6. Further Resources

If you want to improve your general knowledge about SplitsTree4, if you are looking for further information on how SplitsTree4 can be used in the field of linguistics, or if you are looking for linguistic resources which can help you work with SplitsTree4, this chapter offers a variety of information which you can use.

SplitsTree4 Manual

(http://ab.inf.uni-tuebingen.de/data/software/splitstree4/download/manual.pdf)

The SplitsTree4 manual is a great resource for working with SplitsTree4. However, a lot of this information is relatively difficult to apply to linguistics as most of the manual applies to bioinformatics.

Thomas, Erik R. 2011. "Collecting data on phonology", in Maguire, Warren and McMahon, April (eds.), Analysing Variation in English. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Erik R. Thomas gives an interesting and multifaceted overview of different linguistic methods which can be employed to collect data. To ensure better readability and structure, these methods have been assigned to different sub-chapters like Dialectology or Sociolinguistics. Although this paper's examples are relatively easy to understand, they do not lack depth and transport the general idea of the method to be explained very well. Still, if the reader wishes to employ one specific method, further resources should be considered. Luckily, Thomas gives a broad variety of further readings at the end of the chapter, making this paper certainly one of the most useful for an intermediate student of linguistics.

Maguire, Warren and McMahon, April 2011. "Quantifying relations between dialects", in Maguire, Warren and McMahon, April (eds.), Analysing Variation in English. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

It is probably not an understatement to say that this paper is in a way groundbreaking and probably one of the most relevant readings about the content of this companion website. The paper discusses how relations between different languages can be quantified in detail and helps the reader understand how a SplitsTree4 matrix can be created. The paper also takes a look at representing these results by the use of trees and discusses difficulties that come with this approach. At the end, the paper also proposes further readings.

McMahon, April and McMahon, Robert 2005. Language Classification by Numbers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This work can be seen as a summary of all the things that are relevant for this companion website. Both creating and depicting comparative data is discussed in great detail. The book is filled with many (specific) examples, some of them even using SplitsTree4 itself. Reading this book is probably one of the best investments time-wise, if this topic is of further interest to you. But, in contrast to the papers above, the work goes into a lot of detail. Generally, this is not a bad trait at all, but it is probably good to keep in mind that this book could be considered overwhelming if the reader's personal goal is to only get a quick overview.

Heggarty, Paul et al. 2005. "From phonetic similarity to dialect classification: A principled approach", in Delbecque et al. (eds.), Trends in Linguistics - Perspectives on Variation. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

This article's main topic could be considered the quantification problem, that is, how measuring different dialects can be made objective. Several examples help the reader understand this process and thus create a general knowledge-base on which to build further. As this specific topic, that is, how to quantify different items, is only dealt with cursorily on this companion website, reading a more comprehensive and detailed description of this process is certainly a very good idea if you have any interest in putting this method into practice.


Sound Comparisons
(www.soundcomparisons.com)

Although design and user interface are not up to modern standards, this website is a great resource for students of linguistics. It offers a great variety of already transcribed words which can be used in research and therefore simplifies the exhausting step of personally collecting research data.

Created with the Personal Edition of HelpNDoc: Free EPub and documentation generator