This volume features articles which are mostly based on papers presented at the workshop Lexical Data and Universals of Semantic Change in December 2001. The workshop was organized by the project LexiTypeDia of the Special Research Programme (Sonderforschungsbereich) 441 Linguistic Data Structures at the University of Tübingen. The contributions - written in English, French and German - deal with a variety of aspects of the study of semantic change, in particular lexico-semantic change. What they have in common is their focus on the methodological and empirical foundations of diachronic lexicology, i.e. the nature, discovery, storage and interpretation of data in the domain of lexico-semantic change. The aim of this volume is to contribute to a more cautious and at the same time more profitable way of dealing with linguistic evidence for diachronic lexicology.