SSWL (Syntactic Structures of the World's Languages)

SSWL (Syntactic Structure of the World's Languages) is a open-ended database of syntactic, morphological and semantic properties. Each language is characterized by a set of property-value pairs (e.g., Object Verb: Yes), and examples that illustrate these property value pairs. A rich variety of search functions are available, as well as mapping and the creation of similarity trees. The database is open-ended in the sense that (a) new language experts may sign up to add new languages, and (b) new properties may be added. If you are interested in becoming a language expert, just log onto the SSWL site, and sign up. If you are interested in creating a new set of properties, contact Prof. Hilda Koopman of UCLA (Senior Editor of SSWL).

The database is meant to be a tool for the entire linguistic community, including formal linguists, typologists, computational linguists, and descriptive fieldworkers. Properties are written so that they can be applied by language experts from a wide variety of backgrounds.

The ultimate goal of the project is to represent every language on earth with 1000s of linguistic properties, so we need your help!!

http://sswl.railsplayground.net/

If you have any questions, please contact Prof. Hilda Koopman (UCLA) or Prof. Chris Collins (NYU) at linguisticexplorer@gmail.com.