grambank: a database of structural (typological) features of language

Grambank is a database of structural (typological) features of language. It consists of 195 logically independent features (most of them binary) spanning all subdomains of morphosyntax. The Grambank feature questionnaire has been filled in, based on reference grammars, for 2,467 languages. The aim is to eventually reach as many as 3,500 languages. The database can be used to investigate deep language prehistory, the geographical-distribution of features, language universals and the functional interaction of structural features.

Project team: Hedvig Skirgård, Hannah J. Haynie, Damián E. Blasi, Harald Hammarström, Jeremy Collins, Jay J. Latarche, Jakob Lesage, Tobias Weber, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Sam Passmore, Angela M. Chira, Luke Maurits, Russell Dinnage, Michael Dunn, Ger Reesink, Ruth Singer, Claire Bowern, Patience L Epps, Jane Hill, Outi Vesakoski, Martine Robbeets, Noor Karolin Abbas, Daniel Auer, Nancy A. Bakker, Giulia Barbos, Robert D. Borges, Swintha Danielsen, Luise Dorenbusch, Ella Dorn, John Elliott, Giada Falcone, Jana Fischer, Yustinus Ghanggo Ate, Hannah Gibson, Hans-Philipp Göbel, Jemima A. Goodall, Victoria Gruner, Andrew Harvey, Rebekah Hayes, Leonard Heer, Roberto E. Herrera Miranda, Nataliia Hübler, Biu H. Huntington-Rainey, Jessica K. Ivani, Marilen Johns, Erika Just, Eri Kashima, Carolina Kipf, Janina V. Klingenberg, Nikita König, Aikaterina Koti, Richard G. A. Kowalik, Olga Krasnoukhova, Nora L. M. Lindvall, Mandy Lorenzen, Hannah Lutzenberger, Tânia R.A. Martins, Celia Mata German, Suzanne van der Meer, Jaime Montoya Samamé, Michael Müller, Saliha Muradoglu, Kelsey Neely, Johanna Nickel, Miina Norvik, Cheryl Akinyi Oluoch, Jesse Peacock, India O.C. Pearey, Naomi Peck, Stephanie Petit, Sören Pieper, Mariana Poblete, Daniel Prestipino, Linda Raabe, Amna Raja, Janis Reimringer, Sydney C. Rey, Julia Rizaew, Eloisa Ruppert, Kim K. Salmon, Jill Sammet, Rhiannon Schembri, Lars Schlabbach, Frederick W.P. Schmidt, Amalia Skilton, Wikaliler Daniel Smith, Hilário de Sousa, Kristin Sverredal, Daniel Valle, Javier Vera, Judith Voß, Tim Witte, Henry Wu, Stephanie Yam, Jingting Ye 葉婧婷, Maisie Yong, Tessa Yuditha, Roberto Zariquiey, Robert Forkel, Nicholas Evans, Stephen C. Levinson, Martin Haspelmath, Simon J. Greenhill, Quentin D. Atkinson, Russell D. Gray

Publications from this project

Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses.

Verkerk A, Shcherbakova O, Haynie HJ, Skirgård H, Rzymski C, Atkinson QD, Greenhill SJ & Gray RD. 2025. Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses. Nature Human Behaviour. 10, 126-136.

Abstract DOI PDF

@article{Verkerk2025,
  title = {Enduring constraints on grammar revealed by Bayesian spatiophylogenetic analyses.},
  author = {Verkerk, Annemarie and Shcherbakova, Olena and Haynie, Hannah J. and Skirgård, Hedvig and Rzymski, Christoph and Atkinson, Quentin D. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Gray, Russell D.},
  journal = {Nature Human Behaviour},
  volume = {10},
  number = {1},
  pages = {126--136},
  publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1038/s41562-025-02325-z},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/enduring-constraints-on-grammar/},
}

Different models, different assumptions, different findings.

Shcherbakova O, Gast V, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, Gray RD, & Skirgård H. 2025. Different models, different assumptions, different findings: commentary on 'Replication and methodological robustness in quantitative typology' by Becker and Guzmán Naranjo. Linguistic Typology, 29, 587-590.

Abstract DOI PDF

@article{Shcherbakova2025,
  title = {Different models, different assumptions, different findings.},
  author = {Shcherbakova, Olena and Gast, Volker and Greenhill, Simon J. and Blasi, Damián E. and Gray, Russell D. and Skirgård, Hedvig},
  journal = {Linguistic Typology},
  volume = {29},
  number = {3},
  pages = {587--590},
  publisher = {Walter de Gruyter GmbH},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.1515/lingty-2025-0022},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/different-models-assumptions-findings/},
}

The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom

Shcherbakova O, Blasi DE, Gast V, Skirgård H, Gray RD, & Greenhill SJ. 2024. The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom. Scientific Reports, 14, 7259.

Abstract DOI PDF

@article{Shcherbakova2024,
  title = {The evolutionary dynamics of how languages signal who does what to whom},
  author = {Shcherbakova, Olena and Blasi, Damián E. and Gast, Volker and Skirgård, Hedvig and Gray, Russell D. and Greenhill, Simon J.},
  journal = {Scientific Reports},
  volume = {14},
  number = {1},
  publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1038/s41598-024-51542-5},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/evolutionary-dynamics-who-does-what-to-whom/},
}

Societies of strangers do not speak grammatically simpler languages

Shcherbakova O, Michaelis SM, Haynie HJ, Passmore S, Gast V, Gray RD, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, & Skirgård H. 2023. Societies of strangers do not speak grammatically simpler languages. Science Advances, 9 (33), eadf7704.

Abstract DOI PDF

@article{Shcherbakova2023,
  title = {Societies of strangers do not speak grammatically simpler languages},
  author = {Shcherbakova, Olena and Michaelis, Susanne Maria and Haynie, Hannah J. and Passmore, Sam and Gast, Volker and Gray, Russell D. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Blasi, Damián E. and Skirgård, Hedvig},
  journal = {Science Advances},
  volume = {9},
  number = {33},
  publisher = {American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1126/sciadv.adf7704},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/societies-strangers-grammatically-simpler-languages/},
}

Grambank
Grambank’s Typological Advances Support Computational Research on Diverse Languages
Haynie H, Blasi DE, Skirgård H, Greenhill SJ, Atkinson QD, & Gray RD. Grambank’s Typological Advances Support Computational Research on Diverse Languages. In Beinborn L, Goswami K, Muradoğlu S, Sorokin A, Kumar R, Shcherbakov A, Ponti EM, Cotterell R & Vylomova E. Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Research in Computational Linguistic Typology and Multilingual NLP (SIGTYP). Association for Computational Linguistics: Dubrovnik, Croatia.
Abstract PDF
```
@misc{Haynie2023,
  title = {Grambank’s Typological Advances Support Computational Research on Diverse Languages},
  author = {Haynie, Hannah J. and Blasi, Damián E. and Skirgård, Hedvig and Greenhill, Simon J. and Atkinson, Quentin D. and Gray, Russell D.},
  year = {2023},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/grambank-sigtyp/},
}
```

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Skirgård H ....Greenhill SJ, Atkinson QD, & Gray RD. 2023. Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9, eadg6175.

Abstract DOI PDF

@article{Skirgård2023,
title = {Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss},
author = {Skirgård, Hedvig and Haynie, Hannah J. and Blasi, Damián E. and Hammarström, Harald and Collins, Jeremy and Latarche, Jay J. and Lesage, Jakob and Weber, Tobias and Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena and Passmore, Sam and Chira, Angela M. and Maurits, Luke and Dinnage, Russell and Dunn, Michael and Reesink, Ger and Singer, Ruth and Bowern, Claire and Epps, Patience L and Hill, Jane and Vesakoski, Outi and Robbeets, Martine and Abbas, Noor Karolin and Auer, Daniel and Bakker, Nancy A. and Barbos, Giulia and Borges, Robert D. and Danielsen, Swintha and Dorenbusch, Luise and Dorn, Ella and Elliott, John and Falcone, Giada and Fischer, Jana and Ate, Yustinus Ghanggo and Gibson, Hannah and Göbel, Hans-Philipp and Goodall, Jemima A. and Gruner, Victoria and Harvey, Andrew and Hayes, Rebekah and Heer, Leonard and Miranda, Roberto E. Herrera and Hübler, Nataliia and Huntington-Rainey, Biu H. and Ivani, Jessica K. and Johns, Marilen and Just, Erika and Kashima, Eri and Kipf, Carolina and Klingenberg, Janina V. and König, Nikita and Koti, Aikaterina and Kowalik, Richard G. A. and Krasnoukhova, Olga and Lindvall, Nora L. M. and Lorenzen, Mandy and Lutzenberger, Hannah and Martins, Tânia R.A. and German, Celia Mata and Meer, Suzanne van der and Samamé, Jaime Montoya and Müller, Michael and Muradoglu, Saliha and Neely, Kelsey and Nickel, Johanna and Norvik, Miina and Oluoch, Cheryl Akinyi and Peacock, Jesse and Pearey, India O.C. and Peck, Naomi and Petit, Stephanie and Pieper, Sören and Poblete, Mariana and Prestipino, Daniel and Raabe, Linda and Raja, Amna and Reimringer, Janis and Rey, Sydney C. and Rizaew, Julia and Ruppert, Eloisa and Salmon, Kim K. and Sammet, Jill and Schembri, Rhiannon and Schlabbach, Lars and Schmidt, Frederick W.P. and Skilton, Amalia and Smith, Wikaliler Daniel and Sousa, Hilário de and Sverredal, Kristin and Valle, Daniel and Vera, Javier and Voß, Judith and Witte, Tim and Wu, Henry and Yam, Stephanie and 葉婧婷, Jingting Ye and Yong, Maisie and Yuditha, Tessa and Zariquiey, Roberto and Forkel, Robert and Evans, Nicholas and Levinson, Stephen C. and Haspelmath, Martin and Greenhill, Simon J. and Atkinson, Quentin D. and Gray, Russell D.},
journal = {Science Advances},
volume = {9},
number = {16},
publisher = {American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1126/sciadv.adg6175},
url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/grambank/},
}

Language Evolution Phylogenetics Grambank
Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic environment
Shcherbakova O, Michaelis SM, Haynie HJ, Greenhill SJ, Blasi DE, Gray RD, Gast V, & Skirgård H. 2022. Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic environment. Pp. 669-671, In Ravignani A, Asano R, Valente D, Ferretti F, Hartmann S, Hayashi M, Jadoul Y, Martins M, Oseki Y, Rodrigues ED, Vasileva O, & Wacewicz S. (Eds). Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE). Nijmegen: Joint Conference on Language Evolution (JCoLE).
Abstract DOI PDF
```
@article{Shcherbakova2022,
  title = {Grammatical complexity is only weakly influenced by the sociolinguistic environment},
  author = {Shcherbakova, Olena and Michaelis, Susanne Maria and Haynie, Hannah J. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Blasi, Damián E. and Gray, Russell D. and Gast, Volker and Skirgård, Hedvig},
  journal = {(:unas)},
  publisher = {(:unas)},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.17617/2.3398549},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/grammatical-complexity-sociolinguistic-environment/},
}
```

A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking

Shcherbakova O, Gast V, Blasi DE, Skirgård H, Gray RD, & Greenhill SJ. 2022. A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. Linguistics Vanguard, 9(s1), 155–167.

Abstract DOI PDF

@article{Shcherbakova2022,
  title = {A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking},
  author = {Shcherbakova, Olena and Gast, Volker and Blasi, Damián E. and Skirgård, Hedvig and Gray, Russell D. and Greenhill, Simon J.},
  journal = {Linguistics Vanguard},
  volume = {9},
  number = {s1},
  pages = {155--167},
  publisher = {Walter de Gruyter GmbH},
  year = {2022},
  doi = {10.1515/lingvan-2021-0011},
  url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/quantitative-global-complexity-trade-off/},
}