Enhancing comparability: modelling linguistic systems to advance typology

This is a Leverhulme International Fellowship awarded to Professor Dunstan Brown.

Linguistic typology makes generalizations about what languages have in common and where they diverge. A big challenge is the comparability problem. For instance, when we say languages A and B have gender systems, what do they have to share for that to be true? An influential answer to the challenge of comparability is the canonical typology framework. This treats comparability as a matter of greater or lesser convergence on a canonical ideal. This project focuses on the application of new techniques and methods for modelling linguistic systems, in order to make new tools available for this enterprise.