Linguistics

We collect materials to support the study of linguistics with particular strengths in: 

• socio- and contact linguistics
• historical linguistics
• computational linguistics and machine learning
• theoretical linguistics, including phonetics and phonology, as well as syntax and semantics
• descriptive linguistics and fieldwork

We collect materials in all languages of the world, reflecting our collections of materials on Western and Eastern Europe, East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the Near East, Africa and South America. 

The collection has traditionally been strong in the indigenous languages of North America. Increasingly, we collect materials on the languages of Australia. For under-documented languages, we attempt to collect at least a grammar as well as a dictionary or lexicon of on any given language.

We support research done in the Linguistics Department and the Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science, as well as the Department of Anthropology. Applied linguistics materials in English support the Department of English Language and Literature and the English Language Institute. Translation and interpretation studies materials support the Department of Comparative Literature. In general, we support all researchers studying linguistics from a variety of disciplines. 

We collect or provide access to many linguistic corpora and digital files for text mining. We have an institutional license to the BYU corpora and the Linguistic Data Consortium. Other corpora may be provided upon request. We have ownership and text mining rights to a number of newspaper archives and other digital historical collections from Gale, ProQuest, EBSCO, Readex, and Alexander Street Press. Learn more about the services we provide for text and data mining.