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| 2. |
- Barbieri, Chiara, et al.
(author)
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A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories
- 2022
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : NATL ACAD SCIENCES. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 119:47
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Human history is written in both our genes and our languages. The extent to which our biological and linguistic histories are congruent has been the subject of considerable debate, with clear examples of both matches and mismatches. To disentangle the patterns of demographic and cultural transmission, we need a global systematic assessment of matches and mismatches. Here, we assemble a genomic database (GeLaTo, or Genes and Languages Together) specifically curated to investigate genetic and linguistic diversity worldwide. We find that most populations in GeLaTo that speak languages of the same language family (i.e., that descend from the same ancestor language) are also genetically highly similar. However, we also identify nearly 20% mismatches in populations genetically close to linguistically unrelated groups. These mismatches, which occur within the time depth of known linguistic relatedness up to about 10,000 y, are scattered around the world, suggesting that they are a regular outcome in human history. Most mismatches result from populations shifting to the language of a neighboring population that is genetically different because of independent demographic histories. In line with the regularity of such shifts, we find that only half of the language families in GeLaTo are genetically more cohesive than expected under spatial autocorrelations. Moreover, the genetic and linguistic divergence times of population pairs match only rarely, with Indo-European standing out as the family with most matches in our sample. Together, our database and findings pave the way for systematically disentangling demographic and cultural history and for quantifying processes of shifts in language and social identities on a global scale.
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| 3. |
- Forkel, Robert, et al.
(author)
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Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics
- 2018
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In: Scientific Data. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2052-4463. ; 5
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The amount of available digital data for the languages of the world is constantly increasing. Unfortunately, most of the digital data are provided in a large variety of formats and therefore not amenable for comparison and re-use. The Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative proposes new standards for two basic types of data in historical and typological language comparison (word lists, structural datasets) and a framework to incorporate more data types (e.g. parallel texts, and dictionaries). The new specification for cross-linguistic data formats comes along with a software package for validation and manipulation, a basic ontology which links to more general frameworks, and usage examples of best practices.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Forkel, Robert, et al.
(author)
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Glottocodes : Identifiers linking families, languages and dialects to comprehensive reference information
- 2022
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In: Semantic Web. - : IOS Press. - 1570-0844 .- 2210-4968. ; 13:6, s. 917-924
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Glottocodes constitute the backbone identification system for the language, dialect and family inventory Glottolog (https://glottolog.org). In this paper, we summarize the motivation and history behind the system of glottocodes and describe the principles and practices of data curation, technical infrastructure and update/version-tracking systematics. Since our understanding of the target domain - the dialects, languages and language families of the entire world - is continually evolving, changes and updates are relatively common. The resulting data is assessed in terms of the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. As such the glottocode-system responds to an important challenge in the realm of Linguistic Linked Data with numerous NLP applications.
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| 6. |
- Hammarström, Harald, et al.
(author)
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Glottolog 4.5
- 2021
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)
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| 7. |
- Hammarström, Harald, et al.
(author)
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Simultaneous Visualization of Language Endangerment and Language Description
- 2018
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In: Language Documentation & Conservation. - : University of Hawai'i Press. - 1934-5275. ; 12, s. 359-392
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The world harbors a diversity of some 6,500 mutually unintelligible languages. As has been increasingly observed by linguists, many minority languages are becoming endangered and will be lost forever if not documented. Urgently indeed, many efforts are being launched to document and describe languages. This undertaking naturally has the priority toward the most endangered and least described languages. For the first time, we combine world-wide databases on language description (Glottolog) and language endangerment (ElCat, Ethnologue, UNESCO) and provide two online interfaces, GlottoScope and GlottoVis, to visualize these together. The interfaces are capable of browsing, filtering, zooming, basic statistics, and different ways of combining the two measures on a world map background. GlottoVis provides advanced techniques for combining cluttered dots on a map. With the tools and databases described we seek to increase the overall knowledge of the actual state language endangerment and description worldwide.
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| 8. |
- Liljegren, Henrik, 1968-
(author)
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Hindu Kush Areal Typology : (Version v1.0) [Data set]
- 2021
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- One of the goals of the research project “Language contact and relatedness in the Hindukush region” was to produce a typological profile of the languages spoken in the Hindu Kush region, a mountainous area in north-eastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan and the northern parts of the Indian-administered territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. The region is characterized by great linguistic diversity. More than 50 languages, including Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Nuristani, Sino-Tibetan, Turkic and the isolate Burushaski, are spoken here. You can consult this site and its database in different ways, depending on your interest. It can be browsed by language, in case you are interested in individual languages and the features they display, or if you want to see what their basic vocabularies are like. To get more of an overview over the region, you can browse by feature, and see how a number of linguistic feature values are distributed numerically across the languages, or geographically across the region (with values plotted on maps). It can also be browsed by wordlist, in which case you choose a particular vocabulary item to see its phonetic representation in the sample languages (and for some of the items listen to voice recordings of it). In addition, you can download data for offline use.
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| 9. |
- Norvik, Miina, et al.
(author)
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Uralic typology in the light of a new comprehensive dataset
- 2022
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In: Journal of Uralic Linguistics. - : John Benjamins Publishing Company. - 2772-3720 .- 2772-3739. ; 1:1, s. 4-42
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper presents the Uralic Areal Typology Online (UraTyp 1.0), a typological dataset of 35 Uralic languages and a total of 360 features, mainly covering the levels of morphology, syntax, and phonology. The features belong to two different datasets: 195 features’ definitions originate from the Grambank (GB) database, developed for comparison of world language typology, whereas 165 features (UT) have been designed specifically to describe the typological variation within the Uralic language family. We present a series of analyses of the dataset demonstrating its scope and possibilities. The complete data set correctly identifies the main Uralic subgroups in a Principal Components Analysis, whereas GB data alone is insufficiently granular to detect this family-internal structure. Similar analyses limited to various typological subdomains also give variable results. A model-based admixture analysis identifies four distinct areas of historical interaction: Saami, Finnic, the Volga area and Ob-Ugric.
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| 10. |
- Rzymski, Christoph, et al.
(author)
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The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies
- 2020
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In: Scientific Data. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2052-4463. ; 7:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Advances in computer-assisted linguistic research have been greatly influential in reshaping linguistic research. With the increasing availability of interconnected datasets created and curated by researchers, more and more interwoven questions can now be investigated. Such advances, however, are bringing high requirements in terms of rigorousness for preparing and curating datasets. Here we present CLICS, a Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (CLICS). CLICS tackles interconnected interdisciplinary research questions about the colexification of words across semantic categories in the world's languages, and show-cases best practices for preparing data for cross-linguistic research. This is done by addressing shortcomings of an earlier version of the database, CLICS2, and by supplying an updated version with CLICS3, which massively increases the size and scope of the project. We provide tools and guidelines for this purpose and discuss insights resulting from organizing student tasks for database updates.
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