<HTML dir=ltr><HEAD><TITLE>Typological databases and the reading public</TITLE>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>Thanks, Frans, for the extensive reaction from the board of LT.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2>Although the first line (<FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Databases are databases, and journal articles are journal articles)</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>seems to suggest that you think there is no place for discussing databases as such in</FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>LT and the like, the rest of the contribution gives mainly arguments for</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>the opposite. What I was suggesting a couple of days ago would be</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>short notes on web accessible databases, which have been used for completed</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>(and ongoing) research already presented in printed form. This should be done</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>according to a short, clear format, which immediately gives an impression of the</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>contents and the quality of the data in the database.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Just as book reviews (in LT) give us a short cut to new literature in the field, </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>could a note on an available database (with scores on criteria crucial for</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>successful use by third parties) help us expand our typological resources, and </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>stand on the shoulders of those who entered some linguistic domain before us.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Work done on the combined databases of the WALS atlas are a clear example</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>of the latter. </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>As pointed out by Dan, I think that Childes indeed is a perfect example of sharing </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>and combining data resources to the benefit of the - in this case mainly the </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>language acquisition - community. That field was lucky to agree on a fixed format early on in time.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>There are several reasons why this is much more complex in the case of typology,</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>and why this field seems to be lagging behind in that respect by several decades. These are both</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>of a technical nature (lack of standardization in formats and software) and, more importantly,</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>the lack of a unifying theoretical framework which defines the categories, and</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>makes the interpretation of other typologists data more or less straighforward.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Childes databases may be interpreted by any user, inclusing non-linguists, since</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>the meaning of the data is quite straightforward. More often than not, it concerns one</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>language, or very few, typically well-known languages, or even the native language of</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>the researcher herself. In that sense they may be compared directly to corpora</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>(BNC, CGN etc) as nowadays widely used by all kinds of linguists, theoretical</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>and applied. On the other hand, typologists typically deal with hundreds of languages, </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>some well-known to them but others hardly, for which they often have to rely on descriptions </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>of others, and must make their own interpretations and categorizations. </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>No existing theoretical framework provides the complete descriptive apparatus to date. </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>It is precisely the work of typologists that may help theories to expand their empirical coverage, </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>to the extent that some theories can be bothered about language data in the first place.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>In that sense typology has a long way to go; the TDB project that was mentioned</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>by Martin (and myself) is a first example of bringing together a number of</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>existing databases under the umbrella of one interface and (an attempt to) a</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>common vocabulary.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>So, LT, or others, keep your pages open for database notes, and help the</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>typological community to share and unite their resources, at the same time</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>giving some deserved credit to all your Unknown Database Contributors.</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Best,</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Dik</DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV id=idSignature99152 dir=ltr>
<DIV RE>Dik Bakker </DIV>
<DIV RE>Dept. of General Linguistics </DIV>
<DIV RE>Universities of Amsterdam & Lancaster</DIV>
<DIV RE>tel (+44) 1524 64975 & (+31) 20 5253864</DIV>
<DIV RE><A href="http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/d.bakker/">http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/d.bakker/</A></DIV>
<DIV RE>
<DIV RE> </DIV>
<DIV RE><STRONG><FONT color=#0000ff><EM>Societas Linguistica Europaea</EM></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV RE>Secretary/Treasurer</DIV>
<DIV><SPAN lang=DE style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: DE; mso-fareast-language: DE; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><A href="http://cf.hum.uva.nl/sle/"><SPAN lang=EN-GB style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>http://cf.hum.uva.nl/sle/</FONT></SPAN></A></SPAN></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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