The LINGUIST List is a major online resource for the academic field of linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words combine into. It was founded by Anthony Aristar in early 1990 1990 was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 1990 Gregorian calendar) at the University of Western Australia The University of Western Australia is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia. Established in February 1911, it is the only university in the state to be a member of the prestigious Group of Eight, as well as the Sandstone universities. The University was established under and is governed by the University of Western Australia Act. Its main and oldest feature is the premoderated electronic mailing list An electronic mailing list is a special usage of email that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users. It is similar to a traditional mailing list — a list of names and addresses — as might be kept by an organization for sending publications to its members or customers, but typically refers to four things: a list, now with thousands of subscribers all over the world, where queries and their summarized results, discussions, journal table of contents, dissertation abstracts, calls for papers, book and conference announcements, software notices and other useful pieces of linguistic information are posted.
History
The LINGUIST List is one of the oldest academic organizations on the web. Since 1991 the resource has been run by Anthony Aristar and Helen Aristar-Dry. In 1991 it moved from Australia to Texas A&M University Texas A&M University, often called A&M or TAMU, is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas. It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. It opened on October 4, 1876 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, the first public institution of higher education in the, and Eastern Michigan University Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The university is governed by an eight-member Board of Regents, who are appointed by the Governor of Michigan for eight-year terms. The school belongs to the Mid-American Conference and was re-accredited by the North Central Association was established as the main editing site. Already in 1994 there were over 5,000 subscribers.[1] From October 14 through November 6, 1996, it held its first on-line conference, Geometric and Thematic Structure in Binding, devoted to the Binding Theory and opened by the keynote address by Howard Lasnik.[2] LINGUIST List moved from Texas A&M to its own site in 1997. Wayne State University Wayne State University is located in Detroit, Michigan, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center and is composed of 12 schools and colleges offering more than 350 major subject areas to 33,000 graduate and undergraduate students. The WSU main campus encompasses 203 acres (822,000 m²) linking 100 education and research buildings in the heart of in Michigan was established as the second editing site in 1998, but in 2006 all its operations moved to Eastern Michigan University Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The university is governed by an eight-member Board of Regents, who are appointed by the Governor of Michigan for eight-year terms. The school belongs to the Mid-American Conference and was re-accredited by the North Central Association. The LINGUIST List is funded by grants from the National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about $6.02 billion (fiscal year 2008), NSF funds approximately 20 percent of all as well as by donations from supporting publishers, institutions and its subscribers during the fund drive month each spring. In recent years it has become a site for research into linguistic infrastructure on the web, and has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation to do this work.
Projects
The LINGUIST List has been one of the main resources for the creation of the new ISO 639-3 ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2 alpha-3 codes with an aim to cover all known natural languages. The standard was published by ISO on 2007-02-05 language identification standard (aiming to classify all known languages with an alpha-3 language code A language code is a code that assigns letters or numbers as identifiers for languages. These codes are often used to organize library collections, to choose the correct localizations and translations in computing, and as a shorthand designation for forms). While the Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language was used as the resource for natural languages In the philosophy of language, a natural language is a language that is spoken, signed, or written by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages (such as computer-programming languages or the "languages" used in the study of formal logic, especially mathematical logic) and from constructed languages currently in use, Linguist List has provided the information on historic varieties, ancient languages, international auxiliary languages An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. An auxiliary language is primarily a second language and constructed languages A planned or constructed language—known colloquially or informally as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally. There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language: to ease human communication ; to bring fiction.
The LINGUIST List has also received grants for the EMELD Project, designed to build infrastructure to facilitate the preservation of endangered languages data, the DATA project, designed to digitize data for the Dena'ina language, the LL-MAP project, designed to produce a comprehensive GIS A geographic information system , or geographical information system, captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that is linked to location. Technically, GIS is geographic information systems which includes mapping software and its application with remote sensing, land surveying, aerial photography, mathematics, photogrammetry, site for language, and the MultiTree project, designed to produce a complete database and tree-viewing facility to study language relationships. The EMELD project was the instigator of the GOLD ontology In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. It is used to reason about the properties of that domain, and may be used to define the domain, the furthest advanced of the current attempts to build an ontology for the morphosyntax of linguistic data. It has also produced a phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones), and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception ontology, based upon Peter Ladefoged Peter Nielsen Ladefoged was an English-American linguist and phonetician who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data. He was active at the universities of Edinburgh, Scotland and Ibadan, Nigeria 1953–61. At Edinburgh he studied phonetics with David Abercrombie, who's and Ian Maddieson Ian Maddieson is a linguist at UC Berkeley, an Adjunct Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, and vice-president of the International Phonetic Association. He wrote the books Patterns of Sounds and Sounds of the World's Languages's The Sounds of the World's Languages.
External links
- The LINGUIST List
- EMELD Project, aids in the preservation of endangered languages data, and in the development of the digital infrastructure necessary of effective collaboration.
- MultiTree Project,a digital library of scholarly hypotheses about language relationships and subgroupings.
- LL-MAP Project, a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) project which will dynamically integrate language information with extensive data from the physical and social sciences.
- The Open Language Archives Community (OLAC), collects information about the language resources in multiple archives, making them searchable from a single location.
- Dena'ina Project, a web-based resource for the Dena'ina Athabascan language, now maintained by the community of speakers.
Categories: Linguistics Categories: Language | Cognitive science | Interdisciplinary fields | Social sciences | Anthropology | Mailing lists | Eastern Michigan University | Wayne State University | Australian websites | Internet properties established in 1990 Categories: 1990 establishments | Internet properties by year of establishment
