The study of Greek and Latin languages is ever more concerned with corpora analysis. Collections of texts have developed dramatically over the last twenty years. Almost all Greek ancient and medieval literature from Homer to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 is today digitized through the “Thesaurus Linguae Graecae” or TLG (University of California, founded 1972: 991 works, 14M words, paywall), while on the Latin side the “Brepolis’ Library of Latin Texts” offers an immense array of texts from the beginnings of Latin literature until the present day (Brepols Publisher, founded 1991, 5,442 works, 143M words, paywall). Inventories of these classic corpora, including collections in open access, are regularly made and enable studies that are generally limited to each individual case (see Digital Classical Philology, Ancient Greek and Latin in the Digital Revolution, dir. Monica Berti, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter 2019).
Now, there are many methods and tools applicable to the analysis of modern languages. Still, the branch of artificial intelligence that helps computers to understand human languages, i.e. Natural Language Processing (NLP), remains underdeveloped for classical languages. Many concepts used in modern corpora analysis such as deep learning-based approaches, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, contextual language models or recently bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) are still far away from being used in classical humanities.
In this seminar, we aim to present the work of scholars who engage in cross-disciplinary collaboration between the study of classical literature and NLP.
Speakers:
Thibault Clérice (École nationale des chartes, PSL) – Title TBC
Marianne Reboul (IHRIM, CNRS & ENS Lyon): “Machine learning on Homer (automatic alignment of translations on the Iliad and the Odyssey)”
Thea Sommerschield (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia) – “Working with Greek epigraphic data for Machine Learning”
Convenors:
Olivier Delouis, Christophe Gaillac, Tristan Alonge
Registration
REGISTRATION LINK: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYudO-vrjsqH9f5d_XFIyfqGHa-NLdH_8Sg
