Visualizing spoken corpus data on a map is an invaluable tool both at the stage of data collection (keeping track of numbers of speakers from different regions for corpus balancing purposes) and data exploration (examining the regional distribution of a sociolinguistic variable). Recently, a tool in this vein has been made available to Czech National Corpus users via the SyD application: a map summarizing the proportional usage of a given set of variants across the traditional dialect regions of Czech represented in the ORAL series corpora. The advantages of this new feature are discussed and examples highlighting how it can give an intuitive overview of dialectal variation are given. Current and future plans for other useful types of map-based visualizations of spoken corpus data are also presented.
Publishing of the Commentaries on the Polish Ethnographic Atlas
(Komentarze do Polskiego Atlasu Etnograficznego) has been a
long-term project of Polish ethnology since the second half of the 20th century. starting with the sixth volume, they include maps, so the reader has both - the textual and the map part - at his disposal. After 1990, the volumes were devoted to the following topics: husbandry and cattle breeding (1993, 1994), vernacular
architecture (1995), diet (1996), transport and communication (1997), funeral customs (1999), folk beliefs and knowledge (2002), neighbourly help (2001), wedding ceremonies (2004, 2007, 2009), ceremonies related to childbirth (2010). The planned volumes will cover e.g. the puerperium, upbringing and life of children, etc.