Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part I Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- 2 Theoretical Approaches to Comparative Syntax
- 3 Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
- 4 Quantitative Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 5 Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 6 Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
- 7 Micro-Comparative Syntax, Dialectology, and Sociolinguistics
- 8 Change
- 9 Universal and Language-Specific Properties of Language
- Part II Comparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part III Comparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IV Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
- Index
- References
3 - Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
from Part I - Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2026
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Cambridge Handbooks In Language And Linguistics
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Comparative Syntactic Enterprise
- Part I Comparative Syntax: Theory, Methodology, and Data Collection
- 2 Theoretical Approaches to Comparative Syntax
- 3 Databases for Comparative Syntactic Research
- 4 Quantitative Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 5 Computational Approaches to Syntactic Variation
- 6 Comparative Syntax from Formal and Functional Perspectives
- 7 Micro-Comparative Syntax, Dialectology, and Sociolinguistics
- 8 Change
- 9 Universal and Language-Specific Properties of Language
- Part II Comparative Syntax: Building Blocks and Combinatorial Properties
- Part III Comparative Syntax: Dependency Relations and Dependency Marking
- Part IV Comparative Syntax: Interfaces
- Index
- References
Summary
Recent years have witnessed a steep increase in linguistic databases capturing syntactic variation. We survey and describe 21 publicly available morphosyntactic databases, focusing on such properties as data structure, user interface, documentation, formats, and overall user-friendliness. We demonstrate that all the surveyed databases can be fruitfully categorized along two dimensions: units of description and the design principle. Units of description refer to the type of data the database represents (languages, constructions, or expressions). The design principles capture the internal logic of the database. We identify three primary design principles, which vary in their descriptive power, granularity, and complexity: monocategorization, multicategorization, and structural decomposition. We describe how these design principles are implemented in concrete databases and discuss their advantages and limitations. Finally, we outline essential desiderata for future modern databases in linguistics.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Comparative Syntax , pp. 75 - 107Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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