Welcome to WALS Online
The data and the texts from The World Atlas of Language Structures, published as a book with CD-ROM in 2005 by Oxford University Press, are now freely available online.
WALS Online is a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Max Planck Digital Library . It is a separate publication, edited by Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie (Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, 2008).
What is WALS?
WALS is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of more than 40 authors (many of them the leading authorities on the subject).
WALS consists of 141 maps with accompanying texts on diverse features (such as vowel inventory size, noun-genitive order, passive constructions, and "hand"/"arm" polysemy), each of which is the responsibility of a single author (or team of authors). Each map shows between 120 and 1370 languages, each language being represented by a symbol, and different symbols showing different values of the feature. Altogether 2,650 languages are shown on the maps, and more than 58,000 datapoints give information on features in particular languages.
WALS thus makes information on the structural diversity of the world's languages available to a large audience, including interested nonlinguists as well as linguists who would not normally read grammars of exotic languages or specialized works by comparative linguists. Although endangered languages are not particularly emphasized, they are automatically foregrounded because of the large sample of languages represented on each map, where each language (independently of its number of speakers) is shown by a single symbol.
Interactive Reference Tool (WALS program)
The World Atlas of Language Structures was published as a book with a CD-ROM in summer 2005. The CD-ROM contains the "Interactive Reference Tool (WALS program)" as a standalone application for Mac OSX, Mac OS9.2 and Windows 2000, XP written by Hans-Jörg Bibiko. To download the "Interactive Reference Tool (WALS program)" please follow the link http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/research/tool.php.
How to use WALS Online
Using WALS Online requires a browser (supported by Google Maps) with Javascript enabled.
You find the 142 features or chapters of WALS through the item "Features" in the navigation bar. On the "Features" page, you can browse the features by feature number or thematic area, and search for them by author or keyword. Maps and chapter texts are accessed from the individual chapter pages.
You can also browse and search for languages and language families alphabetically, by map region or by country through the item "Languages" on the navigation bar.
You can search for references through the item "References", and once you have navigated to a particular feature, you see a second navigation bar with citation information and various export options.
How to cite WALS Online
It is important to cite the specific chapter that you are taking your information from, not just the general work "WALS Online" (Haspelmath et al. 2008), unless you are citing data from more than 25 chapters simultaneously.
We recommend that you cite WALS Online chapters as in the following example:
Cysouw, Michael. 2008. Inclusive/Exclusive Distinction in Independent Pronouns. In: Haspelmath, Martin & Dryer, Matthew S. & Gil, David & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, chapter 39. Available online at http://wals.info/feature/39. Accessed on <ACCESS_DATE>
Terms of use
The content of this web site is published under a Creative Commons Licence. Use of the Google base maps is subject to Google's permission guidelines. We invite the community of users to think about further applications for the available data and look forward to your comments, feedback and questions.
