“LANGUAGES of the WORLD”: Ongoing projects

1. “LANGUAGES of the WORLD”: Ongoing projects CML-2008 Montenegro, September 2008 Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics, RAN) kibrik@comtv.ru

2. “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

3. 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

4. Template

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easily applicable to any language • flexible • allows to fit in as much useful info as possible • Negative • somewhat outdated (developed in the 1970s) • There is no other choice than keep going with the template, as long as we are able to

6. 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

7. c o v e r e d s o f a r

8. 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

9. 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

10. c o v e r e d s o f a r

11. Not yet published projects • I. Near completion • II. In the making • III. Incipient stage • IV. Projected

12. I. Near completion 15. Semitic I 16. Semitic II 17. Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of western Asia

13. 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

14. III. Incipient stage 24. Relict Indoeuropean languages of Europe 25. Sino-Tibetan

15. IV. Projected • 26. Tai-Kadai • 27. Miao-Yao

16. In toto • 13 forthcoming volumes • or more?

17. Semitic I • Akkadian • North-Central • Hebrew... • Aramaic...

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

19. Working with dead languages • many Semitic • some Indoeuropean • Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of western Asia

20. URARTU HURRITES

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

23. Some are quite general, such as this map of Tibeto-Burman

24. Or this map of Semitic in the 2nd millennium B.C.

25. While some are very focused, such as this map of Jewish-Aramaic languages

26. Or this map of Old Hebrew inscriptions

27. c o v e r e d s o f a r f o rthcoming