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Hedvig Skirgård edited this page Mar 9, 2024 · 19 revisions

If you are working in language description or a typological project and would like to contribute to our database, you can! Our database is continuously improved, we revise and complete older coding and we welcome input from others.

We are continuously releasing new versions. The data set on our website (grambank.clld.org) represents the version of the data in the most recent release. We may have made updates since then (including updates initiated by you!). Please be patient as we work through the motions of updating the data set and releasing new versions.

We are open to contributions of languages currently not included, or suggestions for changes to already existing coding. See acknowledgements here for people who have already contributed to the project.

The questionnaire and project involve particular terminology and procedures that require training to fully understand. This wiki outlines our approach, but we recognize that this can be a lot to take in for an outsider. We have trained coders who can communicate with you and take you through the questionnaire and procedures if you need clarification.

To get in touch with us concerning contributing, please do one of the following:

Please note that we want to refer to specific sources for our coding, so make explicit what references you are using. We prefer the issue-workflow, so please if you can use that - it is more likely to be resolved soon. The issue-workflow has a template that we advice you follow and will appear when you start a new issue.

If you want to file or discuss more than 10 data-points, we strongly encourage you to first fill out your suggestions in a spreadsheet form. We have a blank coding sheet that you can use. Use the columns Value (for the new proposed value), Source (for the source you used) and Comment (for any comments you want to give to the datapoint). You can get at it either though the regular git workflow (clone/fork repos etc) or by following these steps in your web-browser

  1. download the file by pressing "Raw" and then, in your web browser, navigating to "File > Save as..".
  2. Save the file as a tsv file. Make sure you are saving "Page source" and remove ".txt" if it has been appended to the file name.
  3. Make changes to the file in a spreadsheet program, preferably LibreOffice (we strongly encourage LibreOffice over Microsoft Excel)
  4. Upload the file to your email or GitHub issue

Thank you for your interest in our database and the generosity you show us by contributing!

For more practical guides for using Grambank data, go here.

Language family trees and locations

Grambank uses language codes from the catalog Glottolog to identify languages uniquely (glottocodes). By extension, we also make it possible to use language family trees and coordinates from Glottolog in our web browser interface visualizations and CLDF-data release.

Grambank is not involved in defining language family trees or coordinates, this is all handled by Glottolog editors. See their definitions for language families here and geographic coordinates here. Any suggestions for changes regarding language names, trees or locations should be directed to glottolog. Changes made in Glottolog will ripple out to Grambank and other CLDF-datasets like Lexibank, Dictionaria etc.

Naturally, all users are free to map Grambank data to other language family trees and geographic locations. The CLDF-release also comes with ISO 639-3 language codes (what SIL International uses in Ethnologue) and names to facilitate cross-dataset research.

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