“LANGUAGES of the WORLD”: Ongoing projects Andrej A. Kibrik (Institute of Linguistics, RAN) CML-2008 Montenegro, September 2008

2 “Languages of the World”: basic information  Founded in mid-1970s by Viktoria N. Yartseva  Motive: fragmented character of individual language descriptions, due to:  actual linguistic differences  various linguistic traditions  personal preferences  Goal: produce commensurable descriptions of as many human languages as possible  Format: encyclopedia  Languaqe: Russian

3 Template  Tool: typologically-oriented, uncommitted template, including information on:  external aspects of language: history geography sociolinguistics dialects  internal features: phonetics and phonology formal morphology representation of semantic categories syntactic constructions lexicon

4 Template

5 Properties of the template  Positive  very general easily applicable to any language  flexible allows to fit in as much useful info as possible  Negative  somewhat outdated (developed in the 1970s)  There is no other choice than keep going with the template, as long as we are able to

6 1990s to now  Switch from the encyclopedia format to individual volumes on language groups  Since 1993 – 14 volumes on genealogical and areal language groupings  One megaproject is split into a large number of much more graspable and managable individual projects  In the 2000s we integrate international colleagues and collect some articles in English  Project of the Database “Languages of the World” was developing on the basis on our project, but largely in parallel, and it is only now that some integration began

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8 14 published volumes  Uralic 1993  Turkic 1997  Mongolic, Tungusic, Japanese, and Korean 1997  Paleoasiatic 1997  South-western Iranian 1997  North-western Iranian 1999  Eastern Iranian 1999  Dardic and Nuristani 1999  Caucasian 1999  Germanic and Celtic 2000  Romance 2001  Old and Middle Indo-Aryan 2004  Slavic 2005  Baltic 2006

9 Management  Editorial group “Languages of the World”  Constituent of the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences  6 coworkers in the group  Each project is managed by:  Supervisor from the group “LW”  “Genealogical editor(s)”  Group of authors

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11 Not yet published projects  I. Near completion  II. In the making  III. Incipient stage  IV. Projected

12 I. Near completion 15. Semitic I 16. Semitic II 17. Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of western Asia

13 II. In the making 18. Relict Indoeuropean languages of western and central Asia 19. Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of Europe 20. Modern Indo-Aryan 21. Dravidian 22. Austroasiatic and Andamanese 23. Mande

14 III. Incipient stage 24. Relict Indoeuropean languages of Europe 25. Sino-Tibetan

15 IV. Projected  26. Tai-Kadai  27. Miao-Yao

16 In toto  13 forthcoming volumes  or more?

17 Semitic I  Akkadian  North-Central  Hebrew...  Aramaic...

18 Semitic II  South-Central  Arabic...  Ethio-Semitic  South Arabian

19 Working with dead languages  many Semitic  some Indoeuropean  Relict non-Indoeuropean languages of western Asia

20 HURRITES URARTU

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22 Linguistic maps  Authored by Yuri Koryakov  Each volume is accompanied by a series of maps

23 Some are quite general, such as this map of Tibeto-Burman

24 Or this map of Semitic in the 2 nd millennium B.C.

25 While some are very focused, such as this map of Jewish-Aramaic languages

26 Or this map of Old Hebrew inscriptions

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