The World Atlas of Language Structures Online

To keep track of the usage of the site, we set up a - rather crude - web server log file analysis to be run once a week. You can find the results here. (Note: To keep robots out, the pages require you to authenticate. You may use the account info given in the popup.)

Over the last week we rolled out some new functionality requested by our early users:

• Genealogical browsing pages now show numbers of languages in each family or genus.
• On genus pages (like http://wals.info/languoid/genus/romance ) there is now a link to references for all languages having this genus. (Unfortunately we will not be able to extend this to families as well, because this would result in way too long query URLs for the reference database.)
• It is now possible to choose the size of the markers on feature maps. This can be done by either using the slider on a feature value page or directly by supplying a URL parameter s=size (where size is the size of the markers in pixels) with the map URL (e.g. http://wals.info/feature/4?tg_format=map&s=30 ).

Although only officially released for a couple of days, there's already been quite a bit of feedback. Thank you!

While after this initial release we have to downgrade WALS Online to a side project among others, we still plan on rolling out new functionalities every once in a while. Be sure to check out the roadmap.

In particular with respect to RDF export we'd be interested in feedback.

So stay tuned and enjoy WALS Online!

Through a joint effort of the Max Planck Digital Library and the Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, all the data and analytical texts from The World Atlas of Language Structures are now freely available online ("WALS Online"), at http://wals.info. The materials are published under a Creative Commons License, guaranteeing open access for users and inviting scientists to use them for their work. WALS Online is by far the most important web site on the world's linguistic diversity.

The site shows data on over 2500 languages, for which more than 6500 references have been used. Searching and browsing is possible by structural feature, by language name or language family, by reference and by author. The analytical texts contain links to all the references and all the languages. The maps can be shown at any zoom level, and the map symbols can be displayed in various shapes and colours. A wide range of export options is available.

Full press release (PDF)

WALS Online is the second edition of the World Atlas of Language Structures - and it's online!