ITR: Collaborative Research, Algorithms for Inferring Reticulate Evolution in Historical Linguistics

ITR：历史语言学中推断网状进化的协作研究和算法

• 批准号: 0312830
• 负责人: Tandy Warnow
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-08-01 至 2009-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0312830&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ITR; Collaborative; Research; Algorithms; Inferring

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Tandy Warnow and Dr. Donald Ringe will conduct three years of linguistic research aimed at recovering the evolutionary history of families of languages. Traditional models and methods assume that languages evolve in a bifurcating manner, in which case trees are appropriate graphical models of language evolution. Earlier work by the project leaders Warnow and Ringe (also funded by NSF) produced accurate computational methods for inferring evolution when the evolution of the languages is tree-like and led to advances in the understanding of how the Indo-European family evolved. However, a full resolution of the evolution of Indo-European (and of other language families) requires methods and models that can reconstruct evolutionary histories that are not treelike. The project combines research in computer science algorithms, statistical inference and modeling, and historical linguistics to produce effective means for reconstructing evolutionary histories of language families. It also draws on related work in molecular evolution. The project thus impacts several fields, and it will bring novel techniques and research methods to the field of historical linguistics. The open source software tools developed during this project will impact other fields as well, and in particular will help population geneticists and anthropologists resolve questions related to human origins and migrations. The project will include workshops in historical linguistics and will thus provide training in this multidisciplinary area to a broad group of researchers.

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，坦迪·沃诺博士和唐纳德·林奇博士将进行为期三年的语言学研究，旨在恢复语言家族的进化史。传统的模型和方法假设语言以分岔的方式进化，在这种情况下，树是语言进化的合适的图形模型。项目负责人Warnow和Ringe（同样由NSF资助）的早期工作产生了精确的计算方法来推断语言的进化，当语言的进化是树状的，并导致对印欧语系如何进化的理解取得进展。然而，要全面解决印欧语系（以及其他语系）的进化问题，需要能够重建非树状进化历史的方法和模型。该项目结合了计算机科学算法、统计推断和建模以及历史语言学的研究，为重建语言家族的进化历史提供了有效的手段。它还借鉴了分子进化方面的相关工作。因此，该项目将影响多个领域，并将为历史语言学领域带来新的技术和研究方法。在这个项目中开发的开源软件工具也将影响其他领域，特别是将帮助人口遗传学家和人类学家解决与人类起源和迁徙有关的问题。该项目将包括历史语言学讲习班，因此将向广泛的研究人员提供这一多学科领域的培训。