VerbaAlpina documents dialectal variations within an ethnographically defined area. The onomasiological frame is outlined by cultural technology and ways of life that were conventionalized under specific environmental circumstances and must be viewed regardless of culture. Such areas, prototypically represented by the Alpine region, have not been appropriately covered by the linguistic research tradition, as the sub-disciplines that systematically deal with the determination of spaces – i.e., linguistic geography, dialectology or even geolinguistics – are, almost without exception, oriented towards given political and/or linguistic borders. While narrowing in on these central, and in some regards, significant endeavours is quite understandable (like, e.g., the AIS and the FEW), one may not always approve of it. Especially the particularly fascinating multilingual cultural areas, e.g., the region between the Montenegran-Albanian Adriatic coast and the Danube, fall through the cracks of established research, which is guided by national philological standards. The ambitiously planned Atlante linguistico mediterraneo could have been a major pioneer project which, however, never surpassed its initial stage.
VerbaAlpina targets the Alpine region. However, the project does neither aim at mapping out linguistic or dialectal borders, nor illustrating the mosaic of distinctive varieties (dialects). Rather, it is about the development of interlingual geolinguistics, researching to what extent specific variants, namely the ones characteristic of the Alpine cultural area, are common to the dialects and possibly link them beyond the boundaries of the language families. The relative similarity of the local dialects is inductively derived from the data itself. The only predefined outline of the Alpine region, which is underlied by the project, pertains to the current border between the three major language families (Germanic, Romanic, Slavic).

Perspective

The distribution of variants within these greater dialectal regions implies diverse, more or less distant relationships, which is why the overall perspective of the project can only be a historical one. However, with regard to the outlined research area, VerbaAlpina does not see itself as making a contribution to the national linguistic histography of the involved languages, but as an exemplary attempt at reconstructing the stratigraphy of a multilingual communicative area.

This is exclusively done in a bottom up way, that is, on the basis of data that can be geo-referenced locally. The minimal and default reference entity is the political community, more precisely, a geo-point representing the municipality as a whole, or else, the overall surface area of the municipality. However, if necessary, geo-referencing can be narrowed down to a few meters.

Cartography

Access to the documentation is mainly provided by an interactive map. So far, only point-symbol-maps with interactive symbols are being used for visualisation. Complementary, an interactive symbolization of surfaces is being developed based on the surface areas of municipalities. This is meant to achieve better visualisation of quantitative relations. The interactive symbol maps mark a substantial advance in linguistic and human science spatial imaging. They allow for the enrichment of highly abstracted ('synthetic') representations with specific local information ('analytic').

Linguistic Data Processing

By activating ('clicking') a point symbol, a window with the linguistic data available for the respective location opens. The following example shows the concept BUTTER as recorded in Ramosch (Lower Engadine):

cf. the interactive map of the concept BUTTER

The data is rendered true to the source (as a phonetically transcribed single record, such as in the example above, or in orthographically typified form) and assigned to more general types. The most abstract category is represented by the etymologically defined base type. If possible, links to reference dictionaries will be added soon.

Filter

Multiple filters allow the user to make specific selections within the available data and display them cartographically. The cutout shown above is taken from the map that appears when the 'concept' BUTTER is selected:

Filters for controlling the interactive map

Grouping and Sorting

It is not uncommon for numerous linguistic expressions to already be available in the selected categories – the search for the 'concept' BUTTER (see the image below) leads to 1.448 records. Therefore, the possibility of grouping and sorting all relevant terms according to different criteria will be offered:

The sorting feature of the interactive map: Concepts

A corresponding option occurs when searching for morpho-lexical types or base types. Sorting by 'concept' is particularly interesting, regardless of the language area, since it uncovers the polysemy of each expression. Here are two screenshots of the procedure using the example of malga:

As a result, the following definitions, that clearly are metonymically related with one another, emerge.
Polysemy of the morpho-lexical type malga:

cf. the interactive map of the morpho-syntactic type malga

Sources

So far, a few dictionaries that can be geo-referenced, but especially language atlases, have been evaluated. During this process, three main techniques have been used:

Material with already published maps in printed form has been newly transcribed and added to the VA-database with the help of a tool developed especially for this reason. This is the case for the majority of atlases (SDS, AIS, TSA etc.).

Material where the maps were published in printed form, but the original is already available digitally, has been converted and algorithmically transcribed in such a way that it could be read by the VA-database. This was applied for the ALD-II and the ALTR.
Material from other projects that has not yet been published will be transcribed directly from their questionnaires or adopted digitally. So far, this is mainly the case for SAO-data.

Multidimensionality

For a comprehensive understanding of the historical processes, it is imperative to supplement the linguistic data with other, historically relevant data. VerbaAlpina’s ability to do so is very limited; at least some of the data is retrievable.

The following map cutout of the Eastern Alps is a synoptic presentation of the pre-Roman base type baita and the Latin base type cellarium, on the one hand, as well as of the dissemination of Roman inscriptions in the provinces of Raetia and Noricum and place names documented in the Tabula Peutingeriana, on the other hand. The numerous records of baita in Slovenia as well the three records of cellarium in Upper Austria are of particular interest, considering their subtsratal status:

cf. the interactive map
The unmistakable congruency or, at least, affinity of distribution can hardly be accidental.