14.07.2024
Understanding Language Development with AI-Supported Methods
Funding for "Pioneer Project" by Prof. Gerhard Jäger, Department of Linguistics
Professor Dr. Gerhard Jäger from the Institute of Linguistics has received funding under the "Pioneer Projects – Exploration of the Unknown Unknowns" initiative by the Volkswagen Foundation. Jäger aims to develop an AI-supported method to study the development of human languages based on spoken language data. The linguist hopes to gain deeper insights into the history of languages, potentially offering new perspectives on human cultural heritage. The project, titled "Phylomilia," is funded with 550,000 euros over three years. The "Pioneer Projects" program supports groundbreaking and risky research ideas aiming for significant scientific breakthroughs, even with the possibility of not achieving the set goals.
The project title "Phylomilia" is derived from the term "phylogeny"
for an evolutionary tree and the Greek word for speech, "Omilia."
Typically, comparative linguistics relies on written data manually transcribed and annotated. Gerhard Jäger aims to bypass this step with his project by using deep learning techniques to directly analyze acoustic language data. Together with his team, he will develop AI-supported technologies that can recognize spoken language and convert it into a format suitable for machine evaluation. A statistical analysis will then enable tracing the ancestry of languages and reconstructing earlier stages of language. Focusing on spoken language offers the advantage of capturing nuances and details that are lost in written records. The long-term goal of the Phylomilia project is to develop an automated system capable of identifying and interpreting features of spoken language that remain consistent over long periods. This can shed new light on the evolution and interaction of languages.