Glottopedia is a comprehensive web-based free-content encyclopedia of linguistics that any linguist can contribute to. It is modeled on Wikipedia, a general-knowledge encyclopedia for nonspecialist readers. Each registered user may create new articles or modify existing ones. But there are three important differences:
- Authors of Glottopedia articles should be trained linguists or students with a profound linguistic background.
- For this reason, authors have to create an account with their real names and log in before working on an article; in contrast to Wikipedia, anonymous editing is not allowed (in this regard, Glottopedia works like Citizendium).
- Articles in Glottopedia don't have to be intelligible to all. Some of them will refer to highly specialized phenomena and concepts, which will be relevant for only a small number of specialists.
Six kinds of articles
- Glottopedia:Dictionary articles (which define, explain, comment on and discuss all kinds of linguistic concepts)
- Glottopedia:Survey articles (which offer a comprehensive discussion of linguistic concepts and methods)
- Glottopedia:Biographical articles (about the life and work of past linguists)
- Glottopedia:Language articles (which provide basic information about most natural languages)
- Glottopedia:Linguistic research articles (about institutions, conferences, journals, etc.)
- Glottopedia:Linguists (articles consisting of links to pages about living linguists)
Copyright and Licence Information
Glottopedia content is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 licence. This means that users are free:
- to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
- to Remix -- to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
- Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one.
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
Fore more information on copyright issues in Glottopedia, see Glottopedia:Copyright.
History of Glottopedia
Glottopedia was started on 27 May 2007. It arose as a merger of two earlier projects with very similar goals, WikiLingua at the University of Trier (created in 2005), and Linguipedia at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (created in 2006). Now that Glottopedia has been officially launched, these two earlier projects are no longer alive.
The following online dictionaries of linguistic terminology will soon be copied into Glottopedia, as part of an agreement with the authors:
Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics
- Textlinguistik-Glossar, Gesprächslinguistik-Glossar (Bremen, Eva Schoenke)
Large parts of the following dictionaries have already been integrated, as part of an agreement with the authors: