Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics

Abstract

The amount of available digital data for the languages of the world is constantly increasing. Unfortunately, most of the digital data are provided in a large variety of formats and therefore not amenable for comparison and re-use. The Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative proposes new standards for two basic types of data in historical and typological language comparison (word lists, structural datasets) and a framework to incorporate more data types (e.g. parallel texts, and dictionaries). The new specification for cross-linguistic data formats comes along with a software package for validation and manipulation, a basic ontology which links to more general frameworks, and usage examples of best practices.

Authors

Robert Forkel, Johann-Mattis List, Simon J. Greenhill, Sebastian Bank, Christoph Rzymski, Michael Cysouw, Harald Hammarström, Martin Haspelmath, Gereon A. Kaiping, Russell D. Gray

Citation

Forkel R, List J-M, Greenhill SJ, Bank S, Rzymski C, Cysouw M, Hammarström H, Haspelmath M & Kaiping GA & Gray RD. 2018. Cross-linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and reuse in comparative linguistics. Scientific Data, 5:180205.

Published 20 June 2018

@article{Forkel2018,
  title = {Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics},
  author = {Forkel, Robert and List, Johann-Mattis and Greenhill, Simon J. and Bank, Sebastian and Rzymski, Christoph and Cysouw, Michael and Hammarström, Harald and Haspelmath, Martin and Kaiping, Gereon A. and Gray, Russell D.},
  journal = {Scientific Data},
  volume = {5},
  number = {1},
  publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1038/sdata.2018.205},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/cross-linguistic-data-formats/},
}