MLC2018: Shared task on measuring linguistic complexity Faculty of Languages NCU (Collegium Humanisticum, Bojarskiego 1, Torun) Torun, Poland, April 15, 2018 |
Conference website | http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_CFP.html |
Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mlc2018 |
Abstract registration deadline | February 28, 2018 |
Submission deadline | February 28, 2018 |
Description
An influential line of thinking within evolutionary linguistics is that languages change in response to socioecological pressures, i.e. adapt to their environmental niches. Language complexity is a common parameter to test for such adaptation. It is, however, notoriously difficult to define and measure. Virtually every study of complexity uses its own operationalization and measure. On one hand, this diversity is beneficial for the field, since an intricate phenomenon is being studied from different angles. On the other hand, the comparison of different studies is inhibited. This is particularly problematic if different measures yield different conclusions, since there currently is little consensus about how measures themselves can be evaluated and compared.
To overcome this, we organize a shared task (shared tasks are widely used in computational linguistics) on linguistic complexity, namely: Measure and compare the complexities of a set of 37 language varieties of 7 families. The list of languages is given on the workshop website (http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_data.html). The participants are free to choose whether they want to measure just one facet of complexity (e.g. phoneme/grapheme inventory, morphology, word order), or try to develop an overall complexity measure. The complexity measure can be based on any conceivable metric. The submissions, however, have to clearly state: 1) what exactly is being measured (e.g. overspecification, lexical diversity, irregularity, verbosity, opacity etc.); 2) how the measure is calculated, and the theoretical rationale behind the method; 3) the resulting value for each language.
To facilitate the comparability of different measures, we request that the participants who apply corpus-based measures use the corpora available in Universal Dependencies, v2.1. The subsample to be used is given on the conference webpage (http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_data.html). Participants are free to decide which level of annotation they want to use. Plain-text files are also available for those who do not need any annotation. Participants who do not need corpora are exempt from this requirement. We also require that the participants submit all relevant calculations and scripts as supplementary materials (after acceptance).
The presentation format will depend on the number and quality of submissions. We will allot a slot for a detailed discussion of the proposed measures, their strengths, drawbacks and comparability, their relation to each other, and the possibilities to flesh out uniform approaches to measure language complexity and its evolution. We consider writing a joint paper based on the conclusions of the workshop.
Submissions
After acceptance, participants are also required to submit
We will publish electronic proceedings of the workshop.
Important Dates
Submission deadline: February 1, 2018
Submission deadline: February 28, 2018
Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2018 Workshop: April 15, 2018 (Collegium Humanisticum, Bojarskiego 1, Toruń, Poland)
Website
http://www.christianbentz.de/MLC_index.html
Organizers
Aleksandrs Berdicevskis (Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden)
Christian Bentz (Department of General Linguistics & DFG Center for Advanced Studies, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany)