Glottolog/langdoc: defining dialects, languages, and language families as collections of resources
Year: 2011
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: . This paper describes the Glottolog/Langdoc project, an attempt to provide near-total bibliographical coverage of descriptive resources to the world’s languages. Every reference is treated as a resource, as is every “languoid”[1]. References are linked to the languoids which they describe, and languoids are linked to the references described by them. Family relations between languoids are modeled in SKOS, as are relations across different classifications of the same languages. This setup allows the representation of languoids as collections of references, rendering the question of the definition of entities like ‘Scots’, ‘West-Germanic’ or ‘Indo-European ’ more empirical. 1 Dialects, languages, and language families The question of what is a dialect and what is a language is a very old one, and up to now, there are no agreed upon criteria how to resolve it. While it is a hotly debated topic among the general public, there is general consensus among linguists that this question is of relatively minor interest. The classical quotation
Source: MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society)
Authors: Sebastian Nordhoff, Harald Hammarström
Institution: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1923658367