MultiTree: A Digital Library of Language Relationships

What is MultiTree? What fruits will MultiTree bear? How is MultiTree being funded? Who is involved in MultiTree? Go to MultiTree Browser

What is MultiTree? MultiTree is a project being undertaken by The LINGUIST List to create a digital library of scholarly hypotheses about language relationships and subgroupings. This information will be organized in a searchable database with a web interface, and each hypothesis will be presented graphically as a diagram of a family tree, accompanied by information on all of the languages involved and the source of the hypothesis. This database will be integrated with the existing LINGUIST List databases, providing access to a wealth of information on related books, articles, dissertations, and conferences. Back to top

What fruits will MultiTree bear? Education Currently, it is difficult to find all the relevant sources on the classification of a given language or language group, as the information is dispersed among different primary sources, requires expert knowledge to identify, and is available only in research libraries. Having a searchable database of all the scholarly hypotheses and their sources will make it much easier for students to learn about language families, from a grade-school level up through graduate students. It will also stimulate linguistic research by enabling linguists to see the "big picture" and by saving them time in their research. With this accessible overview of language classification, new hypotheses may be triggered, and lesser-known languages will be more widely exposed. It will also encourage typological analysis to take into account genetic relationships. Other scholars will be able to use this comparative language data as well - for instance historians, archaeologists, ethnographers and geneticists - who all have collaborated with linguists to explore the relationship between prehistoric movements of people and the spread of language families. Back to top

How is MultiTree being funded? The MultiTree project has a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. Back to top

Who is involved in MultiTree? Principal Investigators The principal investigators (PIs) of the project are Anthony Aristar and Helen Aristar-Dry, both of Eastern Michigan University. Anthony Aristar and Helen Aristar-Dry are co-founders and moderators of the LINGUIST List and also principal investigators of the E-MELD project, a five-year project aiming to develop standards for digital documentation of languages and to build electronic infrastructure for linguists. Anthony Aristar is a historical linguist and typologist who specializes in Afroasiatic languages. Martha Ratliff, the co-PI of MultiTree, is a historical linguist at Wayne State University whose research focus has been the Hmong-Mien languages of Southeast Asia. She is also a co-PI of E-MELD. Grad students MultiTree work was begun by students from Wayne State University and Eastern Michigan University, who gathered the hypotheses to be input to the database, through consulting library resources and bibliographical databases. They were later joined by three interns, one from Germany (Evelyn Richter) and two from Texas (Jana Thompson and Matt Lahrman). They are also developing the database and web interface for the project. Students involved: Fatemeh Abdollahi Catherine Adams Andrea Berez Ania Kubisz F. Okki Kurniawan Evelyn Richter Susan Smith Jana Thompson Bethany Townsend Advisory Board A panel of advisors, including Language Technology experts and distinguished linguists from comparative and historical linguistics, typology and specific language areas, will provide ongoing input throughout the duration of the project. Steven Bird, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Melbourne; Senior Research Associate, Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania Claire Bowern, Asst Prof, Department of Linguistics, Rice University (after 7/2004); Affiliate of the Centre for Research on Language Change, Australian National University Lyle Campbell, Professor of Linguistics, University of Utah Bernard Comrie, Director, Dept. of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara Alan Dench, Associate Professor, Linguistics; Head of School, School of Humanities, University of Western Australia Andrew Garrett, Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley Spike Gildea, Associate Professor and Head, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Oregon Ives Goddard, Senior Linguist, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Alice Harris, Professor of Linguistics, State University of New York Stony Brook Jeffrey Heath, Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan Gary Holton, Assistant Professor, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Associate Director, Alaska Native Language Center Jay Jasanoff, Professor and Chair, Dept. of Linguistics, Harvard University Brian D. Joseph, Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics & Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics, The Ohio State University; Editor, Language Randy LaPolla, Professor and Chair, Linguistics Department, LaTrobe University, Australia Marianne Mithun, Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara Paul Newman, J.D., PhD. Distinguished Professor, Linguistics; Adjunct Professor, School of Law, Indiana University. Bloomington, Indiana Johanna Nichols, Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley Martha Ratliff, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Wayne State University Sarah Thomason, William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan Joe Salmons, Professor of German, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Co-director, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, UW-Madison; Editor, Diachronica Joel Sherzer, Professor of Anthropology, University of Texas; Director of AILLA Project Doug Whalen, Vice President of Research, Haskins Laboratories, Yale University; President, Endangered Languages Fund Project Associate Mon-Khmer Languages Project, Centre for Research in Computational Linguistics www.sealang.net/mk Back to top

contact information: Anthony Aristar email: aristar@linguistlist.org Helen Aristar-Dry email: hdry@linguistlist.org Martha Ratliff email: ac6000@mail.wayne.edu