ViGramm – Visualizing Grammars across Space and Time

Since the early 20th century, trained linguists have painstakingly collected thousands of sentences from little-known Romance varieties (so-called dialects). In recent decades, a considerable effort has been put into digitizing and reviving existing collections of linguistic data (e.g. linguistic atlases), which are now freely available thanks to the recent open data revolution.

The main goal of ViGramm is to move a step forward, by turning digitized textual material into quantitative variables. Variables are geo- and time-referenced and are organized in open-access spreadsheets that provide a faithful, yet abstract picture of grammatical systems.

ViGramm spreadsheets will allow researchers to model syntactic variation through statistical analysis and digital cartography.

ViGramm is a SOSI project (Suivi Ouvert des Sociétés et de leurs Interactions), a funding scheme supported by CNRS Sciences humaines & sociales.

The project team is formed by Diego Pescarini(BCL), Anne Dagnac (CLLE), Stella Medori (LISA), Xavier Bach (CLLE). 

The project is made possible by a collaborative network comprising other European research centers that maintain our primary sources such as the database of the Syntactic Atlas of Italy (ASIt – University of Padua), the Manzini & Savoia Archive (University of Florence), the project AIS Reloaded (University of Zurich), the collection of maps published in the framework of the Symila project based at the Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès,.

All ViGramm datasheets are stored in the open-access repository Nakala (to retrieve our datasheets, enter ‘ViGramm’ in the query field and launch the search)

The ViGramm dataset is modular. To retrieve and merge the files that may be relevant for your research, please follow the instructions below.

All files are distributed under a CC BY-NC-SA license.