Abstract
In this paper we present a case study in which Visual Analytic methods for interactive data exploration are applied to the study of historical linguistics. We discuss why diachronic linguistic data poses special challenges for Visual Analytics and show how these are handled in a collaboratively developed web-based tool: HistoBankVis. HistoBankVis allows an immediate and efficient interaction with underlying diachronic data and we go through an investigation of the interplay between case marking and word order in Icelandic and Old Saxon to illustrate its features. We then discuss challenges posed by the lack of annotation standardization across different corpora as well as the problems we encountered with respect to errors, uncertainty and issues of data provenance. Overall we conclude that the integration of Visual Analytics methodology into the study of language change has an immense potential but that the full realization of its potential will depend on whether issues of data interoperability and annotation standards can be resolved.
Highlights
I INTRODUCTION In this paper we discuss the potential of methods from Visual Analytics [Thomas and Cook, 2005] for the study of language change by focusing on a web-based tool we have built in collaboration with colleagues from computer science: HistoBankVis [Schätzle et al, 2017, Schätzle et al, 2019] is a multilayer visualization system developed for historical linguistic research
We provide an introduction to Visual Analytics in section III, describe the functionalities of our HistoBankVis system in section IV and show how it works with respect to investigating an interaction between dative case and word order in Icelandic
We demonstrate the efficacy of using Visual Analytics (VA) for historical linguistic research by introducing our HistoBankVis system and by applying the system to a concrete case study on syntactic change in Germanic
Summary
In this paper we discuss the potential of methods from Visual Analytics [Thomas and Cook, 2005] for the study of language change by focusing on a web-based tool we have built in collaboration with colleagues from computer science: HistoBankVis [Schätzle et al, 2017, Schätzle et al, 2019] is a multilayer visualization system developed for historical linguistic research. We highlight the effectiveness of HistoBankVis by presenting a concrete test case which investigates syntactic change in Germanic, using historical corpora annotated according to the Penn Treebank format. We conclude that while the integration of methodology from Visual Analytics into historical linguistic research has great potential, this potential will only be unlocked to its full extent once issues of annotation interoperability are comprehensively dealt with. This includes developing systematic methods of dealing with inconsistencies and errors as well as annotation uncertainty and data provenance
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