 Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (APiCS)
APiCS gathers comparable synchronic data on the grammatical and lexical structures of a large number of pidgin and creole languages. It will appear in four volumes (with Oxford University Press) and as an electronic database: In the first atlas volume, the data will be presented in the form of maps. The three survey volumes will contain sociohistorical and grammatical surveys of each language. The data will also be made available as an interactive electronic database on the web (to be published by the Max Planck Digital Library). [more]
The Leipzig Valency Classes Project
 This project is studying valency classes in the world's languages. It attempts to find out to what extent valency classes, defined by coding properties of verbal arguments and by (coded or uncoded) alternations, are distributed similarly or differently across languages. We are gathering comparable mini valency dictionaries in several dozen languages (for about 70 verbs per language), with a view to formulating generalizations over them and gaining deeper insight into the nature of verbal valency. [more]
Typology of ditransitive constructions
In this project, we are studying the grammatical properties of ditransitive constructions (i.e. constructions with an agent, a recipient, and a theme argument) in a broadly comparative perspective. We are compiling a database with relevant information on about 200 languages, and we plan to publish this database as well as a monograph that presents the results of our inquiries. [more]
Figurative Language: Cross-Linguistic, Cross-Cultural and Cognitive Aspects
The goal of the project is to conduct a systematic in-depth analysis, from a cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspective, of the linguistic and psychological aspects involved in the use of figurative language, focussing on expressions such as, but not limited to, metaphors, similes, oxymorons, analogies, proverbs and idioms. [more]
The internal structure of person portmanteaus
In this project we investigate the world-wide diversity and universal structure of person portmanteaus. Person portmanteaus are markers which bundle the expression of person for subject and object of a verbal predicate into a single morphological unit. [more]
Morphological Borrowing
This project studies morphological borrowing, i.e. the transfer of grammatical morphemes (inflection, derivation, and function words) from one language to another through language contact. [more]
The relative frequencies of nouns, pronouns, and verbs cross-linguistically
This project investigates the relative frequencies of nouns, pronouns, and verbs in spoken language corpora of seven languages. The main research questions are: (i) How exactly and why do languages vary in the relative frequencies of noun, pronoun, and verb tokens employed overallin discourse? (ii) How exactly and why do the relative frequencies of nouns, pronouns, and verbs vary as narrative texts unfold? [more]
Langdoc/Glottolog
The first aim of this project is to provide an exhaustive list of bibliographical references of descriptive work in linguistics ('Langdoc'). For understudied languages, we aim at having references to everything available on earth, while for better-studied languages, only the most extensive works are included. [more]
Electronic Grammaticography
Descriptive linguistic content is still usually presented in book form. This project explores ways how descriptive grammars can be published on the Internet. In a trivial sense, this can be made by publishing a pdf on the author's homepage. [more]
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