The workshop will focus on quantitative methods for examining and measuring the differences (or similarities) between pairs of language varieties quantitatively, where the pairs will typically come from a sample of 20 or more.

After comparing the varieties, we typically wish to analyse the results, and techniques for doing this will also be examined, including mapping, clustering and multi-dimensional scaling.

Naturally, we will pay attention to the reliability of this sort of analysis, too.  Although the instructor is best known for work focusing on string comparison metrics, we will examine methods for comparing nominal and numeric data as well, e.g., features and e.g., formant frequencies,  respectively.  We’ll also reserve time for questions about the participants’ research.

To get a more concrete idea of the content, those interested might consult my publications http://www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne/papers.html or the web application Gabmap, which includes demos on various dialectal data sets https://gabmap.nl/bin/home

John Nerbonne
Germanistische Linguistik
University of Freiburg
D-79098 Freiburg im Breisgau
GERMANY
www.let.rug.nl/nerbonne
+49 (0)761 203 32 15