Data: dijous 4 de març del 2021

Hora: 12.00 h

Accés: en línia, amb Collaborate (Enllaç: eu.bbcollab.com/guest/cbd918ec0de7403f94ba44b0a67b7a2d)

Resum: This presentation is going to explore the benefits of the application of formal graph theory to the analysis of language. The past decades in both society as a whole and linguistics as an academic field are characterised by a steadily increasing relevance of technology. While society faces challenges in dealing with the resulting enhanced interpersonal connectivity, the work of linguists nowadays faces a myriad of new research methods based on these technologies. Such technologies also have a deep impact on theory. This is, however, not a recent phenomenon. The work of Noam Chomsky is deeply influenced by the mathematical advances in computation and automata theory at the time, most notably by Alan Turing. The technological revolution that is the Internet has produced a new tool and method of conceptualisation of language – networks. Networks are widely studied in informatics and communication under the mathematical umbrella graph-theory, but have hitherto only started to impact the study of linguistics proper. The presentation will focus on highlighting the different applications of graph theory to human language, specifically on the applicability of networks on different levels of linguistic inquiry, such as typology, grammar, cognition, and interaction networks. It will be shown that all these applications of networks to language operate under fundamentally different axiomatic assumptions, the advantages of pitfalls of which are going to be discussed in each context. Finally, the formal analysis of interaction networks will be characterised drawing on empirical data from a network corpus from online social media, hinting to some of the properties of such networks.