Descriptive status of the world's languages

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Dear all,
it might be difficult to know how languages fare in 'typology', since it  
is not clear which works would be part of 'typology'. Is a generative  
comparison between Tamil and Icelandic already 'typology'?

The Glottolog/Langdoc project casts a wider net and looks at the general  
descriptive status of the world's languages.We have collected about 200k  
bibliographical records for descriptive/'typological' literature. This is  
a large collection but still opportunistic: we have good coverage of  
Africa and South America thanks to Youni Maho and Alain Fabre; the rest of  
the world is less well covered. The distribution of works is given below.

I am not sure how this relates to Wolfgang's question, but I am sure that  
some of you will find the numbers below interesting
Sebastian


All numbers refer to the quantity of works (not the quantity of references  
to these works)

Areas
Africa  74787
South America  32897
Eurasia  16879
Pacific  15424
Australia  7557
North America  3815
Middle America  1897

Topics
comparative treatise  13827
grammar sketch  13810
ethnographic treatise  13504
grammar  10209
overview  8273
dictionary  7408
wordlist  5552
phonology  1942
bibliography  1464
specific feature  1362
text  1039
sociolinguistics  943
dialectology  797
minimal  648
new testament  143


Languages
Swahili  1916
Hausa  1609
Nama  1288
Afrikaans  1178
French  1070
Zulu  1060
Arabic, South Levantine  1033
Yoruba  925
Kabyle  897
Thai  745
Pulaar  743
Xhosa  739
Akan  729
Éwé  713
Tswana  703
Mapudungun  610
Shona  597
Portuguese  592
Somali  591
Amharic  554
Igbo  550
Sotho, Southern  539
Arabic, Algerian  526
Oromo, Borana-Arsi-Guji  516
Turkish  511
Tarifit  505
Nyanja  504
Arabic, Tunisian  498
Tachelhit  490
Wolof  487
Tibetan  483
Sotho, Northern  467
Aymara, Central  462
Aymara, Southern  454
Vietnamese  439
Paraguayan Guaraní  436
Singa  405
16 languages  300-399
31 languages  200-299
159 languages  100-199
389 languages  50-99
647 languages  25-49
611 languages  15-24
533 languages  10-14
1033 languages  5-9
351 languages  4
436 languages  3
612 languages  2
1045 languages  1