International Quantitative Linguistics Association

About IQLA

The founding of IQLA (1994) goes back to an initial idea of Reinhard Köhler (University of Trier, Germany), who was the organizer of the first Qualico 1991 at the University of Trier, Germany. Subsequently a series of QUALICOs was organised, and where always the related of IQLA business meetings took place. In 1993 the Journal of Quantitative linguistics was by Reinhard Köhler established (now at Taylor and Francis) and in 2001 Glottometrics (initiated by Gabriel Altmann and issued by RAM-Verlag and since 2022 it is issued as open access journal by the IQLA).

Contact

Email: secretary@iqla.org

IQLA Council
  • President: Adam Pawlowski, University of Wroclaw (Poland)
  • Vice-President: Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain)
  • Treasurer: Emmerich Kelih, University of Vienna (Austria)
  • Secretary-General: Ján Mačutek, Mathematical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, (Slovakia)

Council Members at Large
  • Sheila Embleton, York University (Canada)
  • Lars Johnsen, National Library of Norway
  • Miroslav Kubát, University of Ostrava (Czechia)
  • Haruko Sanada, Rissho University (Japan)
Educational Outreach Liaison
  • Arjuna Tuzzi, University of Padova (Italy)
Former IQLA Council
  • 2023-2025
    • President: Adam Pawłowski
    • Vice-President: Lars Johnsen
    • Treasurer: Emmerich Kelih
    • Secretary-General: Radek Čech
  • 2021-2023
    • President: Adam Pawłowski
    • Vice-President: Hermann Moisl
    • Treasurer: Emmerich Kelih
    • Secretary-General: Radek Čech
  • 2018-2021
    • President: George Mikros
    • Vice-President: Hermann Moisl
    • Treasurer: Emmerich Kelih
    • Secretary-General: Radek Čech
  • 2016-2018
    • President: Arjuna Tuzzi
    • Vice-President: George Mikros
    • Treasurer: Emmerich Kelih
    • Secretary-General: Hermann Moisl
  • 2014-2016
    • President: Arjuna Tuzzi
    • Vice-President: Emmerich Kelih
    • Treasurer: Ján Mačutek
    • Secretary-General: George Mikros
  • 2012-2014
    • President: Emmerich Kelih
    • Vice-President: Relja Vulanović
    • Treasurer: Ján Mačutek
    • Secretary-General: George Mikros
  • 2012-2014
    • President: Reinhard Köhler
    • Vice-President: Peter Grzybek
  • 2007-2012
    • President: Reinhard Köhler
  • 1997-2007
    • President: Sheila Embleton
  • 1994-1997
    • President: Reinhard Köhler

Mission

The International Quantitative Linguistics Association promotes the use of mathematical and statistical methods in linguistic modelling, textual analysis, and related fields. Quantitative Linguistics covers the whole spectrum of theoretical and empirical research in these areas, including observation and description of linguistic data, formulation and empirical testing of quantitatively-stated linguistic and textual models relative to such data, and discussion of associated methodological and epistemological issues.
Over the last four decades Quantitative Linguistics has undergone a rapid development with respect both to theory and application. By introducing into linguistics the quantitative methods and models of scientific disciplines in the natural and social sciences, it has promoted the development of new and exciting theoretical perspectives as well as solutions to practical problems in the various branches of linguistic and textual research.
One of the main ideas of IQLA is to provide an institutional platform for researchers working in the field of quantitative linguistic and related fields. One main event are the regularly organised conferences on Quantitative linguistics (QUALICO), which provide an excellent forum for getting a representative overview on the state of art in quantitative linguistics. The official journals of IQLA are the Journal of Quantitative Linguistics (JQL) and Glottometrics (open access) and both provide a good overview of the range of IQLA’s subject coverage. Finally, IQLA offers for members the access to further technical resources (electronic bibliographies, access to QL-papers, omnibus volumes etc.)
Our main scientific events: regular organization of QUALICO conferences and conferences under sub auspices of IQLA, IQLA-GIAT Summer School in Quantitative Analysis of Textual Data, Dissemination of knowledge: Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, Glottometrics, Book series Quantitative Linguistics (de Gruyter.

History

The application of quantitative methods in linguistics is as old as linguistic studies are. However, as to an institutional endeavour the academic promotion of quantitative linguistics as a subbranch of linguistics in form of IQLA goes back to the tireless efforts of Gabriel Altmann (1931-2020) and Reinhard Köhler (1951-). Both, among many other colleagues, have the leading role in building-up and maintaining the essential institutional infrastructure of current quantitative linguistics (Bibliography of QL 1995; Handbook of Quantitative Linguistics 2005; book series Quantitative linguistics with it’s subseries Glottometrika and Musikometrika; foundation of the Journal of Quantitative linguistics in 1993 and Glottometrics in 2001).

Historical background

The first scientific counts of units of language or text were published already in the 19th century. In Germany, Förstemann (1846, 1852) and Drobisch (1866), in Russia, Bunjakovskij (1847), in France, Bourdon (1892), in Italy, Mariotti (1880) and in the USA, probably Sherman (1888) performed frequency studies as a means of linguistic description. First theoretical insight after many years of merely descriptive counts of various kinds is due to the Russian mathematician A.A. Markov who created the basis of the theory of Markov chains in 1913. ln modern computational linguistics and in natural language processing Markov chains are a central component of the corresponding methods of language technology (“Hidden Markov Models”).

Later, quantitative studies of linguistic material were, in the first place, a consequence of practical demands: efforts to improve second language training and optimisation of stenographic systems are examples. Early quantitative observations and corresponding mathematical models in the field of vocabulary are originated from works by J.B. Estoup (1916), G.U. Yule (1924) und E.U. Condon (1928). The unveiled interrelations between frequency of words and the ranks of the frequency class (alternatively: between frequency and the number of words in the given frequency class) were systematically investigated by founder of Quantitative Linguistics, George Kingsley Zipf (1902-1950). He was the first to set up a theoretical model in order to explain the observations and to find a mathematical formula for the corresponding function – the famous “Zipf’s Law”. Zipf and others observed the same kind of dependence between rank and frequency (or size) on data from a number of scientific and everyday phenomena. Among bis publications, his books “The Psycho-Biology of Language. An lntroduction to Dynamic Philology” (1935) and “Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort” (1949) are considered the most important ones. Zipf formulated (in different terms) innovative thoughts on self-organisation, the principle of language economy and fundamental properties of linguistic laws long before modern systems theory arose. His ideas such as the “principle of least effort” and the “forces of unification and diversification” are important still today and they belong to the few things contemporary linguists know about Quantitative Linguistics. Later, Zipf’s model was conceptually, and mathematically improved and enhanced by Benoit Mandelbrot (1953, 1959, 1961a, 1961b), the world-wide celebrated originator of fractal geometry. Zipf’s body of thought fecundated various scientific disciplines and enjoys increasing publicity again. The idea of self-organization of linguistic systems has been developed further by Reinhard Köhler (1951-) in his synergetic linguistics, which basically relies on various needs and requirements coming from the hearer and the speaker, serving as basis of an hypothesis-based research of various interrelations of linguistic phenomena and entities.

Shannon and Weaver (1949) applied information theory to linguistics and raised a storm of calculations on diverse language phenomena. Many linguists responded well to this novel approach, among them in particular Gustav Herdan (1897-1968), Rajmund. G. Piotrowski (also speeled Pitrovskij) (1922-2009). In Germany the physicist Wilhelm Pucks (1955) was responsible for a turn towards theoretical considerations in German Quantitative Linguistics. He set up, among others, a mathematical model of word length distributions and performed various investigations into language, literature, and music. In France, Charles Muller (1973, 1979) created a novel approach to study the vocabulary of a text, which is still popular today. In Russia, Zipfian linguistics was conducted particularly by Michail V. Arapov in Moscow, who based his models of the dynamics of texts and of language development on the analysis of rank order. In Georgia, a group around Jurij K. Orlov (cf. 1982a, 1982b) established a tradition of studies into the statistical structure of text based on the Zipf-Mandelbrot Law. The Estonian researcher Juhan Tuldava (1995, 1998) is famous for his mathematical methods of analysis of numerous text phenomena.

One outstanding input for current QL has come from phonetics. German phonetist Paul Menzerath (1883-1954) worked on problems of the word and syllables structure, where he obtained a tendency of an decreasing of the syllable length with increasing word length. Later on this observation was generalized and mathematically reformulated by German-Slovak linguistic Gabriel Altmann (1931-2020) as an statement about the construct – constituent relations. In current QL this is usually summarized as so-called Menzerath-Altmann’s law.
As it can be seen in the course of the history of QL, every now and then scientists from other disciplines, mainly mathematicians, worked on the application of mathematical models to and the development of methods for linguistic problems. Moreover, chronologically there have been several different centres of QL, but all in all QL is an endeavour bringing together colleagues from all over the world. The most recent development is without any doubt an increasing interest in QL-studies in studies (Haitao Liu and his corroborators at the Zheiyang University, China).

Reference: Köhler, Reinhard; Altmann, Gabriel (2025): Aims and methods of quantitative linguistics. In: Emmerich. Kelih, Ján. Mačutek und Michaela. Kosčová (eds): Quantification in Linguistics and Text Analysis. Selected Papers of Gabriel Altmann. 1st ed. Basel/Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, (Quantitative Linguistics [QL]
Series, v.73), pp. 261–285.

Constitution

Constitution of the International Quantitative Linguistics Association

§ 1 Name

The name of this organisation will be “International Quantitative Linguistics Association”, abbreviated: IQLA. The organisation, if so desired, changes its name through a vote of the membership.

§ 2 Purpose

The purpose of the Association is to promote the development of theoretical and applied Quantitative Linguistics and to stimulate worldwide communication of scientists working in these fields. In order to realise these objectives, the Association maintains a website, holds international conferences, establishes chapters, and sponsors such other activities consistent with the objectives as may be directed by the Council.

§ 3 Membership

Members join the Association using a procedure prescribed by the Council. The Council may also invite (appoint) Honorary Members, who shall be invited to all Council meetings. Membership is for the calendar year, i.e. from January 1 to December 31.

§ 4 Organization

The elected members of the Council are the President, the Vice-President, the Treasurer, the Secretary, and four Members-at-Large. The Council may appoint international representatives or liaisons to the Council. All shall be invited to all Council meetings and shall be included in all Council Correspondence. All members of the Council must be members of the Association.

The Council may appoint such Committees as it finds necessary to carry out the business of the Society or to further its objectives. Those committees shall preferably be chaired by Council-Members.

Groups of individual members may form Chapters of the Association. These Chapters may be formed on a territorial basis, on the basis of common interests (topics) or as a combination of both. They may either adopt the Association’s Constitution and By-Laws or design their own. In the latter case the Constitution of the Chapter has to be approved by the Council before the Chapter is officially established.

§ 5 Elections

The President invites nominations for the election of all Council Members. He/she gives at least one month’s notice to the membership of the closing date for the receipt of nominations. Candidates must be members of the Association. They may be proposed either by Council Members or by any six members of the Association. No nomination that is in accordance with the Constitution may be refused, provided that the candidate agrees to stand. In the case of contested positions there shall be a secret ballot. Officers are elected for one “term” which is the period between the end of the business meeting held during the International Conference mentioned in §6 and the end of the business meeting at the following International Conference. Re-election is possible for all officers.

§ 6 International Conferences

International Conferences are held by the Association every 2 to 4 years. The President nominates, and the Council elects, the Chair of the Organization and the Chair of the Program Committee for the next International Conference.

Fees for the International Conferences are fixed by the local organizing committee in consultation with the President. Local organizers are fully responsible for the budget of the conference.

§ 7 Fees and Finances

7.1 The membership fees are proposed by the Council and decided by the Business Meeting. Chapter fees are decided by the individual Chapters. A member who has not paid his or her dues before the end of the current year will be deemed to have left the Association.

7.2 IQLA may use various sources of financing, including but not limited to direct subsidies, indirect costs from grants and donations from individuals and institutions.

§ 8 Other Activities

In addition to the International Conferences, the Association may hold other conferences, summer schools, workshops, seminars or other research and educational activities. The organization of such meetings is subject to the approval of the Council.

§ 9 Amendment of Constitution

If proposed by at least 10% of the membership of the Association, or by vote of the Council, this Constitution may be amended by the majority of two thirds of the votes, either at a business meeting of the Council or by a written or electronic ballot. Proposals must reach the President at least one month before the voting takes place.

§ 10 By-Laws

In order to carry out the obligations as set forth in this Constitution and to conduct the business of the Association, the Council shall adopt by-laws. These may be adopted, annulled, or amended by an affirmative vote of at least 2/3 of the Council members. The Council shall have the authority to interpret the by-laws.

By-Laws

I. Duties of Officers

a. The President chairs the Council meetings and the General Business meeting to be held at all International Conferences. He/she nominates candidates for the elections to the Council and submits a report on the activities of the Association when he/she relinquishes his office. This report will be published on the website. He/she represents the Association and performs such other duties as usually pertain to this office.

b. The Vice-President shall support the President in all duties. In the absence of the President, the Vice-President will perform the duties of the President.

c. The Secretary will keep the minutes of all meetings, conduct the correspondence of the Association, and be responsible for carrying out the directives of the Council and for maintenance of the website.

d. The Treasurer is responsible for the administration of the funds of the Association, as directed by the Council. The Treasurer shall make a financial report to the Association at the Business Meeting and present a budget proposal for the coming term to the Council. The Council approves with a simple majority. The Treasurer is empowered in the name of the Association to accept and hold funds and property, under the authority of the President, to employ staff and to make contracts, subject to the following restrictions:

1. All major financial transactions (i.e. those above €2000) shall be undertaken jointly by the Secretary and the Treasurer. The Council shall decide the nature and scope of such transactions as may be carried out by either of them separately.

2. The Treasurer shall cause proper books of accounts to be kept with respect to all money transactions and liabilities of the Association. The accounts shall be audited annually by two auditors appointed by the Council.

3. If conditions are attached to funds granted or donated to the Association, the Treasurer must obtain the approval of the President before accepting those funds.

II. Voting and Conduct of Business

Motions will be carried by a simple majority of eligible voters in attendance if not stated otherwise in the Constitution. If a simple majority of all members belonging to the Council deems the issue of sufficient importance to warrant a full vote, the issue shall be presented to all eligible voters and a vote (either electronic or postal mail) shall be conducted.

Eligible voters for the Council meetings are all members of the Council (whether elected or appointed) and for the General Business meeting all members of the Association.

III. Establishing Chapters

In order to facilitate intensive work and communication, the intensive study of sub-disciplines of Quantitative Linguistics as well as new applications, and in order to adapt the work of the Association to local conditions, Chapters may be established within the Association. A Chapter should normally not extend over a territory larger than a country or an area in order to keep meetings of its members easy. In one country or one area there might, however, be several Chapters, distinct by either territory covered or topic of specialization.

Applications for the establishment of Chapters signed by at least 10 members of the Association should be sent to the President. The Council decides about newly established Chapters. The application should include a draft of the constitution and/or by-laws of the Chapter-in-Founding, information on the founding members and on the boundaries of the proposed Chapter (territory and/or topic-wise).

Chapters may levy additional Chapter fees, which shall be directly collected by the officers of the Chapters. These fees must not be imposed before the Chapter has been approved and thereby chartered by the Council.

Approved in Wrocław, July 7, 2018; amendment to § 7 approved in Brno, June 26, 2025