LANGUAGES of the WORLD: Ongoing projects

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LANGUAGES of the WORLD Ongoing projects
CML-2008 Montenegro, September 2008

• Andrej A. Kibrik
• (Institute of Linguistics, RAN)

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Languages of the World basic information

• Founded in mid-1970s by Viktoria N. Yartseva
• Motive fragmented character of individual
  language descriptions, due to
• actual linguistic differences
• various linguistic traditions
• personal preferences
• Goal produce commensurable descriptions of as
  many human languages as possible
• Format encyclopedia
• Languaqe Russian

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Template

• Tool typologically-oriented, uncommitted
  template, including information on
• external aspects of language
• history
• geography
• sociolinguistics
• dialects
• ..........
• internal features
• phonetics and phonology
• formal morphology
• representation of semantic categories
• syntactic constructions
• lexicon

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Template
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Properties of the template

• Positive
• very general
• easily applicable to any language
• flexible
• allows to fit in as much useful info as possible
• Negative
• somewhat outdated (developed in the 1970s)
• There is no other choice than keep going with the
  template, as long as we are able to

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1990s to now

• Switch from the encyclopedia format to individual
  volumes on language groups
• Since 1993 14 volumes on genealogical and areal
  language groupings
• One megaproject is split into a large number of
  much more graspable and managable individual
  projects
• In the 2000s we integrate international
  colleagues and collect some articles in English
• Project of the Database Languages of the World
  was developing on the basis on our project, but
  largely in parallel, and it is only now that some
  integration began

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c o v e r e d s o f a r
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14 published volumes

• Uralic 1993
• Turkic 1997
• Mongolic, Tungusic, Japanese, and Korean 1997
• Paleoasiatic 1997
• South-western Iranian 1997
• North-western Iranian 1999
• Eastern Iranian 1999
• Dardic and Nuristani 1999
• Caucasian 1999
• Germanic and Celtic 2000
• Romance 2001
• Old and Middle Indo-Aryan 2004
• Slavic 2005
• Baltic 2006

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Management

• Editorial group Languages of the World
• Constituent of the Institute of Linguistics,
  Russian Academy of Sciences
• 6 coworkers in the group
• Each project is managed by
• Supervisor from the group LW
• Genealogical editor(s)
• Group of authors

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c o v e r e d s o f a r
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Not yet published projects

• I. Near completion
• II. In the making
• III. Incipient stage
• IV. Projected

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I. Near completion

• 15. Semitic I
• 16. Semitic II
• 17. Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of western
  Asia

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II. In the making

• 18. Relict Indoeuropean languages of western and
  central Asia
• 19. Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of Europe
• 20. Modern Indo-Aryan
• 21. Dravidian
• 22. Austroasiatic and Andamanese
• 23. Mande

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III. Incipient stage

• 24. Relict Indoeuropean languages of Europe
• 25. Sino-Tibetan

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IV. Projected

• 26. Tai-Kadai
• 27. Miao-Yao

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In toto

• 13 forthcoming volumes
• or more?

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Semitic I

• Akkadian
• North-Central
• Hebrew...
• Aramaic...

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Semitic II

• South-Central
• Arabic...
• Ethio-Semitic
• South Arabian

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Working with dead languages

• many Semitic
• some Indoeuropean
• Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of western Asia

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URARTU
HURRITES
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(No Transcript)
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Linguistic maps

• Authored by Yuri Koryakov
• Each volume is accompanied by a series of maps

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Some are quite general, such as this map of
Tibeto-Burman
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Or this map of Semitic in the 2nd millennium B.C.
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While some are very focused, such as this map of
Jewish-Aramaic languages
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Or this map of Old Hebrew inscriptions
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c o v e r e d s o f a r
f o rthcoming