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, in prep.).
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.
The database is also being built by three members of LaTTiCe:
![]() | Mathieu Dehouck (Chargé de recherche at LaTTiCe), a specialist of NLP and computational linguistics. |
![]() | Martial Pastor, a computational engineer at LaTTiCe, expert in NLP and data mining technologies. |
![]() | David Kletz, a doctoral student in NLP at Université Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, affiliated both with LaTTiCe and with Laboratoire de linguistique formelle. |
For any query regarding 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem, feel free to contact alexandre.francois@ens.fr. We welcome any feedback, including offers for data corrections, or suggestions for improvement of our interface.