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#176268 - 04/23/08 12:19 PM WALS online
etaoin etaoin Carpal Tunnel Registered: 06/24/02 Posts: 6045 Loc: Vermont	this could be fun! Quote: WALS is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of more than 40 authors (many of them the leading authorities on the subject). WALS consists of 141 maps with accompanying texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory size, noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and "hand"/"arm" polysemy), each of which is the responsibility of a single author (or team of authors). Each map shows between 120 and 1110 languages, each language being represented by a symbol, and different symbols showing different values of the feature. Altogether 2,650 languages are shown on the maps, and more than 58,000 datapoints give information on features in particular languages. WALS thus makes information on the structural diversity of the world's languages available to a large audience, including interested nonlinguists as well as linguists who would not normally read grammars of exotic languages or specialized works by comparative linguists. Although endangered languages are not particularly emphasized, they are automatically foregrounded because of the large sample of languages represented on each map, where each language (independently of its number of speakers) is shown by a single symbol.
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#176270 - 04/23/08 02:19 PM Re: WALS online [Re: etaoin]
twosleepy twosleepy enthusiast Registered: 02/28/08 Posts: 208 Loc: western NY	I guess I don't get it.. :o( I tried to find Spanish, but the only place it is listed is in Spain. When I used the search country feature, no matter what country I tried in South America, it doesn't list Spanish, or even any variant such as Castillian. What am I doing wrong?
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#176271 - 04/23/08 02:33 PM Re: WALS online [Re: twosleepy]
tsuwm tsuwm Carpal Tunnel Registered: 04/03/00 Posts: 8577 Loc: this too shall pass	well, the U.S. doesn't seem to have English either. I'm thinking these are all mapped as "native" languages.
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#176273 - 04/23/08 04:14 PM Re: WALS online [Re: tsuwm]
BranShea BranShea Pooh-Bah Registered: 06/23/06 Posts: 1856 Loc: Netherlands, the Hague	Indo-European This is what you get for Indo-European. Nice cluster of tiles, but yes, the 'New worlds' seem not to be included.
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