languagefrom

Languagefrom is a term used in linguistic documentation and corpus annotation to designate the source language from which a linguistic item—such as a word, morpheme, or syntactic pattern—originates. In data schemas and lexicographic databases, languagefrom functions as a metadata field that pairs with languageinto (the target language) to trace the etymology or transfer path of items across languages. The concept is particularly useful in studies of language contact, loanwords, calques, and historical linguistics, where researchers seek to map how features move between languages.

In practice, languagefrom is assigned by researchers or annotators based on scholarly etymology, historical records, or phonological-fit analysis. For example, the English loanword "piano" is annotated with languagefrom = Italian and languageinto = English. The term helps enable automated queries, phylogenetic analyses, and cross-linguistic comparisons, and it supports reproducibility by standardizing provenance metadata.

Limitations include ambiguity when multiple languages influence a form, uncertain etymology, or cases of convergent evolution. Some projects prefer broader labels like "source language" or use multiple languagefrom tags to reflect layered origins. The term is not standardized across all linguistic resources and may be implemented differently depending on the corpus or database.

See also: etymology, loanwords, language contact, etymon, data annotation, corpus linguistics.