The project has been very successful so far, as reflected in 21 publications published so far and four more publications being accepted. In addition, we created and expanded four databases that are publicly shared and allow scholars from all over the world to investigate our findings qualitatively and quantitatively. We proposed new standards for the handling of lexical data on a cross-linguistic scale, and published regular updates on six software libraries that can be used by scholars to perform automated tasks in linguistics and neighboring disciplines. To allow scientists to make the best use of our software, we gave tutorials and introductions into our systems on many occasions, especially also in countries where these methods are not yet as frequently used, and we also regularly published blog posts in which we illustrated how certain problems can be solved.
Apart from the scientific output of the project, which is also reflected in talks given at scientific events, we also managed to share our findings to a larger public, as reflected in the numerous interviews given by the principal investigator, the press releases, and also the regular blog posts written by the members of the groups, in which scientific results were discussed for a broader public, and software was explained for interested scientists.
As one of its major contributions, the project led to a first proposal regarding the age and the dispersal of the Sino-Tibetan languages, dating the age of the family to around 7200 years before present, and proposing North China as the original location. These findings may be revised in the future, but as of now, they seem to be best supported by the current state of the art, as reflected in a newly established dataset of 50 Sino-Tibetan language varieties, and the use of state-of-the-art software for annotation and analysis.
In addition, we have achieved all major goals, as outlined in our project up to this time, by proposing new methods for the unification of data in our field, in new algorithms to handle difficult and novel tasks that could so far not be consistently computed, and in the initial planning of future tasks that will be handled during the second part of the project. The work on tools and interfaces has successfully resulted in the publication of a first proto-type that has already been used in order to handle the data underlying our major study on the age and dispersal of Sino-Tibetan languages. With respect to our work on the creation and dissemination of linguistic data, we have presented a large collection of high-quality datasets for a large number of the world’s languages.
