Review: Language and Chronology: Text Dating by Machine Learning (Toner and Han)

In 2015, two grants were awarded for projects using computational and statistical methods to date medieval Irish texts: one is provided by the European Research Council, which funds the project Chronologicon Hibernicum in Maynooth; the other is awarded by the Leverhulme Trust to fund Gregory Toner’s project ‘Dating of medieval texts through regressive analysis of the lexicon’ in QUB. The present book is the outcome of the latter project, in which the two co– authors explore computational methods previously unknown to the field of medieval Irish studies and demonstrate the huge potential such methods embody for the discipline. When one compares the title of the project to that of the book, it is apparent that Toner and Han have pushed the methodological boundary much further by transcending from regression analysis in the initial project idea to advanced machine learning techniques in the outcome.