Database of Semantic Shifts
in languages of the world

DatSemShift 3.0

    The aim of the Database of Semantic shifts is to collect and classify semantic shifts attested in the languages of the world. Semantic shift is understood as a cognitive proximity of two meanings A and B (or SOURCE-meaning and TARGET-meaning) that manifests itself in the fact that these two meanings are conflated within the limits of one word in an extended sense, i.e. in the form of one of following realization types: synchronic polysemy, diachronic semantic evolution, morphological derivation, cognates, borrowing.

    The Database of Semantic shifts is being developed since 2002 in the Institute of Linguistics in Moscow by a research group under the guidance of Anna A. Zalizniak in the framework of the project The Catalogue of semantic shifts.

    For the last four years the project has been running in collaboration with the Semshift workshop of the HSE School of Linguistics. The workshop is led by the project members - Maxim Rousseau and Anna Smirnitskaya. Some of the workshop graduates joined the Datsemshift 2.0 project as full-fledged participants.