𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem is a scientific project started in 2023, and hosted at LaTTiCe (CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, Université Sorbonne nouvelle), a Paris-based research department specializing in theoretical and computational linguistics.
The 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem project is led by Alexandre François (Directeur de recherche at CNRS–LaTTiCe). Following his education in classical languages and Indo-European reconstruction, François works on historical linguistics, and applies the comparative method to Austronesian languages of the Pacific. In parallel, he has contributed to language typology, particularly lexical semantic typology – through his work on “colexification” and semantic maps (François 2008), “lexical tectonics” (François 2022), and “dialexification” (François & Kalyan 2023).
Besides the general conception of 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, François writes code for various aspects of the pages, from curating the datasets to improving interactive functions in tables or maps, or enhancing its visual aesthetics.
Besides the general conception of 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, François writes code for various aspects of the pages, from curating the datasets to improving interactive functions in tables or maps, or enhancing its visual aesthetics.
𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem was born out of an ongoing collaboration with Siva Kalyan (University of Queensland; Australian National University). Kalyan works on the modelling and visualization of complex linguistic data – both in language typology and in language change. Kalyan has been working mostly on the incorporation of datasets from various sources.
Since 2023, 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem has been considerably enhanced by the contributions of Mathieu Dehouck (Chargé de recherche at LaTTiCe), a specialist of NLP and computational linguistics. Among various aspects, Dehouck has developped the semantic graphs, the interactive tables, and the search engines.
Several other individuals have contributed to various aspects of the database over the years:
David Kletz helped us with the first steps of EvoSem in 2022, by developping an early version of our graphs. He was then a doctoral student in NLP at Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, affiliated both with LaTTiCe and with Laboratoire de linguistique formelle
Martial Pastor is a computational engineer at LaTTiCe, expert in NLP and data mining technologies. He helped us import some datasets and built the first version of the search engine.
Romane Fayon, an undergraduate student at PSL University, who worked with the EvoSem team for her UROP internship in 2025. She helped us incorporate info from Glottolog, and build geographical maps – among other things.
Solène Gros, also an undergraduate student at PSL University, who also chose to work for EvoSem for her UROP internship in 2025.She worked on developping the tutorial; and on creating trees based on phylogenetic affiliation.
For any query regarding 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, feel free to contact alexandre.francois@ens.psl.eu. We welcome any feedback, including offers for data corrections, or suggestions for improvement of our interface.