« Recherches actuelles en linguistique»   présenté par  Johann-Mattis LISTDFGResearch Fellow CRLAO «Computer-Assisted Language Comparisonand its Application to Chinese Dialectology» le mercredi 4 février 2015de 16h à 18h  INaLCOSalle des Plaques2, rue de Lille75007 Paris  During the last two decades,historical linguistics has experienced a quantitative turn, reflected inmultiple publications on such diverse topics as phonetic alignment, automaticcognate detection, and phylogenetic reconstruction. Unfortunately, the newmethods have created a gap between the “new and innovative” quantitativemethods and the traditional approaches which date back to the beginning of the19th century: While traditional linguists complain about a lack of qualityin computational approaches, computational linguists complain about a lack of structurein traditional approaches. This also holds for Chinese linguistics and Chinesedialectology, where quantitative approaches haven an even longer tradition, datingback at least to the 1960s. My research project on “Vertical and lateral aspects of Chinese dialecthistory”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) has two major goals:Firstly, it proposes an interdisciplinary, data-driven approach to Chinesedialectology, where – based on cooperation with biologists and sinologists –quantitative methods originally designed to study lateral genetransfer in evolutionary biology are used to explore vertical (inheritance-related) and lateral (contact-related) aspects ofChinese dialect history. Secondly, the project aims to bridge the gap betweentraditional and quantitative approaches in historical linguistics byestablishing a new framework of “computer-assisted language comparison” which developsinteractive interfaces which help to compensate both the lack of structurein traditional, and the lack of quality in quantitative historicallinguistics.In this talk, I will briefly summarize the current state of the art forquantitative methods in historical linguistics, pointing out their specific prospectsand challenges. I will then introduce the major ideas behind the framework of“computer-assisted language comparison” and give some examples on how it can beapplied in the field of Chinese dialectology and Chinese dialect history. Pour information :Les séminaires du CRLAO sont organisés par Hilary Chappell(CRLAO-EHESS) commenceront le 14 janvier 2015 et sedérouleront les mercredis du 16h à 18h jusqu’en fin juin. Pour toute information complémentaire,euillez contacter Hilary Chappell sur hmchappell at gmail.com ou au CRLAO, 131 bd StMichel,  M. Hugues Feler au 0153 10 53 71.
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