RelChronVis: an interactive web application for visualizing the relative chronology of language changes

Abstract

AbstractModels of the relative chronology of language changes resemble the structure of a graph. They consist of a set of changes that are in many cases related to each other. It follows that they can be visualized in a diagram, which opens up new possibilities for publishing historical linguistics data. In this paper, we introduce the RelChronVis application, a web application designed for visualizing language history. Based on detailed models of the relative chronology of Russian and Croatian sound changes, we show how interactive graph representations can help visualize language changes and the relationships between them. In addition to graphs, the application provides textual information about the included changes and relations as well as reconstructions of example lexemes. The RelChronVis application is primarily designed for doing research and for teaching. It allows the researcher to transparently compare different models and to access relevant data. At the same time, the RelChronVis application can be used to teach the history of the included languages as well as methods of historical linguistics. It provides the option of visualizing custom data and can easily be accommodated to novel discoveries. We believe that these features and uses make the RelChronVis application an immensely useful tool for publishing models of the relative chronology of language changes.