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A Swadesh list (/ ˈswɑːdɛʃ /) is a compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. That is, a Swadesh list is a list of forms and concepts which all languages, without exception, have terms for, such as star, hand, water, kill, sleep, and so forth. The number of such terms is small – a few hundred at ...
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 ...
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, [a] the Horn of Africa, [b][c] Malta, [d] and in large immigrant and expatriate ...
Glottochronology (from Attic Greek γλῶττα tongue, language and χρόνος time) is the part of lexicostatistics which involves comparative linguistics and deals with the chronological relationship between languages. [1]: 131. The idea was developed by Morris Swadesh in the 1950s in his article on Salish internal relationships. [2]
Statistical methods have been used for the purpose of quantitative analysis in comparative linguistics for more than a century. During the 1950s, the Swadesh list emerged: a standardised set of lexical concepts found in most languages, as words or phrases, that allow two or more languages to be compared and contrasted empirically.
Finno-Ugric (/ ˌfɪnoʊˈjuːɡrɪk, - ˈuː -/) [ a ][ 1 ] is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in the 19th century and is criticized by some contemporary linguists such ...
Pagel et al. used hypothesized reconstructions of proto-words from seven language families listed in the Languages of the World Etymological Database (LWED). [8] They limited their search to the 200 most common words as described by the Swadesh fundamental vocabulary list. Twelve words were excluded because proto-words had been proposed for two ...
The Nilo-Saharan languages are a proposed family of around 210 African languages [1] spoken by somewhere around 70 million speakers, [1] mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers, including historic Nubia, north of where the two tributaries of the Nile meet. The languages extend through 17 nations in the northern half of Africa ...