[Histling-l] CfP: Workshop *Model and Evidence in Quantitative Comparative Linguistics*, Freiburg, Germany

[Gerhard Jäger]

    Model and evidence in quantitative comparative linguistics

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    Date: February 24-26, 2021

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    Location: Freiburg, Germany (short workshop at the 43rd Annual
    Conference of the DGfS)

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    Contact persons: Gerhard Jäger (gerhard.jaeger at uni-tuebingen.de
    <mailto:gerhard.jaeger at uni-tuebingen.de>) and Johann-Mattis List
    (list at shh.mpg.de <mailto:list at shh.mpg.de>)

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    Web Site: www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~gjaeger/maeiqcl21/


      Workshop organizers

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    Gerhard Jäger (Tübingen)

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    Johann-Mattis List (Jena)


      Call Deadline:

31-Aug-2020


      Meeting description

The emergence of data science has inspired a surge in interest in the 
application of quantitative and computational methods in comparative 
linguistics in the broad sense. By this we mean any kind of research 
studying features of several natural languages in parallel. High profile 
results touch upon three major topics:

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    the study of deep history, both regarding reconstruction of past
    language stages and language change processes and of population
    history in general,

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    statistical investigations of typological questions regarding, e.g.,
    the (non-)universality of feature correlations,

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    probing for - possibly causal - connections between linguistic
    properties and extra-linguistic variables such as language community
    size, climate, or diet.

These results are often met with a healthy skepticism within the 
linguistic community. It is tempting to discount the criticisms leveled 
against quantitative comparative linguistics — such as the insistence by 
practitioners of classical historical linguistics that historical 
linguistics must be based on the identification of sound laws — as 
inevitable side effects of a paradigm shift. However, computational and 
statistically minded comparativists do not agree among themselves 
regarding the standards of /data quality/, /model validation/, and 
/model comparison/. For instance, the debate in a recent issue of 
/Theoretical Linguistics/revealed that there is no consensus about some 
very profound issues pertaining the the nature and purpose of 
statistical models in computational historical linguistics. The open 
peer reviews on Dunn et al. (2011, /Nature/) in /Linguistic Typology 
15(2), 2011/revealed a similar demand for debate in typology which has 
not been conclusively settled so far.

The purpose of the workshop is to provide a forum for this 
/methodological discussion/. It will focus on:

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    approaches to /model validation/and /model comparison/in statistical
    work on comparative linguistics,

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    /standards/for data formats, /data accessibility/, and /data
    sharing/, and

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    /best practices/for code sharing and code accessibility within an
    open science framework.

Please note also: A limited number of travel grants will be available 
upon request.

We invite submissions for 20-minute oral presentations (+ 10 minutes 
discussion) in English. We are equally interested in contributions 
relating to data management and to data modeling. Abstracts should be 
anonymously submitted to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=maeiqcl21.

Abstracts should be at most one page long, plus references on the second 
page, on A4 paper with 2.5cm margins on all sides, and must be set in 
Times New Roman font of at least 11 points. The deadline for submission 
is 31 August 2020; notification date is 15 September 2020.

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