The full Semantic Domains v4 list is available for download in its original FieldWorks XML format, or as JSON generated from it.
This data is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License by SIL International.
The list of semantic domains draws on a wide range of published and unpublished work. The sources below are grouped by language family and region.
Buck, Carl Darling. 1949. A dictionary of selected synonyms in the principal Indo-European languages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Buck’s purpose was to list words from selected Indo-European languages that express selected semantic concepts. Consequently he chose to organize his dictionary by semantics rather than alphabetical order. Since he only includes around 1,100 concepts, his concepts are usually very basic. So his entries often correspond to the domain labels in other lists of domains. Buck has 172 domains.
Louw, Johannes P. and Eugene A. Nida (eds.). 1988. Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament: based on semantic domains. New York: United Bible Societies.
This dictionary is organized by semantic domain with indexes of both Greek words and English glosses. The list of domains is limited due to the limited vocabulary and subject matter of the New Testament. There are 744 domains in the dictionary.
Bruce, Les, et al. undated. List of semantic domains. unpublished manuscript.
Les Bruce and his team developed a list of domains for use in the LinguaLinks program (now available as FieldWorks) as a tool for classifying words in a dictionary. Bruce’s list was based on the list of domains in Louw and Nida (1988). Bruce added about 100 new domains to Louw and Nida’s list for a total of 846. Bruce’s team classified about 25,000 English words.
FrameNet. https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/.
FrameNet is an ongoing research project to identify and describe English semantic frames. Each frame includes a partial list of words that use the frame. These frames and lexical sets are similar to domains. As of September, 8 2012 there were about 1,200 frames in the list.
Levin, Beth. 1993. English verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
This book is a report of a research project investigating the syntactic behavior of English verbs. The book describes 191 classes of verbs. The classes resemble semantic domains, but often combine verbs from quite different domains.
Roget, Peter Mark. 1985. Roget’s thesaurus. New York: Signet.
There are several versions of Roget’s thesaurus on the market. This version is organized alphabetically with large domains interspersed with the small thesaurus entries. Since the head words are often polysemous, the domains and thesaurus entries are often a mixture of semantic concepts.
Roget, Peter Mark. 1989. Roget’s Thesaurus. Essex: Longman Group.
This version of Roget’s thesaurus is organized by domain with a finder list (index) at the back. The organization is highly abstract, often non-intuitive, and therefore difficult to master. This version has 984 domains.
Summers, Della. (ed.) 1993. Longman Language Activator. London: Longman.
This is by far the largest and best developed classified dictionary of English. It was designed for advanced language learners and therefore omits most domains for concrete objects and many situational domains. It has 1052 domains.
Trappes-Lomax, Hugh. 1997. Learner’s wordfinder dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This dictionary is organized by semantic domain and is designed for intermediate language learners. It focuses on concrete and situational domains. It has 630 domains.
Naden, Tony. undated. List of semantic domains. unpublished manuscript.
This list was designed for collecting and classifying words for dictionaries in west Africa. It contains 240 domains.
Snider, Keith, and Jim Roberts. 2006. SIL comparative African word list. http://www.sil.org/silewp/2006/silewp2006-005.pdf.
As its title suggests, the list is designed to elicit standardized word lists for comparative purposes within the African context. It has around 2,000 words in 220 domains.
Batibo, H. M. 1989. Questionnaire on cultural vocabulary. unpublished manuscript.
Batibo developed this questionaire for a project on the linguistic and cultural history of Tanzania. The questionaire includes a list of 1,563 words in 13 domains.
Lukula, A. M. 1991. The nature and extent of linguistic change among insular Jita in Ukerewe. MA dissertation. Dar es Salaam: University of Dar es Salaam.
Lukula’s list has 700 words in 22 domains.
Moe, Ronald. (ed.) 2001. Gikuyu semantic domain list. unpublished manuscript.
This list was produced in a workshop by a group of twelve Gikuyu speakers who were asked to classify 1,000 words. The words were selected by Moe from VanOtterloo’s Kifuliiru list (VanOtterloo:2000) and chosen to cover the entire semantic range of the vocabulary of a language. The purpose of the workshop was to produce an emic list of domains for Gikuyu and organize the domains into a hierarchical system. The participants classified the 1,000 words in 100 domains.
Moe, Ronald (ed.). 2002. Lugwere semantic domain list. unpublished manuscript.
This list was produced in a workshop by a group of twelve Lugwere speakers who were asked to classify 1,000 words. Once they finished this task, they were asked to add additional words to each of their domains. They added 2,000 words and ended up with 3,000 words in a system of 300 domains.
VanOtterloo, Roger. 2000. Kifuliiru dictionary. unpublished manuscript.
Roger VanOtterloo developed a list of domains for his Kifuliiru (Bantu, Congo) dictionary based on his considerable work on the language. It is one of the largest and best developed list of domains for a non-Indo-European language. It was edited by Alison Nicolle and formed the original basis for the DDP list of domains. (Used by permission.) It has around 900 domains.
Yukawa, Yasutoshi. 1979. A tentative questionnaire for the words of Bantu languages. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
Yukawa used his wordlist in two published dictionaries (Yukawa:1989 and Yukawa:1992). The list contains 82 domains.
Yukawa, Yasutoshi. 1989. A classified vocabulary of the Nilamba language. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
Yukawa, Yasutoshi. 1992. A classified vocabulary of the Luba language. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa.
Akiyama, Carol, and Nobuo Akiyama. 1991. Japanese vocabulary. New York: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
This is a semantically classified word list designed for language learners. It has 138 domains.
Premsrirat, Suwilai, David Thomas, and Robert S. Bauer. 2002. The thesaurus and dictionary series of Khmu dialects in Southeast Asia. Mon-Khmer studies - Mahidol University special publication, 1. Nakhon Pathom, Thailand: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development and SIL International. 5 vols.
This is a comparative work for a branch of Austro-Asiatic in southeast Asia. It has 200 domains.
Smith, Kenneth D. (ed.) 2000. Sedang dictionary. Salaya, Thailand: Mahidol University.
Sedang is an Austro-Asiatic language of Vietnam. The dictionary contains 280 semantic domains in boxes scattered throughout the alphabetized entries. Not all the words are classified.
Trimnell, Edward. 2005. Modern Japanese vocabulary. Cincinnati: Beechmont Crest Publishing.
Designed for language learners, this vocabulary is organized in 91 domains.
Xiandai Hanyu Fenlei Cidian. [The bibliographical information for this book is in Chinese.]
This is a large Chinese dictionary classified by semantic domain. It is entirely in Chinese except for a Pinyin transliteration of each word. It is included in this bibliography to alert you to its existence. It was not used in the development of the DDP list of domains.
Dictionary of Biblical Hebrew. Undated. Unpublished manuscript.
This is an ongoing project of the United Bible Societies to produce a classified dictionary of Biblical Hebrew.
Behrens, Dietlinde. 2002. Yakan-English dictionary. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.
Yakan is an Austronesian language of the Philippines. The dictionary has 208 domains in an appendix.
Hohulin, Lou. 1994. Tuwali Ifugao dictionary. unpublished manuscript.
Tuwali Ifugao is an Austronesian language of the Philippines. The dictionary has 150 domains in an appendix.
Svelmoe, Gordon and Thelma Svelmoe, compilers. 1990. Mansaka dictionary. Language Data, Asian-Pacific Series, 16. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
Mansaka is an Austronesian language of the Philippines. The dictionary has 100 domains in an appendix.
Newell, Leonard E. 1993. Batad Ifugao dictionary with ethnographic notes. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines.
Batad Ifugao is an Austronesian language of the Philippines. The dictionary has 138 domains in an appendix.
Thomas, Neville. 1985. Kalinga dictionary. unpublished manuscript.
Kalinga is an Austronesian language of the Philippines. The dictionary has 150 domains in an appendix.
Fleming, Ilah. 1988. Communication analysis, a stratificational approach. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
This book describes a theory of communication that relates the strata of phonology, grammar, semantics, and pragmatics. It contains a list of basic semantic constructions and constituents from a universal, etic viewpoint. Although it is not a list of semantic domains, it is an excellent source for semantic concepts that tend to be expressed by functors. Most lists of domains ignore this part of the vocabulary.
Murdock, George P. et al. 1982. Outline of cultural materials. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files.
The OCM categories were designed as a system for classifying anthropological notes. As such it lacks many lexical domains and some of its categories are not lexical in nature. However it is fascinating to see how much overlap there is between the OCM categories and the semantic domains in the other lists. It has 732 categories.
Samarin, W. J. 1967. Field linguistics; a guide to linguistic field work. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
This book contains a list of 218 basic words in 15 domains.
Corpus of Contemporary American English. http://www.americancorpus.org/
Ongoing development of the DDP domains is being based partly on this corpus. The choice of sample words in the list of domains is being revised primarily on the basis of frequency in this corpus.
Moe, Ronald. 2003. Compiling dictionaries using semantic domains. Lexicos 13: 215-223.
This is a description of the word collection method that uses the DDP list of domains.
