Linguist List

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Linguist List

The LINGUIST List is a major online resource for the academic field of linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
. It was founded by Anthony Aristar

Anthony Aristar

Anthony Manuel Rodrigues Aristar is a linguist, the founder of the LINGUIST List, the most important linguistic resource on the web , and currently a professor of linguistics at Eastern Michigan University....
in early 1990 at the University of Western Australia

University of Western Australia

The University of Western Australia is the oldest university in the state of Western Australia. Established in February 1911, it is the only university in the state to be a member of the prestigious Group of Eight , as well as the Sandstone universities....
. Its main and oldest feature is the premoderated electronic mailing list

Electronic mailing list

An electronic mailing list is a special usage of electronic mail that allows for widespread distribution of information to many Internet users....
, now with thousands of subscribers all over the world, where queries and their summarized results, discussions, journal table of contents, dissertation abstracts, calls for papers, book and conference announcements, software notices and other useful pieces of linguistic information are posted.

History
The LINGUIST List is one of the oldest academic organizations on the web.

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Encyclopedia

The LINGUIST List is a major online resource for the academic field of linguistics

Linguistics

Anthony Aristar

University of Western Australia

Electronic mailing list

History

The LINGUIST List is one of the oldest academic organizations on the web. Since 1991 the resource has been run by Anthony Aristar and Helen Aristar-Dry. In 1991 it moved from Australia to Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University

Texas A&M University, often called A&M or TAMU, is a coeducational public university research university located in College Station, Texas, Texas....
, and Eastern Michigan University

Eastern Michigan University

Eastern Michigan University is a comprehensive, co-educational public university located in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The university is governed by an eight-member Board of Regents, who are appointed by the Governor of Michigan for eight-year terms....
was established as the main editing site. Already in 1994 there were over 5,000 subscribers. From October 14 through November 6, 1996, it held its first on-line conference, Geometric and Thematic Structure in Binding, devoted to the Binding Theory and opened by the keynote address by Howard Lasnik

Howard Lasnik

Howard Lasnik is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park.He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology , Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ....
. LINGUIST List moved from Texas A&M to its own site in 1997. Wayne State University

Wayne State University

Wayne State University is located in Detroit, Michigan, in the city's Midtown, Detroit#Midtown Cultural Center, Detroit and is a 4th tier national university comprised of 12 schools and colleges offering more than 350 major subject areas to 33,000 graduate and undergraduate students....
in Michigan was established as the second editing site in 1998, but in 2006 all its operations moved to Eastern Michigan University

Eastern Michigan University

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering....
as well as by donations from supporting publishers, institutions and its subscribers during the fund drive month each spring. In recent years it has become a site for research into linguistic infrastructure on the web, and has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation to do this work.

Projects

The LINGUIST List has been one of the main resources for the creation of the new ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3

ISO 639-3 is an international standard for language codes. The standard describes three-letter codes for identifying languages. It extends the ISO 639-2 alpha-3 codes with an aim to cover all known natural language languages....
language identification standard (aiming to classify all known languages with an alpha-3 language code

Language code

A language code is a code that assigns letters or numbers as identifiers for languages. These codes are often used to organize library collections, to choose the correct localizations and translations in computing, and as a shorthand designation for forms....
). While the Ethnologue

Ethnologue

Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christianity linguistics service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles, in their native language....
was used as the resource for natural language

Natural language

In the philosophy of language, a natural language is a language that is spoken, Sign language, or writing by humans for general-purpose communication, as distinguished from formal languages and from constructed languages....
s currently in use, Linguist List has provided the information on historic varieties, ancient languages, international auxiliary languages and constructed language

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language?known Colloquialism or informally as a conlang?is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved natural languagely....
s.

The LINGUIST List has also received grants for the EMELD Project, designed to build infrastructure to facilitate the preservation of endangered languages data, the DATA project, designed to digitize data for the Dena'ina language, the LL-MAP project, designed to produce a comprehensive GIS site for language, and the MultiTree project, designed to produce a complete database and tree-viewing facility to study language relationships. The EMELD project was the instigator of the GOLD

GOLD (ontology)

GOLD is an ontology for descriptive linguistics. It gives a formalized account of the most basic categories and relations used in the scientific description of human language....
ontology

Ontology (computer science)

In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a Domain of discourse and the relationships between those concepts....
, the furthest advanced of the current attempts to build an ontology for the morphosyntax of linguistic data. It has also produced a phonetics

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds , and the processes of their physiological production, auditory reception, and neurophysiological perception....
ontology, based upon Peter Ladefoged

Peter Ladefoged

Peter Nielsen Ladefoged was an English-American linguistics and phonetics who traveled the world to document the distinct sounds of endangered languages and pioneered ways to collect and study data....
's and Ian Maddieson

Ian Maddieson

Ian Maddieson is a linguistics at University of California, Berkeley, an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico, and vice-president of the International Phonetic Association....
's The Sounds of the World's Languages.

External links

, aids in the preservation of endangered languages data, and in the development of the digital infrastructure necessary of effective collaboration.
,a digital library of scholarly hypotheses about language relationships and subgroupings.
, a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) project which will dynamically integrate language information with extensive data from the physical and social sciences.
, collects information about the language resources in multiple archives, making them searchable from a single location.
, a web-based resource for the Dena'ina Athabascan language, now maintained by the community of speakers.