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Robert Forkel

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig

phone: +49 (0) 341 3550 261
e-mail: robert_forkel@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de

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About me
Curriculum Vitae
Publications

About me

I am a scientific programmer, focusing on software to aggregate, curate and publish large databases for linguistic and cultural research. I am also interested in how data is used in research, in particular regarding aspects like reproducibility, and contribute to software packages such as LingPy.

 

Curriculum Vitae

since 2018Head of the research data management group at DLCE
2014-2017Scientific Programmer in the CLLD project
2007-2012Scientific Programmer at the Max Planck Digital Library
1994-2000MA in Mathematics.
University Regensburg.
Thesis title: "Effektive Berechnung von Residuenabbildungen"

Publications

In press

Hermann, A., Gutiérrez, P., Chauvel, C., Maury, R., Liorzou, C., Willie, E., Philipp, I., Forkel, R., Rzymski, C., & Bedford, S. (in press). Artefact geochemistry demonstrates long-distance voyaging in the Polynesian Outliers. Science Advances.

2024

Blum, F., Paschen, L., Forkel, R., Fuchs, S., & Seifart, F. (2024). Consonant lengthening marks the beginning of words across a diverse sample of languages (advance online). Nature Human Behaviour.
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Forkel, R., & Hammarström, H. (2024). A revised digital edition of Wurm & Hattori’s Language Atlas of the Pacific Area. Scientific Data, 11: 949.
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Tjuka, A., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2024). Universal and cultural factors shape body part vocabularies. Scientific Reports, 14: 10486.
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Forkel, R., List, J.-M., Rzymski, C., & Segerer, G. (2024). Linguistic survey of India and Polyglotta Africana: Two retrostandardized digital editions of large historical collections of multilingual wordlists. In N. Calzolari, M.-Y. Kan, V. Hoste, A. Lenci, & S. Sakti (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024) (pp. 10578-10583).
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Forkel, R., Swanson, D., & Moran, S. (2024). Converting legacy data to CLDF: A FAIR exit strategy for linguistic web apps. In N. Calzolari, M.-Y. Kan, V. Hoste, A. Lenci, & S. Sakti (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024) (pp. 3978-3982).
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2023

List, J.-M., Hill, N., Forkel, R., & Blum, F. (2023). Representing and computing uncertainty in phonological reconstruction. In N. Tahmasebi, S. Montariol, H. Dubossarsky, A. Kutuzov, S. Hengchen, D. Alfter, F. Periti, & P. Cassotti (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change (pp. 22-32). Association for Computational Linguistics.
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Tjuka, A., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2023). Curating and extending data for language comparison in Concepticon and NoRaRe. Open Research Europe, 2: 141.
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Skirgård, H., Haynie, H. J., Blasi, D. E., Hammarström, H., Collins, J., Latarche, J. J., Lesage, J., Weber, T., Witzlack-Makarevich, A., Passmore, S., Chira, A.-M., Maurits, L., Dinnage, R., Dunn, M., Reesink, G., Singer, R., Bowern, C., Epps, P., Hill, J., Vesakoski, O., Robbeets, M., Abbas, N. K., Auer, D., Bakker, N. A., Barbos, G., Borges, R. D., Danielsen, S., Dorenbusch, L., Dorn, E., Elliott, J., Falcone, G., Fischer, J., Ghanggo Ate, Y., Gibson, H., Göbel, H.-P., Goodall, J. A., Gruner, V., Harvey, A., Hayes, R., Heer, L., Herrera Miranda, R. E., Hübler, N., Huntington-Rainey, B., Ivani, J. K., Johns, M., Just, E., Kashima, E., Kipf, C., Klingenberg, J. V., König, N., Koti, A., Kowalik, R. G., Krasnoukhova, O., Lindvall, N. L., Lorenzen, M., Lutzenberger, H., Martins, T. R., Mata German, C., van der Meer, S., Montoya Samamé, J., Müller, M., Muradoglu, S., Neely, K., Nickel, J., Norvik, M., Oluoch, C. A., Peacock, J., Pearey, I. O., Peck, N., Petit, S., Pieper, S., Poblete, M., Prestipino, D., Raabe, L., Raja, A., Reimringer, J., Rey, S. C., Rizaew, J., Ruppert, E., Salmon, K., Sammet, J., Schembri, R., Schlabbach, L., Schmidt, F. W., Skilton, A., Smith, W. D., de Sousa, H., Sverredal, K., Valle, D., Vera, J., Voß, J., Witte, T., Wu, H., Yam, S., Ye, J., Yong, M., Yuditha, T., Zariquiey, R., Forkel, R., Evans, N., Levinson, S. C., Haspelmath, M., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., & Gray, R. D. (2023). Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss. Science Advances, 9: eadg6175.
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Hermann, A., Gutiérrez, P., Chauvel, C., Maury, R., Liorzou, C., Willie, E., Phillip, I., Forkel, R., Rzymski, C., & Bedford, S. (2023). Artifact geochemistry demonstrates long-distance voyaging in the Polynesian Outliers. Science Advances, 9(16): eadf4487.
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2022

Barbieri, C., Blasi, D. E., Arango-Isaza, E., Sotiropoulos, A. G., Hammerström, H., Wichmann, S., Greenhill, S. J., Gray, R. D., Forkel, R., Bickel, B., & Shimizu, K. K. (2022). A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(47): e2122084119.
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List, J.-M., Forkel, R., Greenhill, S. J., Rzymski, C., Englisch, J., & Gray, R. D. (2022). Lexibank, a public repository of standardized wordlists with computed phonological and lexical features. Scientific Data, 9: 316.
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Tjuka, A., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2022). Linking norms, ratings, and relations of words and concepts across multiple language varieties. Behavior Research Methods, 54, 864-884.
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Forkel, R., & Hammarström, H. (2022). Glottocodes: identifiers linking families, languages and dialects to comprehensive reference information. Semantic Web, 917-924.
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List, J.-M., Forkel, R., & Hill, N. (2022). A new framework for fast automated phonological reconstruction using trimmed alignments and sound correspondence patterns. In N. Tahmasebi, S. Montariol, A. Kutozov, S. Hengchen, H. Dubossarsky, & L. Borin (Eds.), 3rd international workshop on computational approaches to historical language change 2022: proceedings of the workshop (pp. 89-96). Stroudsburg: Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).
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List, J.-M., Vylomova, E., Forkel, R., Hill, N. W., & Cotterell, R. D. (2022). The SIGTYP 2022 shared task on the prediction of cognate reflexes. In E. Vylomova, E. Ponti, & R. Cotterell (Eds.), SIGTYP 2022: the 4th workshop on computational typology and multilingual NLP: proceedings of the workshop (pp. 52-62). Stroudsburg: Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL).
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Tresoldi, T., Rzymski, C., Forkel, R., Greenhill, S. J., List, J.-M., & Gray, R. D. (2022). Managing historical linguistic data for computational phylogenetics and computer-assisted language comparison. In A. L. Berez-Kroeker, B. McDonnel, & E. Koller (Eds.), The open handbook of linguistic data management (pp. 345-354). Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
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2021

Forkel, R., & Hammarström, H. (2021). Glottocodes: identifiers linking families, languages and dialects. Semantics Web Journal, 2685-3899. Retrieved from http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/glottocodes-identifiers-linking-families-languages-and-dialects.
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Geisler, H., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2021). A digital, retro-standardized edition of the Tableaux Phonétiques des Patois Suisses Romands (TPPSR). In A. Thibault, M. Avanzi, & N. Lo Vecchio (Eds.), Nouveaux regards sur la variation dialectale – New ways of analyzing dialectal variation (pp. 13-36). Strasbourg: Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie.
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List, J.-M., & Forkel, R. (2021). Automated identification of borrowings in multilingual wordlists. Open Research Europe, 1: 79.
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List, J.-M., Sims, N. A., & Forkel, R. (2021). Toward a sustainable handling of interlinear-glossed text in language documentation. ACM Transactions on Asian and Low-Resource Language Information Processing, 20(2), 1-15.
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2020

Hermann, A., Forkel, R., McAlister, A., Cruickshank, A., Golitko, M., Kneebone, B., McCoy, M., Reepmeyer, C., Sheppard, P., Sinton, J., & Weisler, M. (2020). Pofatu, a curated and open-access database for geochemical sourcing of archaeological materials. Scientific Data, 7(1): 141.
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Rzymski, C., Tresoldi, T., Greenhill, S. J., Wu, M.-S., Schweikhard, N. E., Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Gast, V., Bodt, T. A., Hantgan, A., Kaiping, G. A., Chang, S., Lai, Y., Morozova, N., Arjava, H., Hübler, N., Koile, E., Pepper, S., Proos, M., Epps, B. V., Blanco, I., Hundt, C., Monakhov, S., Pianykh, K., Ramesh, S., Gray, R. D., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2020). The database of cross-linguistic colexifications, reproducible analysis of cross-linguistic polysemies. Scientific Data, 7: 13.
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Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2020). CLDFBench: Give your cross-linguistic data a lift. In N. Calzolari, F. Béchet, P. Blache, K. Choukri, C. Cieri, T. Declerck, S. Goggi, H. Ishara, B. Maegaard, H. M. Mariani, A. Moreno, J. Odijk, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020) (pp. 6995-7002). Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA).
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2019

Jackson, J. C., Watts, J., Henry, T. R., List, J.-M., Forkel, R., Mucha, P. J., Greenhill, S. J., Gray, R. D., & Lindquist, K. A. (2019). Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure. Science, 366, 1517-1522.
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2018

Forkel, R., List, J.-M., Greenhill, S. J., Rzymski, C., Bank, S., Cysouw, M., Hammarström, H., Haspelmath, M., Kaiping, G. A., & Gray, R. D. (2018). Cross-Linguistic Data Formats, advancing data sharing and re-use in comparative linguistics. Scientific Data, 5: 180205.
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Hammarström, H., Castermans, T., Forkel, R., Verbeek, K., Westenberg, M. A., & Speckmann, B. (2018). Simultaneous visualization of language endangerment and language description. Language Documentation & Conservation, 12, 359-392. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24792.
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List, M., Walworth, M., Greenhill, S. J., Tresoldi, T., & Forkel, R. (2018). Sequence comparison in computational historical linguistics. Journal of Language Evolution, 3(2), 130-144.
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Anderson, C., Tresoldi, T., Chacon, T., Fehn, A.-M., Walworth, M., Forkel, R., & List, J.-M. (2018). A cross-linguistic database of phonetic transcription systems. Yearbook of the Poznan Linguistic Meeting, 4(1), 21-53.
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List, J.-M., Greenhill, S. J., Anderson, C., Mayer, T., Tresoldi, T., & Forkel, R. (2018). CLICS2: An improved database of cross-linguistic colexifications assembling lexical data with the help of cross-linguistic data formats. Linguistic Typology, 22(2), 277-306.
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2017

Maurits, L., Forkel, R., Kaiping, G. A., & Atkinson, Q. D. (2017). BEASTling: A software tool for linguistic phylogenetics using BEAST 2. PLoS One, 12(8): e0180908.
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2016

List, J.-M., Cysouw, M., & Forkel, R. (2016). Concepticon: A resource for the linking of concept lists. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, May 23-28, 2016, Portorož, Slovenia (pp. 2393-2400).
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2015

Naumann, C., Moran, S., & Forkel, R. (Eds.). (2015). Tsammalex: A lexical database on plants and animals. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved from http://tsammalex.clld.org.
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2014

Forkel, R. (2014). The Cross-Linguistic Linked Data project. In 3rd Workshop on Linked Data in Linguistics: Multilingual knowledge resources and natural language processing (pp. 60-66).
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2013

Nordhoff, S., Hammarström, H., Forkel, R., & Haspelmath, M. (Eds.). (2013). Glottolog 2.0. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved from http://glottolog.org/.
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