Aside from geo-referencing – the principle fundamental to VerbaAlpina – the project's overall concept provides the possibility of chrono-referencing as an additional dimension that allows for diachronic data analyses. Chrono-referencing is both possible for the linguistic material collected by VA as well as material from the extra-linguistic data sector. The accuracy of chrono-referencing varies. In the case of language data from atlases and dictionaries, chrono-referencing of the date of collection/publication is implicitly present. Data from crowdsourcing may even be dated back to the exact day under certain conditions. Chrono-referencing is, for example, relevant where data from different generations of atlases is available, such as AIS (1928-1940) as well as ALD (1998-2012). It has not yet been implemented as a search filter on the user interface. Where possible, chrono-referencing is in line with existing standards, e.g., ISO 8601 or TimeML. It is also recorded as a separate data attribute in VA_DB.
A notable example in which chrono-referencing is particularly pronounced would be the ASLEF, since, in this case, not only the collected data but also references from the language atlases ALI and AIS have been included. Thus, a diachronic perspective emerges as language data collected by the AIS (1921-1922) and data from the ALI (1925-1943) are placed alongside data from the ASLEF itself (1974 to 1986). On the maps of the ASLEF, this is represented by various symbols:
"P" denotes data collected by the ALI, while "S" symbolizes data recorded by the AIS. These two letters refer to the explorers of the language atlases: "P" stands for Ugo Pellis, the explorer of the language atlas ALI and "S" refers to the AIS’s explorer, Paul Scheuermeier.
The letters are included on the ASLEF-maps if there is no own documentation is available. They are an indication that only records from AIS and/or ALI have been adopted for these regions. However, if there is additional data collected by the ASLEF that, moreover, corresponds to the data from the two other language atlases, the letters are placed in a rectangle (AIS) or circle (ALI) behind the documented records on the maps of the ASLEF. The instances in which the data collected by the ASLEF deviates from the data collected by one of the other two language atlases are, respectively, marked by a rectangle without "S" (AIS) or a circle without "P" (ALI) in the ASLEF’s records.
There is no need, however, to regard these abbreviations during the transcription for VerbaAlpina, since chrono-referencing is automatically applied in VerbaAlpina’s digital maps, as long as records from all language atlases are being entered and all records of the same region provide a reference to their source. This creates a diachronic perspective, which, in certain cases, allows for the comparison of different records from different survey years of the respective language atlases. Consequently, we can say that the maps of VerbaAlpina incorporate chrono-referencing.
