37.901, Software: Elisheet: A Google Sheets–Based Tool for Linguistic Elicitation and Audio Data Collection

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-901. Thu Mar 05 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.901, Software: Elisheet: A Google Sheets–Based Tool for Linguistic Elicitation and Audio Data Collection

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Date: 03-Mar-2026
From: Akinloluwa Ajayi [loluwahajayi at gmail.com]
Subject: Elisheet: A Google Sheets–Based Tool for Linguistic Elicitation and Audio Data Collection


As a linguist engaged extensively in fieldwork and linguistic
elicitation (wordlists, paradigms, sentence frames, and more), I began
to notice a recurring pattern: most of us prepare our elicitation
materials in spreadsheets.
That observation led to a simple question:
Why not let the spreadsheet become the elicitation sheet?
>From that idea, I developed Elisheet — a Google Sheets–based script
designed to support structured linguistic elicitation and audio data
collection directly within a spreadsheet environment.
Elisheet allows you to:
Present prompts directly inside your spreadsheet
Record audio responses within the sheet interface
Automatically save and organize audio files and metadata
Structure linguistic data for later analysis or speech model training
Rather than juggling notebooks, separate recording devices, and
loosely organized file folders, Elisheet centralizes the workflow into
a single organized system.
How to try Elisheet:
1. Open the template:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J7oAH141RT1QQWj23QSr_-qjPcd2XtCvdOVBGXdrXmY/edit?gid=291142080#gid=291142080
2. Make a copy (so it saves to your own Google Drive).
3. Update your project details in the “Project Info” tab.
4. Enter or modify elicitation material in the “Data Sheet” tab.
5. Review the “Documentation” tab to understand the sheet structure.
6. Use the new ELISHEET menu to launch the recording interface.
Audio can be recorded in .WEBM or .WAV formats. The tool currently
works on PC environments to allow the use of external microphones
(e.g., USB microphones such as the Behringer C1U).
Elisheet is open-source. Users familiar with HTML and JavaScript can
access the script via Extensions → Apps Script in Google Sheets and
modify it to suit specific research needs.
Potential use cases:
Field linguistics
Endangered language documentation
Classroom elicitation exercises
Rapid dataset building for speech technology and ASR/TTS model
training (particularly in low-resource contexts)
Elisheet is still in early development and evolving. I would greatly
appreciate feedback from field linguists, corpus linguists, NLP
researchers, and language technologists.
If you test the tool or have suggestions for improvement, I would be
very glad to hear from you. loluwahajayi at gmail.com

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
                     General Linguistics
                     Language Documentation




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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-901
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