The TypeCraft Project

The TypeCraft Project began in 2005 as a research project at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). It focused on semantic web technology to create linguistic tools including a natural language database and a linguistic editor for manual interlinear glossing. In 2025, the Akan Corpus managed by TypeCraft was migrated to the Leipzig Corpus Collection where it is accessible from the corpus portal.

Key Points:

• Research and Development
  • Started by the LingLab research group at NTNU in 2000, later called the Research Group in Digital Linguistics.
  • Focused on lesser-described languages and grammar engineering.
  • A wiki hosts presentations and links to many further resources.
  • Since 2015, with reduced NTNU support, many activities continued in other forms.
  • TypeCraft tools are now maintained by Polytext AS. The wiki is functional, but the editor is not fully maintained.
• Collaborative Linguistics
  • Facilitated collaboration between researchers and students from different regions, especially the North and South.
  • Key partnership between the Linguistic Department at NTNU and the University of Ghana, Legon.
• Semantic Web Technologies
  • Used to enhance the representation and sharing of linguistic data.
  • Represented linguistic data in a structured, machine-readable format for precise and meaningful organization.
• Educational Outreach
  • Provided tools and resources for linguistic research and language documentation.
• Strengths and Weaknesses:
  • ⇑ User-friendly design, accessible for both novice and experienced linguists.
  • ⇑ Focused on text annotation, providing essential features for creating Interlinear Glossed Texts (IGTs).
  • ⇓ Lacked comprehensive linguistic guidance for creating interlinear glosses.
  • ⇓ Limited advanced features, restricting usefulness for complex annotation needs.
• Grammar engineering projects represented on TypeCraft
  • NorSource: A Norwegian computational grammar. Norwegian_HPSG_grammar_NorSource
  • Construction Labeling Project: System for encoding construction types across languages. Verbconstructions_cross-linguistically_-_Introduction
  • Ga Valence Profile: Semantically enriched valence dictionary for Ga. Ga_Valence_Profile#The_resources
  • NorVal: Valence catalogue for Norwegian. NorVal_resources
  • Tutorials for Norwegian: Descriptions and dynamic exercises in grammar for Norwegian Bokmål. Grammar Tutoring