The marama project – led by Alexandre François (CNRS, Paris; ANU) and Siva Kalyan (Univ. of Queensland, Australia) – includes a particular interest for lexical structures across the world's languages, i.e. the manner in which meaning is distributed across linguistic forms in lexicons of the world. This research agenda is known as lexical typology.
From etymology to lexicography
François developed his passion for lexical semantics as he studied classical languages (Greek, Latin, PIE reconstruction...) and learned about semantic change from ancient languages to modern times. His interest was renewed as he researched the Oceanic languages of Vanuatu: this has led to various lexicographic projects, in the form of printed or electronic dictionaries on various languages of Vanuatu (Araki, Mwotlap, Lo-Toga, Hiw) or the Solomons (Teanu, Lovono, Tanema).
Colexification and the typology of synchronic polysemies
In parallel with his descriptive work on Oceanic languages, François began searching for universal patterns of polysemy by proposing the new concept of colexification – that is, the phenomenon whereby distinct concepts can be expressed identically (=can be “co-lexified”) in certain languages.
- François, Alexandre. 2008.
Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In Martine Vanhove (ed.). From Polysemy to Semantic change: Towards a typology of lexical semantic associations. Studies in Language Companion Series, 106. Amsterdam, New York: Benjamins. 163-215.
François' concept of colexification – and/or the method he proposed for building semantic maps to represent patterns of colexification – have since inspired numerous scientific works, in the domains of lexical typology, cognitive semantics or natural language processing (NLP).
Semantic change and “lexical tectonics”
More recently, François endeavoured to broaden his reflection by focusing on the diachronic dimension of semantic associations, namely semantic change and etymology. This took the form of various publications:
- François, Alexandre. 2013.
- —— 2022a.
Charting the semantic history of *tabu words in Vanuatu. Oceanic Linguistics 61/1 (June 2022), 212-255.- —— 2022b.
The metaphor of “lexical tectonics” captures the phenomenon of semantic change in the lexicon, as word meanings progressively evolve over time. The slow reshaping of each word's profile in semantic space somehow reminds us tectonic plates drift in a way that slowly reshapes our geographical landscapes.
Dialexification, a tool for studying semantic change
In 2023, in order to study the diachronic dimension of colexification, François and Kalyan coined the new concept of dialexification. Dialexification captures the relation between “cognate meanings”: that is, if two words in different languages are cognate (=descended from the same etymon), then the meanings of those words will be dialexified. For example, French entendre 'hear' & Spanish entender 'understand' show that the two concepts {hear—understand} are “dialexified” in the Romance family.
- Alexandre François & Siva Kalyan
th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference), Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf. Aug 2023.- —— (in prep.) Dialexification and the typology of lexical change.
𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem: A database of dialexification
This concept of dialexification has given rise to a new online project: 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem. This database of dialexification explores historical relations between concepts, based on their etymological links in dozens of different language families across the world.
Visit the 𝓔𝓿𝓸Sem database.
