Taking up Diamond’s (1999) geographical axis hypothesis regarding the different population histories of continental areas, Güldemann (2008, 2010) proposed that macro-areal aggregations of linguistic features are influenced by geographical factors. This chapter explores this idea by extending it to the whole world in testing whether the way linguistic features assemble over long time spans and large space is influenced by what we call “latitude spread potential” and “longitude spread constraint.” Regarding the former, the authors argue in particular that contact-induced feature distributions as well as genealogically defined language groups with a sufficient geographical extension tend to have a latitudinal orientation. Regarding the latter, the authors provide first results suggesting that linguistic diversity within language families tends to be higher along longitude axes. If replicated by more extensive and diverse testing, the authors’ findings promise to become important ingredients for a comprehensive theory of human history across space and time within linguistics and beyond.

Despite remarkable progress in digital linguistics, extensive databases of geographical language distributions are missing. This hampers both studies on language spatiality and public outreach of language diversity. We present best practices for creating and sharing digital spatial language data by collecting and harmonizing Uralic language distributions as case study. Language distribution studies have utilized various methodologies, and the results are often available as printed maps or written descriptions. In order to analyze language spatiality, the information must be digitized into geospatial data, which contains location, time and other parameters. When compiled and harmonized, this data can be used to study changes in languages' distribution, and combined with, for example, population and environmental data. We also utilized the knowledge of language experts to adjust previous and new information of language distributions into state-of-the-art maps. The extensive database, including the distribution datasets and detailed map visualizations of the Uralic languages are introduced alongside this article, and they are freely available.

Probably the best online source of information on the geographical distribution of natural languages would be Ethnologue . Ethnologue aims to catalogue all of the world's languages and provides speaker numbers, rough location, family affiliation and other information, along with maps for many areas. Conversely, for every country in the world it lists the main languages that are spoken there, along with an estimate of speaker numbers. It is not designed to be parsed, but it can be. An alternative is the World Language Mapping System , but this is not free and uses a very dodgy language classification scheme (Ruhlen's). Some other sources that deal with restricted subsets of the world's languages are: UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger , AustLang (a complete catalogue of Australian languages), and the forthcoming ELCat .

Feature stability, time and tempo of change, and the role of genealogy versus areality in creating linguistic diversity are important issues in current computational research on linguistic typology. This paper presents a database initiative, DiACL Typology, which aims to provide a resource for addressing these questions with specific of the extended Indo-European language area of Eurasia, the region with the best documented linguistic history. The database is pre-prepared for statistical and phylogenetic analyses and contains both linguistic typological data from languages spanning over four m

branch of linguistics and of language geography, a branch of human geography. As a branch of linguistics, it includes dialectology and linguistic areal Geolinguistics is a branch of linguistics and of language geography, a branch of human geography. As a branch of linguistics, it includes dialectology and linguistic areal features. One academic tradition sees dialect geography, language geography, and linguistic geography as geolinguistics. This identification of geolinguistics with linguistic map-making appears across a range of languages, inclu Geolinguistics is a branch of linguistics and of language geography, a branch of human geography. As a branch of linguistics, it includes dialectology and linguistic areal features. One academic tradition sees dialect geography, language geography, and linguistic geography as geolinguistics. This identification of geolinguistics with linguistic map-making appears across a range of languages, including Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian and Spanish. In German, in addition to an identification of geolinguistics with the terms Sprachgeographie (language geography) and Dialektgeographie (dialect geography), the term Areallinguistik (areal linguistics) appears as also being synonymous. A second linguistic tradition is that of The American Society of Geolinguistics which interprets geolinguistics to be "An academic discipline involving the analysis and implications of the geographical location, distribution and structure of language varieties within a temporal framework, either in isolation or in contact and/or conflict with one another, being originally conceived of by Mario Pei as being a branch of linguistics which would be used to do objective-oriented research on real life language issues and where interdisciplinary approaches would be acceptable." The Society's mission statement mentions the gathering and disseminating of "up-to-date knowledge concerning the world`s present-day languages, dialects, and other language varieties in the context of their distribution and use, their relative practical importance, their perceived usefulness and actual availability from economic, political and cultural standpoints, their genetic, historical and geographical affiliations and relationships, and their identification and use in spoken and written form". It also states the Society's interest in "linguistic geography, languages in contact and conflict, language planning and policy, language education and the broader aspects of sociolinguistics". Two important geolinguistic organizations exist whose naming and/or translation practices imply a certain recognition of the traditional importance that dialectologists have attached to the role of language map-making as a tool for…