Hyperbolic Interlingual Representations

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Lucie Flek
• Subject Area: Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 561108277

In this proposal, we seek to employ hyperbolic methods in order to improve representations in spaces that are shared between multiple languages, and in spaces where language variants themselves are encoded. We believe that the hierarchical nature of the linguistic landscape makes languages a prime candidate for representation in hyperbolic space, allowing to model not only the similarities in typology and genealogy of various language groups but also to “drill down” into linguistic varieties and communities smaller than those recognized as full ISO-693-2 constructs. We are also interested in the question of whether an interlingual space can produce interlingual text, and what such text might look like; furthermore, given a system which is capable of manipulating such interlingual text, and considering the hierarchical nature of the relations between languages, would operating in Hyperbolic Interlingual space improve the utility of using such a system? Concretely, the mere demarcation of languages along the classical framework has become contested by typological linguists and sociolinguists , highlighting the gradient mutual intelligibility between dialects, registers, demographic variants, colloquial use, code-switching and code-mixing usage, all the way down to the individual idiolect. We suggest that scaling up interlingual space to include finer and finer levels of distinction, many but not all of which present hierarchical structure, could be done more naturally within hyperbolic geometry.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• Partner Organisation: The Israel Science Foundation
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Yuval David Pinter, Ph.D.