Help

Search using just one of these fields, or narrow the results using several of them.

Search by name

Enter a language, subgroup, or family name, or part of a name.

Search by code

Enter a language, subgroup, or family code. Since scholars may use different names for the same subgroup or language, the code search may yield more complete results.
Codes can be found in the LINGUIST List database or by looking under the information column of a language or subgroup on any tree.

Search by Author

If you are searching for a particular scholar or publication, search by the author's name to locate a tree by that scholar more easily.

Year

Search by year, in the format YYYY. This can be useful for finding hypotheses from a certain time period. You can search for hypotheses from a range of time by entering a start and end year, or for a single year by entering that year in both fields.

This page provides a starting place to explore MultiTree. It includes all the language families covered in MultiTree, organized by geographic region. After clicking on a continent, a list of families will apppear in the middle column. Clicking on a family will give you a list of all the trees relating to that family in the rightside column. Note: Because a number of families are found in more than one region, you may find the same families repeated.

Nodes

Navigating the Tree

Click and drag to move the tree to a desired node and scroll to zoom on the tree. Be aware that clicking any text in the chart will reveal more text on the Node Info panel, and clicking a node (circle) may reveal or hide the node's children.

Color-coded

A node may represent a subgroup, language, dialect, dialect group, or stock, all of which are colored differently.
The Colors button allows user to change the color scheme to their preference. Users may also select "Turn off lights" for accesibility or readability reasons if they would like.

Solid-color node

If a node is a solid color, that means that it contains children, which may be viewed by clicking on the node. As the children enter the chart, the circle will transition to an outline, representing that the children are either currently displayed or do not exist.
The Open allbutton will open and display the entire tree.
The Close all button will hide all but the main nodes.

Text

The primary name assigned by the scholar to this element is displayed in text near the node. By single-clicking the text, more information about this node will replace the text on the left side of the screen (or above the chart, if viewed on a mobile device).

Highlight

If a match is found after a name is searched for in the search bar on the top left, the path to the match will be highlighted in red (see below for details on searching).
The Highlight button, located in the information sidebar, can also be used to highlight or unhighlight any path.

Searching for nodes

How to Search

Search for a node by entering its name or its code. If you only want to search for names, or only want to search for codes, press the appropriate blue button located directly to the right of the search bar. The best match will be highlighted on the chart (see above for details on highlighting). As you search, names and codes will appear and can be navigated by using the UP and DOWN keys, or they can be clicked on to select them.
The Names, Codes, and All buttons can be used to search the tree only for the specified type.

Layout Options

Choose a different layout by selecting the red buttons:

Rectangular Layouts

Horizontal (default)

Right-to-left layout with horizontal text

Vertical

Top-to-bottom layout with text at an angle.

Radial Layout

Root node is at center, with children around it

Using the website, searching for trees, and viewing trees requires Javascript, and some parts of the website may not work with older versions of Internet Explorer.