LLS Colloquium: "Using causal graphs to explain linguistic phenomena"

On Wednesday 10th November 2021, Seán Roberts (Cardiff University) will be presenting his research on causal graphs and how they can be used to explain linguistic phenomena.

Using causal graphs to explain linguistic phenomena

Explaining linguistic phenomena increasingly involves a complex web of theories from many different fields. How can we cope with this complexity? In this talk, I'll introduce causal graphs as a framework that helps researchers think about their ideas clearly. I'll then present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics Database (CHIELD, https://correlation-machine.com/CHIELD), a tool for expressing, exploring, and evaluating causal hypotheses. It allows researchers to integrate multiple theories into a coherent narrative, helping to design future research. I'll present an application of this tool to the cross-cultural relationship between the number of speakers a language has and its morphological complexity. However, CHIELD is applicable to many different problems in linguistics and can be augmented and edited by anyone.

The talk will take place at 4pm on Zoom, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end - you can join using this link. 

Event poster: LLS Colloquium: "Using causal graphs to explain linguistic phenomena"