Human Diversity seminar 21.4.2023, Vesakoski and Inman

Human Diversity consortiums new interdisciplinary seminar series starts!

HUDI-seminars showcase interdisciplinary research associated to the consortium. At the start of the seminar a consortium member talks about the Human Diversity research related to the topic (20+10 minutes) followed by a visitor talk (30+15 minutes).

Live in Arcanum seminar room A270 or online at https://utu.zoom.us/j/63823912886

Friday 21.4.

12.15-12.50 Outi Vesakoski: Human Diversity
“Discovering how human encounters cascade into genetic and cultural legacies”
Abstract: HuDi is about discovering how human encounters cascade into genetic and cultural legacies. How could we use linguistic research in this?

coffee and tee

13-14 David Inman (Zürichin yliopisto, Department of Comparative Language Science Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution)
“Linguistic traces of population contact”
Abstract: Language contact between population groups leaves behind evidence in the lexicons and grammars of the languages involved. This linguistic information is then carried by the languages and their descendent languages, leaving a trace of historical cultural and linguistic connections that persists after the initiating contact event. In a sufficiently dense and multilingual communication network, multiple languages will develop a pervasive and locally-specific linguistic profile. The large number of new grammars and digital resources published in the last 20 years have made it easier to find historical evidence of this sort present in modern languages. I will talk about how these contact events occur, their relationship to other aspects of human culture, and their impact on language development. I will show how this kind of data can be collected and different ways to analyze it, using the ongoing development of the Areal Typology of the Languages of the Americas (ATLAs) database at the University of Zurich and the sBayes algorithm (Ranacher et al 2021).