lingtypology: creating maps

1. Base map

The most important part of the lingtypology package is the function map.feature. This function allows you to produce maps similar to known projects within the Cross-Linguistic Linked Data philosophy, such as WALS and Glottolog:

map.feature(c("West Circassian", "Kabardian", "Polish", "Russian", "Bulgarian"))

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

As shown in the picture above, this function generates an interactive Leaflet map. All specific points on the map have a pop-up box that appears when markers are clicked (see section 3.3 for more information about editing pop-up boxes). By default, they contain language names linked to the glottolog site.

If for some reasons you are not using RStudio or you want to automatically create and save a lot of maps, you can save a map to a variable and use the htmlwidgets package for saving created maps to an .html file. I would like to thank Timo Roettger for mentioning this problem.

m <- map.feature(c("Kabardian", "Korean"))
# install.packages("htmlwidgets")
library(htmlwidgets)
saveWidget(m, file="TYPE_FILE_PATH/m.html")

There is an export button in RStudio, but for some reason it is not so easy to save a map as a .png or.jpg file using code. Here is a possible solution.

2. Set features

The goal of this package is to allow typologists (or any other linguists) to map language features. A list of languages and correspondent features can be stored in a data.frame as follows:

df <- data.frame(language = c("West Circassian", "Kabardian", "Polish", "Russian", "Bulgarian"),
               features = c("polysynthetic", "polysynthetic", "fusional", "fusional", "fusional"))
df

Now we can draw a map:

map.feature(languages = df$language,
            features = df$features)

fusional
polysynthetic

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

If you have a lot of features and they appear in the legend in a senseless order(by default it is ordered alphabetically), you can reorderthem using factors (a vector with ordered levels, for more information see ?factor). for example, I want the feature polysynthetic to be listed first, followed by fusional:

df$features <- factor(df$features, levels = c("polysynthetic", "fusional"))
map.feature(languages = df$language, features = df$features)

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

Like in most functions, it is not necessary to name all arguments, so the same result can be obtained by:

map.feature(df$language, df$features)

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

As shown in the picture above, all points are grouped by feature, colored and counted. As before, a pop-up box appears when markers are clicked. A control feature allows users to toggle the visibility of points grouped by feature.

There are several types of variables in R and map.feature works differently depending on the variable type. I will use a build in data set phonological_profiles that contains 19 languages from UPSyD database. This dataset have three variables: the categorical variable ejectives indicates whether some language has any ejective sound, numeric variables consonants and vowels that contains information about the number of consonants and vowels (based on UPSyD database). We can create two maps with categorical variable and with numeric variable:

map.feature(phonological_profiles$language,
            phonological_profiles$ejectives) # categorical

FALSE
TRUE

5000 km

3000 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

map.feature(phonological_profiles$language,
            phonological_profiles$consonants) # numeric

5000 km

3000 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

The main point is that for creating a correct map, you should correctly define the type of the variable.

This dataset also can be used to show one other parameter of the map.feature function. There are two possible ways to show the World map: with the Atlantic sea or with the Pacific sea in the middle. If you don’t need default Pacific view use the map.orientation parameter(thanks @languageSpaceLabs and @tzakharko for that idea):

map.feature(phonological_profiles$language,
            phonological_profiles$consonants,
            map.orientation = "Atlantic")

5000 km

3000 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

Sometimes the result image legend are too small. It is possible to increase size of legend using some trick described here. In order to do this assign your map to a variable:

m <- map.feature(languages = df$language,
                 features = df$features)

Map will not appear, but now you can get it calling the variable m. After this in order to increase the legend font one can use code like this:

library(htmltools)
browsable(
  tagList(
    list(
      tags$head(
        tags$style(
          ".leaflet .legend {
                 line-height: 20px;
                 font-size: 20px;
                 }",
          ".leaflet .legend i{
                width: 20px;
                height: 20px;
                 }"
        )
      ),
      m)))

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

3. Set pop-up boxes

Sometimes it is a good idea to add some additional information (e.g. language affiliation, references or even examples) to pop-up boxes that appear when points are clicked. In order to do so, first of all we need to create an extra vector of strings in our dataframe:

df$popup <- aff.lang(df$language)

The function aff.lang() creates a vector of genealogical affiliations that can be easily mapped:

map.feature(languages = df$language, features = df$features, popup = df$popup)

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

Pop-up strings can contain HTML tags, so it is easy to insert a link, a couple of lines, a table or even a video and sound. Here is how pop-up boxes can demonstrate language examples:

# change a df$popup vector
df$popup <- c("sɐ s-ɐ-k'ʷɐ<br> 1sg 1sg.abs-dyn-go<br>'I go'",
              "sɐ s-o-k'ʷɐ<br> 1sg 1sg.abs-dyn-go<br>'I go'",
              "id-ę<br> go-1sg.npst<br> 'I go'",
              "ya id-u<br> 1sg go-1sg.npst <br> 'I go'",
              "id-a<br> go-1sg.prs<br> 'I go'")
# create a map

map.feature(df$language,
            features = df$features,
            popup = df$popup)

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

How to say moon in Sign Languages? Here is an example:

# Create a dataframe with links to video
sign_df <- data.frame(languages = c("American Sign Language", "Russian-Tajik Sign Language", "French Sign Language"),
                      popup = c("https://media.spreadthesign.com/video/mp4/13/48600.mp4", "https://media.spreadthesign.com/video/mp4/12/17639.mp4", "https://media.spreadthesign.com/video/mp4/10/17638.mp4"))

# Change popup to an HTML code
sign_df$popup <- paste("<video width='200' height='150' controls> <source src='",
                       as.character(sign_df$popup),
                       "' type='video/mp4'></video>", sep = "")
# create a map
map.feature(languages = sign_df$languages, popup = sign_df$popup)

5000 km

3000 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

4. Set labels

An alternative way to add some short text to a map is to use the label option.

map.feature(df$language, df$features,
            label = df$language)

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

There are some additional arguments for customization: label.fsize for setting font size, label.position for controlling the label position, and label.hide to control the appearance of the label: if TRUE, the labels are displayed on mouse over(as on the previous map), if FALSE, the labels are always displayed (as on the next map).

map.feature(df$language, df$features,
            label = df$language,
            label.fsize = 20,
            label.position = "left",
            label.hide = FALSE)

West Circassian

Kabardian

Polish

Russian

Bulgarian

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

There is an additional tool for emphasis of some points on the map. The argument label.emphasize allows to emphasize selected points with the color specified by a user.

map.feature(df$language, df$features,
            label = df$language,
            label.fsize = 20,
            label.position = "left",
            label.hide = FALSE,
            label.emphasize = list(2:4, "red"))

West Circassian

Kabardian

Polish

Russian

Bulgarian

Kabardian

Polish

Russian

Kabardian

Polish

polysynthetic
fusional

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

In this example the first vector of the list in the label.emphasize argument is vector 2:4 that produce elements 2, 3 and 4. You can create youro wn selected rows. e. g. c(1, 3, 4). The second vector of the list is the string with a color.

5. Set coordinates

You can set your own coordinates using the arguments latitude and longitude. It is important to note, that lingtypology works only with decimal degrees (something like this: 0.1), not with degrees, minutes and seconds (something like this: 0° 06′ 0″). I will illustrate this with the dataset circassian built into the lingtypology package. This dataset comes from fieldwork collected during several expeditions in the period 2011-2016 and contains a list of Circassian villages:

head(circassian)

In this dataframe you can find variables latitude and longitude that could be used:

map.feature(languages = circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            popup = circassian$village,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude)

Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

It is possible to collapse multiple dots into clusters:

map.feature(languages = circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            popup = circassian$village,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude, 
            point.cluster = TRUE)

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Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

6. Set colors

You can set your own colors using the argument color:

df <- data.frame(language = c("West Circassian", "Kabardian", "Polish", "Russian", "Bulgarian"),
                 features = c("polysynthetic", "polysynthetic", "fusional", "fusional", "fusional"))
map.feature(languages = df$language,
            features = df$features,
            color= c("yellowgreen", "navy"))

fusional
polysynthetic

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

Arguments from RColorBrewer or viridis also can be used as a color argument:

map.feature(phonological_profiles$language,
            phonological_profiles$consonants,
            color= "magma")

5000 km

3000 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

7. Set shapes

For some scientific papers it is not possible to use colors for destinguishing features. In that cases it is posible to use shape argument:

map.feature(languages = circassian$language,
            features = circassian$language,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            shape = TRUE)

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▴ West Circassian
● Kabardian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

The argument shape = TRUE works fine only with 6 or less levels in features variable. If there are more levels in fetures argument, user need to provide a vector with corresponding shapes:

map.feature(languages = circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            shape = 1:10,
            shape.size = 14)

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8 Temirgoy
2 Baksan
9 Terek
6 Malkin
10 Xakuch
5 Kuban
7 Shapsug
3 Besleney
4 Bzhedukh
1 Abadzex

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

Arguments shape.size and shape.color help to change corresponding features of markers.

8. Set control box

The package can generate a control box that allows users to toggle the visibility of some points. To enable it, there is an argument control in the map.feature function:

map.feature(languages = df$language,
            features = df$features,
            control = c("a", "b", "b", "b", "a"))

a

b

fusional
polysynthetic

500 km

300 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

As you can see the control and features arguments are independent of each other.

9. Set an additional set of features using strokes

The map.feature function has an additional argument stroke.features. Using this argument it becomes possible to show two independent sets of features on one map. By default strokes are colored in grey (so for two levels it will be black and white, for three — black, grey, white and so on), but you can set your own colors using the argument stroke.color:

map.feature(circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            stroke.features = circassian$language,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude)

Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

Kabardian
West Circassian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

It is important to note that stroke.features can work with NA values. The function won’t plot anything if there is an NA value. Let’s set a language value to NA in all Baksan villages from the circassian dataset.

# create newfeature variable
newfeature <- circassian[,c(5,6)]
# set language feature of the Baksan villages to NA and reduce newfeature from dataframe to vector
newfeature <- replace(newfeature$language, newfeature$language == "Baksan", NA)
# create a map

map.feature(circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            stroke.features = newfeature)

Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

Kabardian
West Circassian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

10. Set width and an opacity feature

All markers have their own width and opacity, so you can set it. Just use the arguments width, stroke.radius, opacity and stroke.opacity:

map.feature(circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            stroke.features = circassian$language,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            width = 7, stroke.radius = 13)

Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

Kabardian
West Circassian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

map.feature(circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            stroke.features = circassian$language,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            opacity = 0.7, stroke.opacity = 0.6)

Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

Kabardian
West Circassian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

11. Customizing legends

By default the legend appears in the top right corner. If there are stroke features, two legends are generated. There are additional arguments that control the appearence and the title of the legends.

map.feature(circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            stroke.features = circassian$language,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            legend = FALSE, stroke.legend = TRUE)

Kabardian
West Circassian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors

map.feature(circassian$language,
            features = circassian$dialect,
            stroke.features = circassian$language,
            latitude = circassian$latitude,
            longitude = circassian$longitude,
            title = "Circassian dialects", stroke.title = "Languages")

Circassian dialects

Abadzex
Baksan
Besleney
Bzhedukh
Kuban
Malkin
Shapsug
Temirgoy
Terek
Xakuch

Languages

Kabardian
West Circassian

50 km

50 mi

Leaflet | © OpenStreetMap contributors