Mapping as a method of language documentation

Wednesday, 30 October 2024

On 30 October 2024, Cluster 1 "Concepts and Methods" organised a one-day workshop on "Mapping as a method of language documentation". The workshop was led by geoinformatician Peter Ranacher, who is also head of the Spatial Data Science group at the University of Zurich's "Language and Space" focus area.

The event began in the morning with an introduction to the connections between language and space. This was followed by a critical comparison between the Ethnologue and Glottolog databases as instruments for language documentation and documentation of the geographical spread of languages. Important thematic points included not only the challenges associated with language mapping, but also aspects of research ethics. The morning concluded with a "sneak preview" of the open web service Glottography developed at the University of Zurich, which collects, attributes, stores and maps language areas. Both methodological decisions and the optimised approach to language data processing and mapping were discussed. In the afternoon, the participants had the opportunity to learn how to map a language themselves. The workshop was interactive, provided ample opportunities for stimulating discussions among participants from different disciplines and represented an important contribution to efforts to document and understand linguistic diversity and its geographical dimensions.