This repository is a project to convert the Index Diachronica into a database. There are several reasons that this is worth doing:
- The Index Diachronica is very large. It sections on
many languages and language families, as well as a fairly well-structured presentation of historical sound changes in those languages. - The Index Diachronica (usually) includes references. This means that the database could be checkable by experts in various fields.
However, there are also problems in its current state:
- It is a
.texdocument, not a database. This means that while it is true that there are probably a dozen examples of how (say) palatalization happens in the i languages of the world, it’s very difficult to compile those examples in the current form of the information. - The references aren’t in a standard format — they’re just formatted text. In an ideal word there would be an accompanying reference database in a standard format, say bibtex or COiNs JSON references, that would make the database importable into database software such as Zotero, either in whole or in part.
- There are phonological inventories mixed into the soundchanges. Inventories are awesome, but they are a separate project. It would make sense to have a separate project, (perhaps we could call it the Index Phonologica!) to handle that.
For more details see http://amundo.github.io/indexdiachronica/example.html