Visualizing Linguistic Structure

The talk features innovative visual analyses for text and speech data. The work presented is the result of a cooperation between visual computing and linguistics.  Visual analytics for  linguistics allows for a comparative analysis of the underlying structure of languages by: a) processing large and complex amounts of data automatically; b) presenting an at-a-glance overview; c) drilling down to individual data points on demand; d) allowing for a dynamic interaction with the visualizations. The sample visual analyses presented include pixel, glyph and sunburst visualizations as well as self-organizing maps and focus mainly on phenomena involving language change over time.  The talk will demonstrate the high potential for a methodological innovative leap within linguistics that an integration of visual analytics offers as well as discuss challenges and difficulties with applying visual analytics to linguistic problems.