This project is to develop a web application to support research on forms of a language termed the Mediterranean Lingua Franca throughout the history of Europe. This language was a hybrid language, made up of bits of what we today call French, Italian, Spanish etc. The language has been recorded in 49 documents that have come down to us, the earliest from c.1204 and the latest was written in 1887. A prototype database was launched in 2022, which allows researchers to search for linguistic data in just one of these documents.

The aim of this project is to extend the existing prototype database with one (or more) of the following functions:

• Interactive features to enable users to visualise the sources of words on a map of Europe
• Visualisations for time series of word use over time or by categories of words
• Process and upload additional documents into the database, utilising the online software Recogito, to provide a more comprehensive database of linguistic forms which can be easily searched for linguistic data deemed to belong to the Mediterranean Lingua Franca
• Develop a tool to assist researchers in annotating new documents (eg. from the HathiTrust digital libarary) to be added to the database. This task would require some NLP experience and potentially experience with OCR.