Leipzig–Jakarta list

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The Leipzig–Jakarta list of 100 words is used by linguists to test the degree of chronological separation of languages by comparing words that are resistant to borrowing. The Leipzig–Jakarta list became available in 2009. [1] The word list is named after the cities of Leipzig, Germany, and Jakarta, Indonesia, the places where the list was conceived and created.

Contents

In the 1950s, the linguist Morris Swadesh published a list of 200 words called the Swadesh list, allegedly the 200 lexical concepts found in all languages that were least likely to be borrowed from other languages. Swadesh later whittled his list down to 100 items. The Swadesh list, however, was based mainly on intuition, according to Martin Haspelmath and Uri Tadmor. [2] In origin, the words in the Swadesh lists were chosen for their universal, culturally independent availability in as many languages as possible, regardless of their "stability". Nevertheless, the stability of the resulting list of "universal" vocabulary under language change and the potential use of this fact for purposes of glottochronology have been analyzed by numerous authors, including Marisa Lohr 1999, 2000. [3]

The Swadesh list was put together by Morris Swadesh on the basis of his intuition. Similar more recent lists, such as the Dolgopolsky list (1964) or the Leipzig–Jakarta list, are based on systematic data from many different languages, but they are not yet as widely known nor as widely used as the Swadesh list. Although he was one of the pioneers of glottochronology and lexicostatistics, his theories were often controversial, and some have been deprecated by later linguists. [4]

The Loanword Typology Project, with the World Loanword Database (WOLD), published by the Max Planck Digital Library, was established to rectify this problem. Experts on 41 languages from across the world were given a uniform vocabulary list and asked to provide the words for each item in the language on which they were an expert, as well as information on how strong the evidence was that each word was borrowed. [5] The 100 concepts that were found in most languages and were most resistant to borrowing formed the Leipzig–Jakarta list. Only 62 items on the Leipzig–Jakarta list and on the 100-word Swadesh list overlap, hence a 38% difference between the two lists.

A quarter of the words in the Leipzig–Jakarta list are human body parts: mouth , eye , leg / foot , navel , liver , knee , etc. [6] Six animal words appear on the list: fish , bird , dog , louse , ant and fly – animal species that are present wherever humans are as well. [2]

The items house , name , rope and to tie are products of human culture, but are probably found in all present-day human societies. Haspelmath and Tadmor drew the conclusion that "rope is the most basic of human tools and tying is the most basic technology". [2]

List

Lexical items in the Leipzig–Jakarta list are ranked by semantic stability, i.e. words least likely to be replaced by other words as a language evolves. [7] [8] The right two columns indicate inclusion on the 100-word and 207-word Swadesh lists. [9]

RankWord meaning100-word Swadesh list207-word Swadesh list
1fire
2nose
3to go
4water
5mouth
6tongue
7blood
8bone
92nd-person singular pronoun (you)
10root
11to come
12breast
13rain
141st-person singular pronoun (I/me)
15name
16louse
17wing
18flesh/meat
19arm/hand
20fly
21night
22ear
23neck
24far
25to do/make
26house
27stone/rock
28bitter
29to say
30tooth
31hair
32big
33one
34who?
353rd-person singular pronoun (he/she/it/him/her)
36to hit/beat
37leg/foot
38horn
39this
40fish
41yesterday
42to drink
43black
44navel
45to stand
46to bite
47back
48wind
49smoke
50what?
51child (kin term)
52egg
53to give
54new
55to burn (intr.)
56not
57good
58to know
59knee
60sand
61to laugh
62to hear
63soil
64leaf
65red
66liver
67to hide
68skin/hide
69to suck
70to carry
71ant
72heavy
73to take
74old
75to eat
76thigh
77thick
78long
79to blow
80wood
81to run
82to fall
83eye
84ash
85tail
86dog
87to cry/weep
88to tie
89to see
90sweet
91rope
92shade/shadow
93bird
94salt
95small
96wide
97star
98in
99hard
100to crush/grind

Other differences with the Swadesh list

Items on the 100-word Swadesh list but not on the Leipzig–Jakarta list: [9]

See also

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References

  1. Jeanette Sakel; Daniel L. Everett (2012). Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide. Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN   978-1-107-37702-8.
  2. 1 2 3 Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 72.
  3. Marisa Lohr (2000), "New Approaches to Lexicostatistics and Glottochronology" in C. Renfrew, A. McMahon and L. Trask, ed. Time Depth in Historical Linguistics, Vol. 1, pp. 209–223
  4. Ruhlen, Meritt (1994). The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  5. "The World Loanword Database (WOLD)". wold.clld.org. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  6. Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 71.
  7. The Leipzig-Jakarta List of Basic Vocabulary. Source: Haspelmath, Martin and Uri Tadmor (eds.), 2009. Loanwords in the World’s Languages: A Comparative Handbook. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
  8. Tadmor, Uri, Martin Haspelmath, and Bradley Taylor. 2010. Borrowability and the notion of basic vocabulary. Diachronica 27:2 (2010), 226–246. doi : 10.1075/dia.27.2.04tad
  9. 1 2 Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 74.