Introducing the Platform of the Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE)
Bernd Kortmann
1
(
Englishes Seminar, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
)
Kerstin Lunkenheimer
2
(
Englishes Seminar, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
)
Katharina Ehret
3
(
Englishes Seminar, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
)
Keywords: Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English (eWAVE), Grammatical Morpho-syntactic Variations in English, Open-access Digital Resource, World Englishes,
Abstract :
eWAVE constitutes an open-access digital resource dedicated to the systematic study of grammatical variation across the global Anglosphere. Developed as a dynamic and evolving research platform, its primary objective is to facilitate fine-grained, comparative analyses of morpho-syntactic phenomena across a diverse spectrum of 76 English varieties, including traditional dialects, high-contact vernaculars, indigenized L2 varieties, and English-derived Pidgins and Creoles. By cataloging expert judgements on 235 features across 12 grammatical domains, eWAVE moves beyond a traditional, L1-centric perspective to offer a more nuanced and globally inclusive mapping of the English language. The database is explicitly designed for interoperability, allowing for direct comparison with other major typological databases like the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) and the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Structures (APiCS). As such, eWAVE serves a dual purpose: it is both a synthesis of existing knowledge on global Englishes and a foundational tool designed to generate new research questions in fields ranging from dialectology and sociolinguistics to contact linguistics and syntactic theory. Thus, a principal objective in establishing eWAVE as an openly accessible database was to foster a sense of communal ownership by the global research community. The intention was to position the platform as a dynamic and evolving scholarly tool, subject to ongoing enhancement and expansion. It is envisioned to function not only as a reference point but also as a foundational departure for both future pedagogical approaches and practices, as well as further investigative work on global varieties of English.
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Kortmann, B. & Lunkenheimer, K. & Ehret, K. (Eds.) (2020).
The Electronic World Atlas of Varieties of English. Zenodo.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3712132 (Available online at http://ewave-atlas.org)
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