Linguistic Atlas of the Caribbean
This atlas is a major international undertaking to document the lexical and grammatical diversity of Caribbean languages. It is inspired by the ground-breaking work of Jeannette Allsopp and her Caribbean Multilingual Dictionary, which documents Caribbean words in English, French, French Creole and Spanish. This project will document a smaller number of words (approximately 500) across a far greater number of languages, including the English, French and Iberian Creoles of the region, as well as signed languages, immigrant languages, and the languages of indigenous peoples. The planned research will be in communities in every country of the region, and will be obtained through personal interviews that can then be transcribed for use in linguistic, cultural and lexicographic research.
Differentiating this work from dictionaries, the atlas will use an online interface to display each word in map form, allowing people to more easily see which areas have the most in common. The digital format allows maximal flexibility. As researchers engage with new communities, their words can be added to the atlas. Readers who only want to view certain information (e.g. only signed languages, only words with an African origin, only phonetic transcriptions) will be able to filter out extraneous information. And a greater amount of information can be included, such as audio and video files for each word.