Bhasacitra: Visualising the dialect geography of South Asia

TL;DR

Bhasacitra is a dialect mapping system for South Asian languages that visualizes linguistic data, aiding typological research and serving as an interactive bibliography for linguists.

Contribution

It introduces a new dialect mapping tool based on a comprehensive database of South Asian linguistic studies, enhancing feature visualization and accessibility.

Findings

Provides detailed dialect visualizations of South Asian languages

Analyzes language coverage in existing linguistic studies

Offers an interactive platform for linguistic research

Abstract

We present Bhasacitra, a dialect mapping system for South Asia built on a database of linguistic studies of languages of the region annotated for topic and location data. We analyse language coverage and look towards applications to typology by visualising example datasets. The application is not only meant to be useful for feature mapping, but also serves as a new kind of interactive bibliography for linguists of South Asian languages.