Linguistics Research Guide: Maps and Atlases

A large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars).

The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English (WAVE) presents grammatical variation in spontaneous spoken English, mapping 235 features in 48 varieties of English (traditional dialects, high-contact mother tongue Englishes, and indiginized second-language Englishes) and 26 English-based Pidgins and Creoles in eight Anglophone world regions (Africa, Asia, Australia, British Isles, the Caribbean, North America, the Pacific, and the South Atlantic). The analyses of the 74 varieties are based on descriptive materials, naturalistic corpus data, and native speaker knowledge.

IN PRINT, 5 volumes. A compendium of words, phrases, and local meanings has been culled from years of research, using thousands of interviews with representative American communities. (More information and online resources available on DARE's website.)