Linguists are working toward understanding what all human languages have in common and, simultaneously, toward understanding the ways in which human languages differ from one another, and what the limits on those differences are. In recent years, the number of languages taken into account has been increasing substantially. So much so that it has become increasingly difficult to keep track of them, and to integrate the data, the descriptions, and the theoretical implications that this ever larger number of languages is feeding into the field.
The main purpose of this database, designed with support from this Special Grant for Exploratory Research, will be to provide a tool to linguists which will allow them to explore the connections between the various properties of the world's languages. The planned database will take inspiration from open-ended systems such as Wikipedia. It will be constructed in such a way as to allow linguists from anywhere in the world to add new language data to it, and with an eye toward interoperability with other language data being collected, curated and archived for similar purposes.
