Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus: Sustainability Implementation [STEDT]

FAIN: PW-50674-10

University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)
James A. Matisoff (Project Director: July 2009 to September 2014)

The development of an online etymological dictionary and thesaurus of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the common ancestor of languages spoken in China, India, and Southeast Asia. The project would also implement strategies for sustaining this resource over the long term.

STEDT (the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus project) began at UC Berkeley in 1987 with a twofold goal: (1) to create an etymological dictionary reconstructing the meaningful spoken units of the ancestor languages at major taxonomic levels (e.g., Proto-Kuki-Chin, Proto-Lolo-Burmese, Proto-TB, Proto-ST), paying due attention to typological and phonological plausibility; and (2) to produce a semantically based historical thesaurus, classifying the reconstructed roots by meaning, and recognizing phonosemantic variation at all time depths. An NEH grant for the academic year 2008-09 enabled STEDT to develop a Sustainability Plan. This plan, is adopted in the current proposal.