The Index Diachronica

[Tropylium]

One more interesting reference I saw a few years ago was a talk Tresoldi (2020) referring to "the case of the Index Diachronica" without much further comment.

[bradrn]

One more interesting reference I saw a few years ago was a talk Tresoldi (2020) referring to "the case of the Index Diachronica" without much further comment.

What I find more interesting is that it mentions SCA² too! And then goes on to present their own sound change applier. It’s interesting to see a sound change applier written by a real linguist — I’ll have to look into it to see if there’s anything I can use in my own one.

EDIT: Looks like this person is also involved in CLTS, which makes sense.

[fusijui]

A little puzzled reading this; I remember a couple academic linguists pottering around with automated sound-change engines back in the late 80s and early 90s. I guess that just died out without memory or issue? That's kind of sad.

[Man in Space]

OK. I know bradrn needs credentials. Who else while I’m at it?

[bradrn]

A little puzzled reading this; I remember a couple academic linguists pottering around with automated sound-change engines back in the late 80s and early 90s. I guess that just died out without memory or issue? That's kind of sad.

I do believe I saw one of those once. It was a rather strange GUI program with the most unintuitive interface I’ve ever seen. If they were all like that, I’m not surprised they died out.

[fusijui]

Biting my tongue pretty hard, man.

[bradrn]

Come to think of it…let me e-mail the authors and ask them what they would like to see out of it.

EDIT: Just did.

Thinking about this again… did you ever get a response from them?

[Man in Space]

Come to think of it…let me e-mail the authors and ask them what they would like to see out of it.

EDIT: Just did.

Thinking about this again… did you ever get a response from them?

I did not. I should follow up with Dr. Haag at least.

[bradrn]

Come to think of it…let me e-mail the authors and ask them what they would like to see out of it.

EDIT: Just did.

Thinking about this again… did you ever get a response from them?

I did not. I should follow up with Dr. Haag at least.

If it helps at all, I know that academics often don’t mind if you re-send an email they might not have seen. (They’re busy, and stuff gets lost in the inbox.)

[Man in Space]

That does make me feel less self-conscious and bothersome.

[Man in Space]

Not sure, actually — I’ve never used DreamHost. Perhaps it would be easiest if you just DM’d me the login details.

I'm in the process of adding the hosting (I guess I had it set to DNS Only at first). When it's done I can credential you.

Anybody else while I'm at it?

[Man in Space]

Thinking about this again… did you ever get a response from them?

Mr. López Porcheron responded;

[bradrn]

Thinking about this again… did you ever get a response from them?

Mr. López Porcheron responded;

Thanks very much for this!

So, at least according to Porcheron, we’re on the right track in two key ways:

• We’re collecting sound changes in a database with a consistent format and phonemic information
• The data can be processed using an open-source library (that being my own Brassica)

Which is good to know!

[Mynodon]

Hi all,

I'd like to volunteer to help out with the project. I've no formal linguistics training and just colang as a hobby, but I'd like to contribute.

I've been reading papers about sound changes in the Ryukyuan languages recently, so maybe I could start there?

[linguistcat]

Hi all,

I'd like to volunteer to help out with the project. I've no formal linguistics training and just colang as a hobby, but I'd like to contribute.

I've been reading papers about sound changes in the Ryukyuan languages recently, so maybe I could start there?

Welcome! That would definitely be helpful for the Japonic thread.

[Kev]

Thinking about this again… did you ever get a response from them?

Mr. López Porcheron responded;

Thanks very much for this!

So, at least according to Porcheron, we’re on the right track in two key ways:

• We’re collecting sound changes in a database with a consistent format and phonemic information
• The data can be processed using an open-source library (that being my own Brassica)

Which is good to know!

Hey all, I'm Kev (aka Mr. López Porcheron from the above images ) I'm interested in helping, but my current time is a bit limited. I can pledge a couple hours per week (which might not be much, but it's at least something). My background is a programming one, so anything programming related I can help with. I checked your Brassica library, seems pretty cool, though I'm not familiar with haskell.

[Man in Space]

Can confirm, this is the man himself.

Welcome to the board!

[bradrn]

Hey all, I'm Kev (aka Mr. López Porcheron from the above images )

Welcome! Nice to have you here on the team.

I'm interested in helping, but my current time is a bit limited. I can pledge a couple hours per week (which might not be much, but it's at least something). My background is a programming one, so anything programming related I can help with. I checked your Brassica library, seems pretty cool, though I'm not familiar with haskell.

At least for the moment, I feel there isn’t a huge need for development work per se — the current website suffices for this early stage.

On the other hand, that experience could potentially be very useful for transcribing sound changes onto the website. Currently that process involves tools like git and YAML, which you may already be familiar with, but many other people here aren’t. (I hope to create a simpler submission process one day, but only once this project becomes a bit larger.)

[bradrn]

Just discovered a Mixtec Sound Change Database. It would appear from the README that the ‘sound changes’ in question are merely correspondence sets, but there’s probably some way to use this information somehow.

[bradrn]

Today the ID came up in the course of a discussion I had with Alexandre François (who I hope won’t mind me mentioning his feedback here). He seemed very interested — in fact he said it’s an idea he’s contemplated before, due to how useful it would be. He found even the old ID impressive, especially with its searching capabilities, and liked how the greater structure of this new one could increase its abilities in that regard.

Some specific suggestions he made:

• Examples — it would be nice to have examples for each sound changes. This shouldn’t be too hard for any halfway reliable source, although it would make for more work. Given the hyperlinked nature of the new ID, he suggested that example words could e.g. be linked to the corresponding Wiktionary entry when present. (I think it shouldn’t be very hard to retrofit this into the existing data schema).
• Maps — being able to map the distribution of search results would be extremely interesting. With this, you might be able to see things like, say, the spread of individual sound changes across an area.
• Graphs — another search-related feature, he suggested that one could connect individual phonemes into a graph representation, where each edge is weighted based on how often one phoneme changes into another. This would let you see broader patterns of phonological development.
• Improving consistency — a known problem area with what we’re currently doing: there is no way to enforce consistency in the representation of supersegmental features. In fact this is a limitation with Brassica more generally, and one which I’m not yet entirely sure how to solve.

Overall, this is giving me a lot more motivation to resume work on the ID. It would still be slow, but in the next month I’ll at least aim to finish transcribing the changes from Skou, and maybe make a start on Iroquoian (where I have at least one excellent reference).