ACL Special Interest Group on Similar Languages, Varieties, and Dialects

Variation is intrinsic to human language. It is manifested at different dimensions such as diachronic, diastratic, and diatopic. With over 7,000 languages spoken in the world, most of them with multiple dialects and regional varieties, diatopic variation is arguably the most important dimension to be considered when developing NLP applications. Furthermore, processing dialects – which often do not have a written standard – presents its own particular set of challenges.

The purpose of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) Special Interest Group on Similar Languages, Varieties, and Dialects (SIGVAR) is to promote interest in all aspects of diatopic language variation and multilingualism and to foster collaboration between researchers in NLP/CL and in variationist linguistics.

The activities of SIGVAR include:

• The exchange and propagation of research results, relevant to language varieties and dialects.
• Coordination between organizations in academia (both in NLP and in dialectology and linguistics) and industry on this topic.
• Fostering open-source language resource creation, maintenance, and release.
• Endorsing the VarDial workshop and other relevant events.