Computer-Assisted Language Comparison: Reconciling Computational and Classical Approaches in Historical Linguistics

Project Information

CALC

Grant agreement ID: 715618

DOI 10.3030/715618

Project closed

EC signature date 28 October 2016

Start date 1 April 2017

End date 31 March 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost € 1 499 437,50

EU contribution € 1 499 437,50

Coordinated by

MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV
Germany

Deliverables

Open Research Data Pilot (1)

Data Management Plan

Free software tools include updates of the LingPy library for quantitative tasks in historical linguistics (http://lingpy.org) and the EDICTOR tool for handling etymological dictionaries. These will be updated in regular release cycles and immediately made public by submitting the data to ZENODO.

Publications

Peer reviewed articles (45)

Automated identification of borrowings in multilingual wordlists [version 3; peer review: 4 approved]

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List, Robert Forkel
Published in: Open Research Europe, 2022, ISSN 2732-5121
Publisher: European Union
DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.13843.3

The complexity and history of verb-stem ablauting patterns in Siyuewu Khroskyabs

Author(s): Yunfan Lai
Published in: Folia Linguistica, Issue 0/0, 2021, ISSN 0165-4004
Publisher: The Hague Mouton
DOI: 10.1515/folia-2020-2071

Bayesian phylogenetics illuminate shallower relationships among Trans-Himalayan languages in the Tibet-Arunachal area

Author(s): Mei-Shin Wu, Tiago Tresoldi, T. A. Bodt
Published in: Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 2022, ISSN 0731-3500
Publisher: La Trobe University

Betrayal through obedience: on the history of the unusual inflectional chain in Siyuewu Khroskyabs

Author(s): Yunfan Lai
Published in: Linguistic Typology, Issue 25/1, 2020, Page(s) 79-122, ISSN 1430-0532
Publisher: Mouton de DeGruyter
DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2021-2075

From Text to Thought: How Analyzing Language Can Advance Psychological Science

Author(s): Joshua Conrad Jackson, Joseph Watts, Johann-Mattis List, Curtis Puryear, Ryan Drabble, Kristen A. Lindquist
Published in: Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2021, Page(s) 174569162110048, ISSN 1745-6916
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Inc.
DOI: 10.1177/17456916211004899

The historical development of inverse marking in Khroskyabs: evidence from two modern varieties – Siyuewu and Wobzi

Author(s): Yunfan Lai
Published in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Issue 83/2, 2020, Page(s) 259-281, ISSN 0041-977X
Publisher: School of Oriental and African Studies
DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x2000258x

Annotating cognates in phylogenetic studies of South-East Asian languages

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List, Mei-Shin Wu
Published in: Language Dynamics and Change, 2022, Page(s) 1-25, ISSN 2210-5832
Publisher: Brill

Correcting a bias in TIGER rates resulting from high amounts of invariant and singleton cognate sets

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Journal of Language Evolution, 2022, ISSN 2058-458X
Publisher: Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/jole/lzab007

Using lexical language models to detect borrowings in monolingual wordlists

Author(s): John E. Miller, Tiago Tresoldi, Roberto Zariquiey, César A. Beltrán Castañón, Natalia Morozova, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: PLOS ONE, Issue 15/12, 2020, Page(s) e0242709, ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0242709

First steps towards the detection of contact layers in Bangime: a multi-disciplinary, computer-assisted approach [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]

Author(s): Abbiee Hantgan, Hiba Babiker, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Open Research Europe, 2022, ISSN 2732-5121
Publisher: Open Research Europe
DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.14339.1

Tangut as a West Gyalrongic language

Author(s): Yunfan Lai, Xun Gong, Jesse P. Gates, Guillaume Jacques
Published in: Folia Linguistica, Issue 54/s41-s1, 2020, Page(s) 171-203, ISSN 0165-4004
Publisher: The Hague Mouton
DOI: 10.1515/flih-2020-0006

Using Chinese Character Formation Graphs to Test Proposals in Chinese Historical Phonology

Author(s): Nathan W. Hill, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Bulletin of Chinese Linguistics, Issue 12/2, 2020, Page(s) 186-200, ISSN 1933-6985
Publisher: BRILL
DOI: 10.1163/2405478x-01202008

Linking norms, ratings, and relations of words and concepts across multiple language varieties

Author(s): Annika Tjuka, Robert Forkel, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Behavior Research Methods, 2021, ISSN 1554-3528
Publisher: Springer
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-021-01650-1

Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List, Robert Forkel, Simon J. Greenhill, Christoph Rzymski, Johannes Englisch, Russell D. Gray
Published in: Scientific Data, Issue 9, 2022, Page(s) 1-16, ISSN 2052-4463
Publisher: Springer Nature
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-022-01432-0

From transitive to intransitive and voiceless to voiced in Proto-Sino-Tibetan

Author(s): Gates, Jesse P., Honkasalo, S., Lai, Yunfan
Published in: Language and Linguistics,, Issue 23, 2022, Page(s) 212-239, ISSN 1606-822X
Publisher: Zhong Yang Yan Jiu Yuan yu Yan Yan Jiu Suo Chou Bei Chu
DOI: 10.1075/lali.00104.gat

Developing an annotation framework for word formation processes in comparative linguistics

Author(s): List, Johann-Mattis; Schweikhard, Nathanael Erik
Published in: SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, Issue 1, 2020, ISSN 1336-782X
Publisher: SKASE
DOI: 10.17613/73w9-x654

When internal reconstruction goes further: proposing the vowel system of Pre-Khroskyabs through examining bound state apophony (advance online)

Author(s): Yunfan Lai
Published in: Folia Linguistica, 2022, Page(s) 1-49, ISSN 1614-7308
Publisher: De Gruyter
DOI: 10.1515/flin-2022-2015

CLICS2: An improved database of cross-linguistic colexifications assembling lexical data with the help of cross-linguistic data formats

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List, Simon J. Greenhill, Cormac Anderson, Thomas Mayer, Tiago Tresoldi, Robert Forkel
Published in: Linguistic Typology, Issue 22/2, 2018, Page(s) 277-306, ISSN 1613-415X
Publisher: de Gruyter
DOI: 10.1515/lingty-2018-0010

Sequence comparison in computational historical linguistics

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List, Mary Walworth, Simon J Greenhill, Tiago Tresoldi, Robert Forkel
Published in: Journal of Language Evolution, Issue 3/2, 2018, Page(s) 130-144, ISSN 2058-458X
Publisher: Oxford University Press
DOI: 10.1093/jole/lzy006

Relativisation in Wobzi Khroskyabs and the integration of genitivisation

Author(s): Yunfan Lai
Published in: Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Issue 41/2, 2018, Page(s) 219-262, ISSN 0731-3500
Publisher: La Trobe University
DOI: 10.1075/ltba.17015.lai

Challenges of annotation and analysis in computer-assisted language comparison: A case study on Burmish languages

Author(s): Nathan W. Hill, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting, Issue 3/1, 2017, Page(s) 47-76, ISSN 2449-7525
Publisher: De Gruyter
DOI: 10.1515/yplm-2017-0003

Using ancestral state reconstruction methods for onomasiological reconstruction in multilingual word lists

Author(s): Gerhard Jäger, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Language Dynamics and Change, Issue 8/1, 2018, Page(s) 22-54, ISSN 2210-5824
Publisher: Brill
DOI: 10.1163/22105832-00801002

Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics

Author(s): Robert Forkel, Johann-Mattis List, Simon J. Greenhill, Christoph Rzymski, Sebastian Bank, Michael Cysouw, Harald Hammarström, Martin Haspelmath, Gereon A. Kaiping, Russell D. Gray
Published in: Scientific Data, Issue 5, 2018, Page(s) 180205, ISSN 2052-4463
Publisher: Nature
DOI: 10.1038/sdata.2018.205

Save the trees

Author(s): Guillaume Jacques, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Journal of Historical Linguistics, Issue 9/1, 2019, Page(s) 128-166, ISSN 2210-2116
Publisher: John Benjamins
DOI: 10.1075/jhl.17008.mat

Automatic Inference of Sound Correspondence Patterns across Multiple Languages

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Computational Linguistics, Issue 45/1, 2019, Page(s) 137-161, ISSN 0891-2017
Publisher: MIT Press
DOI: 10.1162/coli_a_00344

Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan

Author(s): Laurent Sagart, Guillaume Jacques, Yunfan Lai, Robin J. Ryder, Valentin Thouzeau, Simon J. Greenhill, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Issue 116/21, 2019, Page(s) 10317-10322, ISSN 0027-8424
Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1817972116

A cross-linguistic database of phonetic transcription systems

Author(s): Cormac Anderson, Tiago Tresoldi, Thiago Chacon, Anne-Maria Fehn, Mary Walworth, Robert Forkel, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting, Issue 4/1, 2018, Page(s) 21-53, ISSN 2449-7525
Publisher: DeGruyter
DOI: 10.2478/yplm-2018-0002

Towards a standardized annotation of rhyme judgments in Chinese historical phonology (and beyond)

Author(s): List, J.; Hill, N.; Foster, C.
Published in: Journal of Language Relationship, Issue 2, 2019, ISSN 2219-4029
Publisher: RGGU

A study of cognates between Gyalrong and Old Chinese

Author(s): Zhang, S.; Guillaume, J.; Lai, Y.
Published in: Journal of Language Relationship, Issue 1, 2019, ISSN 2219-4029
Publisher: RGGU

Automated methods for the investigation of language contact, with a focus on lexical borrowing

Author(s): Johann‐Mattis List
Published in: Language and Linguistics Compass, 2019, ISSN 1749-818X
Publisher: Blackwell
DOI: 10.1111/lnc3.12355

Old chinese and friends: new approaches to historical linguistics of the Sino-Tibetan area

Author(s): List, J.; Lai, Y.; Starostin, G.
Published in: Journal of Language Relationship, Issue 1, 2019, ISSN 2219-4029
Publisher: RGGU

Evolutionary dynamics in the dispersal of sign languages

Author(s): Justin M. Power, Guido W. Grimm, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Royal Society Open Science, Issue 7/1, 2020, Page(s) 191100, ISSN 2054-5703
Publisher: Royal Society
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.191100

Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure

Author(s): Joshua Conrad Jackson, Joseph Watts, Teague R. Henry, Johann-Mattis List, Robert Forkel, Peter J. Mucha, Simon J. Greenhill, Russell D. Gray, Kristen A. Lindquist
Published in: Science, Issue 366/6472, 2019, Page(s) 1517-1522, ISSN 0036-8075
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science
DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw8160

The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies

Author(s): Christoph Rzymski, Tiago Tresoldi, Simon J. Greenhill, Mei-Shin Wu, Nathanael E. Schweikhard, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Volker Gast, Timotheus A. Bodt, Abbie Hantgan, Gereon A. Kaiping, Sophie Chang, Yunfan Lai, Natalia Morozova, Heini Arjava, Nataliia Hübler, Ezequiel Koile, Steve Pepper, Mariann Proos, Briana Van Epps, Ingrid Blanco, Carolin Hundt, Sergei Monakhov, Kristina Pianykh, Sallona Rame
Published in: Scientific Data, Issue 7/1, 2020, ISSN 2052-4463
Publisher: Springer Nature
DOI: 10.1038/s41597-019-0341-x

Beyond edit distances: Comparing linguistic reconstruction systems

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Theoretical Linguistics, Issue 45/3-4, 2019, Page(s) 247-258, ISSN 0301-4428
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
DOI: 10.1515/tl-2019-0016

DAFSA: a Python library for Deterministic Acyclic Finite State Automata

Author(s): Tiago Tresoldi
Published in: Journal of Open Source Software, Issue 5/46, 2020, Page(s) 1986, ISSN 2475-9066
Publisher: Open Journals
DOI: 10.21105/joss.01986

Computer-Assisted Language Comparison: State of the Art

Author(s): Mei-Shin Wu, Nathanael E. Schweikhard, Timotheus A. Bodt, Nathan W. Hill, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Journal of Open Humanities Data, Issue 6/1, 2020, Page(s) 2, ISSN 2059-481X
Publisher: Ubiquity Press
DOI: 10.5334/johd.12

The uses and abuses of tree thinking in cultural evolution

Author(s): Cara L. Evans, Simon J. Greenhill, Joseph Watts, Johann-Mattis List, Carlos A. Botero, Russell D. Gray, Kathryn R. Kirby
Published in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Issue 376/1828, 2021, ISSN 0962-8436
Publisher: Royal Society of London
DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2020.0056

Toward a Sustainable Handling of Interlinear-Glossed Text in Language Documentation

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List, Nathaniel A. Sims, Robert Forkel
Published in: ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing, Issue 20/2, 2021, Page(s) 1-15, ISSN 2375-4699
Publisher: ACM
DOI: 10.1145/3389010

Handling word formation in comparative linguistics

Author(s): Schweikhard, N.; List, J.
Published in: SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, Issue 4, 2020, ISSN 1336-782X
Publisher: Slovak Association for the Study of English

Sami Honkasalo: A Grammar of Eastern Geshiza: A Culturally Anchored Description. 889 pp. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Faculty of Arts, 2019. ISBN 978 951 51 5732 4.

Author(s): Lai Yunfan
Published in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Issue 83/2, 2020, Page(s) 374-375, ISSN 0041-977X
Publisher: School of Oriental and African Studies
DOI: 10.1017/s0041977x20002505

Reflex prediction

Author(s): Timotheus A. Bodt, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Diachronica, 2021, ISSN 0176-4225
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
DOI: 10.1075/dia.20009.bod

Improving data handling and analysis in the study of rhyme patterns

Author(s): Johann-Mattis LIST
Published in: Cahiers de Linguistique Asie Orientale, Issue 49/1, 2020, Page(s) 43-57, ISSN 0153-3320
Publisher: Editions de I'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
DOI: 10.1163/19606028-bja10004

Las lenguas del Chaco desde la perspectiva de la semántica léxica. Análisis preliminar de patrones léxicos compartidos en el dominio etnobiológico [The languages of the Gran Chaco from the perspective of lexical semantics. Preliminary analysis of shared lexical structures in the ethnobotanical domain]

Author(s): Brid, Nicolás and Johann-Mattis List and Cristina Messineo
Published in: LIAMES, Issue 22, 2022, Page(s) 1-21, ISSN 2177-7160
Publisher: Universidade Estadual de Campinas Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem Departamento de Linguística
DOI: 10.20396/liames.v22i00.8669038

Benefits of reflex prediction: A case study of Western Kho-Bwa

Author(s): Bodt, Tomotheus A.; List, Johann-Mattis
Published in: Diachronica, Issue 2, 2021, ISSN 0176-4225
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
DOI: 10.17613/t3nm-q348

Book chapters (2)

A digital, retro-standardized edition of the Tableaux Phonétiques des Patois Suisses Romands (TPPSR)

Author(s): Hans Geisler, Robert Forkel, Johann-Mattis List
Published in: Nouveaux regards sur la variation dialectale, 2021
Publisher: Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie

Managing historical linguistic data for computational phylogenetics and computer-assisted language comparison.

Author(s): Tresoldi, T., Rzymski, C., Forkel, R., Greenhill, S. J., List, J.-M., & Gray, R. D.
Published in: The open handbook of linguistic data management, 2022, Page(s) 345-354
Publisher: MIT Press
DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/12200.003.0033

Thesis and dissertations (1)

Computer-Assisted Approaches to Historical Language Comparison

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List
Published in: 2021
Publisher: Friedrich-Schiller Universität
DOI: 10.22032/dbt.49007

Conference proceedings (6)

Are Automatic Methods for Cognate Detection Good Enough for Phylogenetic Reconstruction in Historical Linguistics?

Author(s): Taraka Rama, Johann-Mattis List, Johannes Wahle, Gerhard Jäger
Published in: Proceedings of the 2018 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, Volume 2 (Short Papers), 2018, Page(s) 393-400
Publisher: Association for Computational Linguistics
DOI: 10.18653/v1/n18-2063

More on Network Approaches in Historical Chinese Phonology (音韻學)

Author(s): List , Johann-Mattis
Published in: LFK Society Young Scholars Symposium, Issue 2, 2018, Page(s) 157-174
Publisher: LFK Society
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1171901

An automated framework for fast cognate detection and Bayesian phylogenetic inference in computational historical linguistics

Author(s): Taraka Rama and Johann-Mattis List
Published in: 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2019
Publisher: Association for Computational Linguistics

A web-based interactive tool for creating, inspecting, editing, and publishing etymological datasets

Author(s): List, J.
Published in: Proceedings of the 15th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. System Demonstrations, Issue 2017, 2017, Page(s) 9-12
Publisher: Association of Computational LInguistics

More on Network Approaches in Historical Chinese Phonology (音韻學)

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List
Published in: http://www.lfksociety.org/s_organization.htm, 2018
Publisher: HAL
DOI: 10.17613/7hbq-f306

CLDFBench: Give Your Cross-Linguistic Data a Lift

Author(s): Forkel, Robert; List, Johann-Mattis
Published in: Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020), 2020
Publisher: ELRA
DOI: 10.17613/8t0e-w639

Other (1)

Towards a history of concept list compilation in historical linguistics

Author(s): Johann-Mattis List
Published in: History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences, Issue 10, 2018, ISSN 2366-2409
Publisher: WordPress
DOI: 10.17613/xy30-ep36

Non-peer reviewed articles (1)

Testing the predictive strength of the comparative method: an ongoing experiment on unattested words in Western Kho‐Bwa languages

Author(s): Timotheus A. Bodt, Johann‐Mattis List
Published in: Papers in Historical Phonology, Issue 4, 2019, Page(s) 22-44, ISSN 2399-6714
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.2218/pihph.4.2019.3037