Many languages, one knowledge base: Introducing a collaborative ontolinguistic research tool

Abstract

Linguists traditionally have published their research in book and paper publications. However, advances in technology enable new innovative electronic dissemination paths, coupled with an immediate reuse potential and flexible accessibility of both the data and their analysis. In this chapter, a new computational research tool that is currently still under development is presented: TYTO ('Typology Tool') is specifically tailored to typological work carried out by a group of researchers. The first application domain of TYTO is social cognition and its cross-linguistic grammaticalisation. I outline TYTO's features, describe its backbone ontology, and in what way it is envisaged to be able to support typologists and other linguists in their work.