• About the MultiTree Project

What is MultiTree?

MultiTree is a project of The LINGUIST List to create and present a digital library of scholarly hypotheses about language relationships and subgroupings. This information is organized in a searchable database with a web interface and each hypothesis is presented graphically as a diagram of a family tree, accompanied by information on all of the languages involved and the source of the hypothesis. The Multitree database is integrated with existing LINGUIST List databases, providing access to a wealth of information on related books, articles, dissertations, and conferences.

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What fruits will MultiTree bear?

Currently, it is difficult to find all the relevant sources on the classification of a given language or language group, as the information is dispersed among different primary sources, requires expert knowledge to identify, and is available only in research libraries. A searchable database of all the scholarly hypotheses and their sources makes it much easier for students to learn about language families, from grade-school level up through the graduate level. The Multitree database can also stimulate linguistic research by enabling linguists to see the "big picture" and by saving them time in their research. With this accessible overview of language classification, new hypotheses may be triggered, and lesser-known languages will be more widely exposed. It will also encourage typological analysis to take into account genetic relationships. Other scholars will be able to use this comparative language data as well - for instance historians, archaeologists, ethnographers and geneticists - who all have collaborated with linguists to explore the relationship between prehistoric movements of people and the spread of language families.

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How was MultiTree funded?

The MultiTree project was initially funded by a grant (2005-2009) from the National Science Foundation and is an ongoing project of the LINGUIST List.

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Who has been involved in MultiTree?

Principal Investigators

The principal investigators (PIs) of the NSF grant were Anthony Aristar of Eastern Michigan University and Martha Ratliff of Wayne State University. Anthony Aristar is a co-founder and moderator of the LINGUIST List and was also a co-principal investigator with Helen Aristar-Dry of the E-MELD project, a project which has worked toward developing standards for digital documentation of languages and building electronic infrastructure for linguists. Anthony Aristar is a historical linguist and typologist who specializes in Afroasiatic languages. Martha Ratliff is a historical linguist at Wayne State University whose research focus has been the Hmong-Mien languages of Southeast Asia. She was also a co-PI of E-MELD.

Students

The initial MultiTree work was done by students from Wayne State University and Eastern Michigan University, who gathered the hypotheses to be input to the database through consulting library resources and bibliographical databases. Since then, many more students and several programmers at Eastern Michigan University have worked on the project, and they are listed below (both past and current).

  • Fatemeh Abdollahi
  • Catherine Adams
  • Andrea Berez
  • Jessica Boynton
  • Kevin Burrows
  • Benjamin Cool
  • Ania Kubisz
  • Okki Kurniawan
  • Matt Lahrman
  • Lwin Moe
  • Nicholas Prokup
  • Evelyn Richter
  • James Rider
  • Dayn Schulert
  • Susan Smith
  • Danielle St. Jean
  • Jana Thompson
  • Joshua Thompson
  • Bethany Townsend
  • Dwight Van Tuyl
  • Di Wdzenczny
  • Alexander Werny
  • Aaron White
  • Erica Wicks
  • Brent Woo
  • Szu-Hsien Wu

Advisory Board

A panel of advisors, including Language Technology experts and distinguished linguists from comparative and historical linguistics, typology and specific language areas, provide ongoing input throughout the duration of the project.

  • Steven Bird, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Melbourne; Senior Research Associate, Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania
  • Claire Bowern, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Yale University; Affiliate of the Centre for Research on Language Change, Australian National University
  • Lyle Campbell, Professor of Linguistics, University of Hawai'i
  • Bernard Comrie, Director, Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara
  • Alan Dench, Associate Professor, Linguistics; Head of School, School of Humanities, University of Western Australia
  • Andrew Garrett, Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
  • Spike Gildea, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon
  • Ives Goddard, Senior Linguist, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
  • Alice Harris, Professor of Linguistics, State University of New York Stony Brook
  • Jeffrey Heath, Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan
  • Gary Holton, Professor of Linguistics, University of Alaska Fairbanks and Director, Alaska Native Language Archive
  • Jay Jasanoff, Diebold Professor of Indo-European Linguistics and Philology, Department of Linguistics, Harvard University
  • Brian D. Joseph, Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics; Kenneth E. Naylor Professor of South Slavic Linguistics, The Ohio State University; Editor, Language
  • Randy LaPolla, Professor and Chair, Linguistics Department, LaTrobe University, Australia
  • Marianne Mithun, Professor of Linguistics, University of California Santa Barbara
  • Paul Newman, J.D., PhD. Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Linguistics; Adjunct Professor, School of Law, Indiana University
  • Johanna Nichols, Professor of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
  • Martha Ratliff, Professor of Linguistics, Wayne State University
  • Sarah Thomason, William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of Linguistics, University of Michigan
  • Joe Salmons, Professor of German, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Co-director, Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, UW-Madison; Editor, Diachronica
  • Joel Sherzer, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Texas; Director of the Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America
  • Doug Whalen, Vice President of Research, Haskins Laboratories, Yale University; President, Endangered Languages Fund
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How to cite MultiTree

2009. Multitree: A digital library of language relationships. Ypsilanti, MI: Institute for Language Information and Technology (LINGUIST List), Eastern Michigan University. http://multitree.org/.

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Contact Information

Anthony Aristar email: aristar(at)linguistlist.org
MultiTree email: multitree(at)linguistlist.org