This book promotes the development of linguistic databases by describing a number of successful database projects, focusing especially on cross-linguistic and typological research. It has become increasingly clear that ready access to knowledge about cross-linguistic variation is of great value to many types of linguistic research. Such a systematic body of data is essential in order to gain a proper understanding of what is truly universal in language and what is determined by specific cultural settings. Moreover, it is increasingly needed as a tool to systematically evaluate contrasting theoretical claims. The book includes a chapter on general problems of using databases to handle language data and chapters on a number of individual projects.
Author(s): Martin Everaert, Simon Musgrave, Alexis Dimitriadis
Series: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 41
Edition: 1
Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
Year: 2009
Language: English
Pages: 416
Frontmatter
......Page 2
Contents......Page 6
Introduction......Page 8
Designing linguistic databases: A primer for linguists......Page 20
A typological database of personal and demonstrative pronouns......Page 84
Databases designed for investigating specific phenomena......Page 124
How to integrate databases without starting a typology war: The Typological Database System......Page 162
A contribution to ‘two-dimensional’ language description: the Typological Database of Intensifiers and Reflexives......Page 216
StressTyp: A database for word accentual patterns in the world’s languages......Page 242
The typological database of the World Atlas of Language Structures......Page 290
Typology of reduplication: The Graz database......Page 308
The Romani Morpho-Syntax (RMS) database......Page 336
A database on personal pronouns in African languages......Page 370
Contributors
......Page 398
Index of subjects
......Page 401
Index of languages
......Page 408
Index of persons
......Page 413
