announcing Glottopedia (www.glottopedia.org)

[Martin Haspelmath]

Dear LINGTYP readers,

In recent years, Wikipedia has become a tremendous free resource on the 
web, and it seems to us, that linguists also need such a comprehensive 
free reference work. So some of us have set up a "linguist's Wikipedia", 
called "Glottopedia" (see http://www.glottopedia.org).

Glottopedia differs from Wikipedia in that (i) its content is much more 
specialized (e.g. you'll be able to find articles on "applicative", 
"gapping", "subcomparative construction", "rich agreement", "loan 
translation", "adfix"), and (ii) users must have an account to edit 
articles, and they must be linguists with an academic background.

Moreover, Glottopedia focuses on *dictionary articles* rather than 
survey articles of the sort that are found in Wikipedia (and various 
specialized linguistics handbooks). But each dictionary article 
(protentially) provides more information than just a definition: It also 
gives examples, synonyms, other meanings of the term, the origin of the 
term, some key references, and a translation into other languages 
(Glottopedia is a multilingual enterprise; so far there are articles in 
English and German, but it is hoped that more languages will follow soon).

Glottopedia also has articles on linguists, but unlike Wikipedia, which 
aims to restrict its articles to "notable people", Glottopedia 
potentially has articles on all linguists. (However, Glottopedia's 
articles on living linguists are restricted to links, in order to avoid 
problems of personality rights.)

Eventually we also want to add articles about all languages and language 
families (with detailed references), and articles about things that we 
need for our everyday work (such as journals, conferences, 
institutions), but at the moment this is mainly an idea for the future.

We feel that Glottopedia is a resource that the field of linguistics 
really needs, and we hope that you will all contribute to it. Some of us 
have taught courses in which the assignment to the students was writing 
dictionary articles on some technical terms. We think that especially 
advanced students, who do not have easy access to other forms of 
publications, will find that Glottopedia gives them a great chance to 
make a contribution to the field.

Martin Haspelmath, Sven Naumann, and Götz Burger

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at eva.mpg.de)
Max-Planck-Institut fuer evolutionaere Anthropologie, Deutscher Platz 6	
D-04103 Leipzig      
Tel. (MPI) +49-341-3550 307, (priv.) +49-341-980 1616