Visualization of Language Relations and Families: MultiTree

Abstract

MultiTree is an NFS-funded project collecting scholarly hypotheses about language relationships, and visualizing them on a web site in the form of trees or graphs. Two open online interfaces allow scholars, students, and the general public an easy access to search for language information or comparisons of competing hypotheses. One objective of the project was to facilitate research in historical linguistics. MultiTree has evolved to a much more powerful tool, it is not just a simple repository of scholarly information. In this paper we present the MultiTree interfaces and the impact of the project beyond the field of historical linguistics, including, among others, the use of standardized ISO language codes, and creating an interconnected database of language and dialect names, codes, publications, and authors. Further, we offer the dissemination of linguistic findings world-wide to both scholars and the general public, thus boosting the collaboration and accelerating the scientific exchange. We discuss also the ways MultiTree will develop beyond the time of the duration of the funding.

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