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WALS is the World Atlas of Language Structures, a reference database of structural properties of the world’s languages (phonological, grammatical and lexical) drawn from descriptive sources such as reference grammars. It is the standard first stop for linguists who need comparable, cross-linguistic data on a feature such as word order. This page explains what it contains, who produced it, how to browse and cite it, how to reuse the data, and where it stops being the right tool. Facts below were checked against wals.info, its download page, its chapter list and the cldf-datasets/wals GitHub repository on 2026-11-07.
What does WALS mean?
In linguistics, WALS means the World Atlas of Language Structures; the online edition is often written “WALS Online” and lives at wals.info. The same four letters stand for unrelated organisations. The World Association of Lesson Studies also uses the abbreviation (walsnet.org), and searches for “WALS” can also return the name of a place or other organisations. If you are looking for typological data on languages, wals.info is the right site.
What is the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)?
WALS is a database of structural properties of languages. Each property is documented in a chapter that explains the feature, how languages were coded for it, and what the cross-linguistic picture looks like. The material is gathered from descriptive sources such as reference grammars.
Who runs WALS and what does it cover?
- Editors: Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath, with 55 contributing authors.
- Publisher: the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig.
- History: the first version was a book with CD-ROM from Oxford University Press (2005). The first online version appeared in April 2008, and the 2013 edition corrected coding errors.
- Current status: the site states: “WALS is a finished project. This website will no longer be updated.” Treat it as a fixed, citable snapshot rather than a living resource.
The chapter list is organised into 11 areas: Phonology, Sign Languages, Other, Morphology, Nominal Categories, Nominal Syntax, Verbal Categories, Word Order, Simple Clauses, Complex Sentences and Lexicon. The chapter table shows an Id, Name, Author, Area and a Cite column for each chapter, so each feature has a named author you can credit.
How to find your way around WALS Online
- Use Features or Chapters in the top bar to browse by linguistic property; the chapter table lists the author of each.
- Use Languages to browse or search for a particular language.
- Use References to search the descriptive sources the data was drawn from.
- On a feature page, use the second navigation bar for citation information and export options.
- Note that the site needs JavaScript to work.
How to cite WALS
The site asks you to cite the specific chapter you used and the general work, and to name the version listed on Zenodo. The general citation is: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) 2013. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The site cites data version v2020.6 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23010827); older releases are archived on Zenodo under DOI 10.5281/zenodo.3606197, where all released versions are accessible. For general principles on citing datasets, see data citation principle.
Download and reuse the WALS data
The download page points to the GitHub repository cldf-datasets/wals, which publishes WALS as a CLDF (Cross-Linguistic Data Formats) StructureDataset, with metadata in cldf/StructureDataset-metadata.json. The data is licensed CC BY 4.0, so reuse requires attribution. If you build a derived dataset, cite the DOI of the released version you used, not just the website. For the general practice of pinning versions, see versioning research datasets; for how the archive that hosts these releases works, see Zenodo; and for what CC BY obliges you to do, see data licensing for research datasets.
Strengths and limits
- Strength: a single, chapter-documented, openly licensed, citable source of coded structural features, with named authors per chapter.
- Strength: machine-readable CLDF release with archived, DOI-versioned snapshots, which supports reproducible analysis.
- Limit: the project is finished and the website will not be updated, so new descriptive work will not appear in it.
- Limit: the data is derived from descriptive sources such as reference grammars, so each coding reflects what those sources say.
- Limit: the browsing interface requires JavaScript; use the GitHub or Zenodo release for scripted work.
Alternatives and companion resources
| Resource | What it is (per its own site, read 2026-11-07) |
|---|---|
| Glottolog (glottolog.org) | A catalogue of the world’s languages, language families and dialects that assigns each a stable identifier (the Glottocode), plus a bibliography of descriptive works. Version 5.3 is shown on the site. |
| Grambank (grambank.clld.org) | A grammatical database covering 2,467 language varieties in 195 features, built by an international collaboration. Its release is available on Zenodo (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.7740139), and the site says to record which version you used. |
| WALS Online (wals.info) | Chapter-documented structural features of languages; finished, no longer updated. |
WALS, Glottolog and Grambank are not interchangeable: WALS and Grambank hold feature data, while Glottolog is a catalogue and bibliography. For other linguistics data infrastructure, see TalkBank and CHILDES, and for the field overview see What is linguistics?
FAQ
What does WALS mean?
In linguistics it means the World Atlas of Language Structures. Other organisations share the abbreviation, so check the site name.
What is the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)?
A database of phonological, grammatical and lexical properties of languages, edited by Matthew S. Dryer and Martin Haspelmath and published by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
What is the World Association of Laparoscopic Surgeons (WALS)?
That is a different organisation and not the subject of this page. The linguistics database has no connection to surgery, and this page gives no medical information. The walsnet.org site belongs to the World Association of Lesson Studies, another unrelated body.
Can I still cite and download WALS?
Yes. The site is frozen but the data remains available, under CC BY 4.0, from GitHub (CLDF) and Zenodo; cite the released version you used.
Sources
- WALS Online home, https://wals.info/ (read 2026-11-07)
- WALS Online download page, https://wals.info/download (read 2026-11-07)
- WALS Online chapters, https://wals.info/chapter (read 2026-11-07)
- cldf-datasets/wals, https://github.com/cldf-datasets/wals (read 2026-11-07)
- Glottolog, https://glottolog.org/ and Grambank, https://grambank.clld.org/ (read 2026-11-07)
