World Atlas of Language Structures

The World Atlas of Language Structures ( WALS ) or World Atlas of Language Structures is a project of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Max Planck Digital Library, which summarizes the phonological, word semantic and grammatical knowledge on 2650 languages ​​in a database. Thus relations between the specification of linguistic variables can be examined over a large area. The testing result is published both as WALS Online in the Internet available free as well as a book.

Details

A forty -member team headed by Bernard Comrie, David Gil and Martin Haspelmath (all Max - Planck - Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology ) and Matthew Dryer ( University at Buffalo ) evaluated on the basis of 6800 sources via 2560 both related and non- related languages ​​, to analyze their similarity structures.

Test parameters were inter alia:

  • Number of consonants
  • Presence of rare sounds
  • Distinction of tones
  • Genus Categories
  • Plural formation
  • Number of case
  • Future and past tenses in the verb
  • Imperative
  • Word order
  • Passive constructions
  • Number words
  • Color adjectives
  • Writing Systems

The result of the project has been published both as WALS Online in the Web can be used as free as a book at the Oxford University Press. The WALS is not only to linguists, but also non-speech experts provide insight into the structural diversity of languages ​​in the world. Due partially insufficient linguistic awareness only 2650 approx 7000 languages ​​spoken worldwide could be examined. The published languages ​​are, however, equally and analyzed independently of their distribution.

The structural analysis is visually supported by 141 picture cards that show each 120-1370 languages. Overall, the WALS database includes over 58,000 data points.

WALS program (Interactive Reference Tool )

For more detailed and specialized use of the World Atlas of Language Structures is to download and install a free program is required, which is available for Mac OS X, Mac OS9.2 and Windows 2000 and XP. See links.

Lexical semantics Grammar
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