Cultural advice

The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that ANU Library collections may include images, names, voices, and other representations of deceased persons.

Material in the collection may contain terms, language or views that reflect the period in which the item was created and may be considered inappropriate today.

The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database: From bioinformatics to lexomics

Thumbnail Image

Date

2008

Authors

Greenhill, Simon
Blust, Robert
Gray, Russell

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Libertas Academica

Abstract

Phylogenetic methods have revolutionised evolutionary biology and have recently been applied to studies of linguistic and cultural evolution. However, the basic comparative data on the languages of the world required for these analyses is often widely dispersed in hard to obtain sources. Here we outline how our Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database (ABVD) helps remedy this situation by collating wordlists from over 500 languages into one web-accessible database. We describe the technology underlying the ABVD and discuss the benefits that an evolutionary bioinformatic approach can provide. These include facilitating computational comparative linguistic research, answering questions about human prehistory, enabling syntheses with genetic data, and safe-guarding fragile linguistic information.

Description

Keywords

Keywords: article; Australia; bibliographic database; bioinformatics; controlled study; data analysis; data extraction; data synthesis; genetic database; information retrieval; information storage; language; linguistics; phylogeny; web browser ABVD; Austronesian; Database; Lexicon; Linguistics

Citation

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/1885/82450

Collections

ANU Research Publications

Source

Evolutionary Bioinformatics

Type

Journal article

Book Title

Entity type

Access Statement

Open Access

License Rights

Creative Commons Attribution By licence

DOI

Restricted until

Downloads

File
Description
01_Greenhill_The_Austronesian_Basic_2008.pdf (1.98 MB)

DSpace software copyright © 2002-2026 LYRASIS

abcd