Computational Linguistics & Phonetics Computational Linguistics & Phonetics Fachrichtung 4.7 Universität des Saarlandes

Distinguished Speakers in Language Science

21 April 2016, 16:15
Conference Room, Building C7.4

Historical sociolinguistics from philology to computer science

Terttu Nevalainen
Department of Modern Languages, University of Helsinki

When we started our project on Historical sociolinguistics in Helsinki some twenty years ago we thought of it as being a field of study at the cross-roads of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics with a methodological basis in corpus linguistics. It soon became clear that it was much more than that, both substantively and methodologically.

In my talk I will discuss these developments by considering some of the methodological issues that our work has addressed over the years, with emphasis on recent projects and developments. These issues include coming to terms with the historical sociolinguist's notorious "bad-data" problem and building on the empirical research that has accumulated over the years.

Why is it worth taking all the trouble, then? The major question that we have been looking answers to is: How does language change in real time? Or more specifically: How does language change come about over time through the actions of individuals and groups of people? My talk will present some of the results that we have arrived at and suggest some directions for future work.

If you would like to meet with the speaker, please contact Stefania Degaetano-Ortlieb.