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Tanaka-Ishii Lab
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The lab uses complex systems theory to explain natural language mathematically.
AboutAbout the lab
Reading the complexity of language through mathematics
The Tanaka-Ishii Lab uses complex systems theory to study the mathematical properties of natural language.
From the perspectives of fractals and chaos, the lab examines the relationship between linguistic structures such as words and grammar and the large-scale regularities seen across language as a whole.
The lab builds mathematical models of language that reproduce these findings, and also applies them to natural language processing.
Language shares properties with other large-scale social systems such as finance, law, and communication networks, and the lab is also exploring new ways to understand these systems using text and computation.
Key terms
- complex systems
- An approach to systems in which regularities and patterns emerge at the level of the whole as many elements influence one another
- fractal
- A self-similar structure in which the shape of a part resembles the shape of the whole
- natural language processing
- Technology that enables computers to process the language humans speak and write
NewsLab news
Paper accepted at TACL
Paper accepted at ACL 2026
Paper accepted at DH 2026
Paper accepted at ICML 2026
Paper accepted at NeurIPS 2025
ResearchResearch themes
The Tanaka-Ishii Lab uses complex systems theory to study the mathematical properties of natural language. From the perspectives of fractals and chaos, it examines the relationship between linguistic structures such as words and grammar and the large-scale regularities seen in society, and applies mathematical models that reproduce them to natural language processing.
*Illustrative imageNatural Language as a Complex System
This theme studies natural language using complex systems theory. The lab works on the statistical properties of language, long-range dependencies, and the mathematical modeling of sentence tree structures (syntax).
*Illustrative imageMathematical Models of Language
The lab studies language models that reproduce the statistical properties of language, embeddings (vector representations) that capture those properties, and deep learning methods for handling complex sequences.
*Illustrative imageUnderstanding Social Complex Systems through Text
This research uses text to analyze and predict complex social systems such as finance and law. The lab works on time-series forecasting in finance and the analysis of legal documents, among other topics.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Tanaka-Ishii Lab include faculty, administrative staff, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, and project research students.As of 2026
- ProfessorKumiko Tanaka-Ishii-Ishii
VoicesStudent voices
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Fractal Broccoli” Jon Sullivan / Public domain (cropped)
- Natural Language as a Complex System: “Aufgeschlagenes Buch” Dietmar Rabich / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Mathematical Models of Language: “Network Visualization” Martin Grandjean / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Understanding Social Complex Systems through Text: “Modern collapsible balance scale for jewellers 1” W.carter / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Uchida Lab): “Network Visualization” Martin Grandjean / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Sakai Lab): “Datacenter Server Racks ( )” Carl Lender / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Simo-Serra Lab): “3D rendering example” Adamgmz / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Sugawara Lab): “Ant robot” Tiia Monto / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
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