Unlike objects such as vases or pieces of jewelry, languages move primarily when a group of people speaking them migrates and settles in a new area. Thus, information about language boundaries and language relationships can provide critical insights into the migrations, interactions, cultures, and genetics of populations. However, such insights can only be realized in a system that melds language information with information from the physical and social sciences. The most effective way to do this is through a Geographical Information System (GIS), which can flexibly organize a wide range of heterogeneous data, presenting the assembled information according to the topography of geographical regions. This allows language data to be integrated with geographical, political, demographic, zoological, botanical and archaeological data in ways which are immediately visually interpretable.
The LL-MAP project will build a database of linguistic information which is integrated into such a geographically-based system and is made freely available through Internet-based tools. These will allow users to generate customized maps showing the relationships between language and diverse kinds of non-linguistic data. They will also allow researchers to add annotations to map-oriented data, and to discuss the relationships the system manifests. In this way LL-MAP will encourage collaboration between linguists, historians, archaeologists, ethnographers and geneticists, as they explore the relationships between language and cultural adaptation and change. The integrated data approach embodied in LL-MAP will thus promote innovative research methods, and these in turn may lead to new insights into the prehistoric relationships among human populations.
