122222 SE Linguistics Seminar / BA Paper (2021S)

Linguistic complexity can be assessed on different levels, such as morphology (number of inflectional or derivational morphemes), phonology (size of the phoneme inventory) or in the lexicon (distributional properties of word frequencies; see Szmrecsanyi & Kortmann 2012). One determinant of the complexity of a language is thought to be the size of its speaker population (Nettle 2012). For example, there exists some debate in linguistic research as to whether languages with many speakers also tend to feature more phonemes than comparably smaller languages do (Moran et al. 2012).

In this seminar, we will investigate the relationship between linguistic complexity and population size on various levels. Students will focus on specific linguistic aspects relevant to linguistic complexity and analyze the above relationship either diachronically or comparatively. To this end, diverse data sources (census data; linguistic databases such as the World Atlas of Language Structures or Sketchengine; word frequency lists) will be used together with basic statistical techniques, in order to identify relationships between demography and language.

Students will learn how to perform statistical data analysis in the programming language R (with RStudio Cloud). No preliminary knowhow in statistical computing is required, but a solid knowledge of high-school mathematics (basic calculus, fractions, percentages, functions like log or exp, linear functions) will be taken for granted. NB: data analysis is fun!

IMPORTANT: All projects will be presented at a student-mini-conference, which will take place online on Saturday, June 19th, 10:00 to 14:00! Attendance is required.