Lexibank: a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features
The past decades have seen substantial growth in digital data on the world’s languages. At the same time, the demand for cross-linguistic datasets has been increasing, as witnessed by numerous studies devoted to diverse questions on human prehistory, cultural evolution, and human cognition. Unfortunately, most published datasets lack standardization which makes their comparison difficult. Here, we present a new approach to increase the comparability of cross-linguistic lexical data. We have designed workflows for the computer-assisted lifting of datasets to Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, a collection of standards that make these datasets more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). We test the Lexibank workflow on 100 lexical datasets from which we derive an aggregated database of wordlists in unified phonetic transcriptions covering more than 2000 language varieties. We illustrate the benefits of our approach by showing how phonological and lexical features can be automatically inferred, complementing and expanding existing cross-linguistic datasets.
Publications from this project
Lexibank 2: pre-computed features for large-scale lexical data.
@article{Blum2025, title = {Lexibank 2: pre-computed features for large-scale lexical data.}, author = {Blum, Frederic and List, Johann-Mattis and Barrientos, Carlos and Englisch, Johannes and Forkel, Robert and Greenhill, Simon J. and Rzymski, Christoph}, journal = {Open Research Europe}, volume = {5}, pages = {126}, publisher = {F1000 Research Ltd}, year = {2025}, doi = {10.12688/openreseurope.20216.2}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/lexibank2-pre-computed-features-for-large-scale-lexical-data/}, }Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features
@article{List2022, title = {Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features}, author = {List, Johann-Mattis and Forkel, Robert and Greenhill, Simon J. and Rzymski, Christoph and Englisch, Johannes and Gray, Russell D.}, journal = {Scientific Data}, volume = {9}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.1038/s41597-022-01432-0}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/lexibank/}, }Managing Historical Linguistic Data for Computational Phylogenetics and Computer-Assisted Language Comparison
@misc{Tresoldi2022, title = {Managing Historical Linguistic Data for Computational Phylogenetics and Computer-Assisted Language Comparison}, author = {Tresoldi, Tiago and Rzymski, Christoph and Forkel, Robert and Greenhill, Simon J. and List, Johann-Mattis and Gray, Russell D.}, publisher = {The MIT Press}, year = {2022}, doi = {10.7551/mitpress/12200.001.0001}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/managing-historical-linguistic-data-for-computational-phylogenetics/}, }The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies
@article{Rzymski2020, title = {The Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies}, author = {Rzymski, Christoph and Tresoldi, Tiago and Greenhill, Simon J. and Wu, Mei-Shin and Schweikhard, Nathanael E. and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria and Gast, Volker and Bodt, Timotheus A. and Hantgan, Abbie and Kaiping, Gereon A. and Chang, Sophie and Lai, Yunfan and Morozova, Natalia and Arjava, Heini and Hübler, Nataliia and Koile, Ezequiel and Pepper, Steve and Proos, Mariann and Epps, Briana Van and Blanco, Ingrid and Hundt, Carolin and Monakhov, Sergei and Pianykh, Kristina and Ramesh, Sallona and Gray, Russell D. and Forkel, Robert and List, Johann-Mattis}, journal = {Scientific Data}, volume = {7}, number = {1}, publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC}, year = {2020}, doi = {10.1038/s41597-019-0341-x}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/clics-reproducible-polysemies/}, }Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure
@article{Jackson2019, title = {Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure}, author = {Jackson, Joshua Conrad and Watts, Joseph and Henry, Teague R. and List, Johann-Mattis and Forkel, Robert and Mucha, Peter J. and Greenhill, Simon J. and Gray, Russell D. and Lindquist, Kristen A.}, journal = {Science}, volume = {366}, number = {6472}, pages = {1517--1522}, publisher = {American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)}, year = {2019}, doi = {10.1126/science.aaw8160}, url = {https://simon.net.nz/articles/emotion-semantics-show-both-cultural-variation-and-universal-structure/}, }