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.

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]

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.[3] 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 body parts: mouth, eye, leg/foot, navel, liver, knee, etc.[4] Six animal words appear on the list: fish, bird, dog, louse, ant and fly – animals found everywhere humans can be found.[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[edit]

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.[5][6] The right two columns indicate inclusion on the 100-word and 207-word Swadesh lists.[7]

Rank Word meaning 100-word Swadesh list 207-word Swadesh list
1 fire ✔ ✔
2 nose ✔ ✔
3 to go
4 water ✔ ✔
5 mouth ✔ ✔
6 tongue ✔ ✔
7 blood ✔ ✔
8 bone ✔ ✔
9 2nd-person singular pronoun (you) ✔ ✔
10 root ✔ ✔
11 to come ✔ ✔
12 breast ✔ ✔
13 rain ✔ ✔
14 1st-person singular pronoun (I/me) ✔ ✔
15 name ✔ ✔
16 louse ✔ ✔
17 wing ✔
18 flesh/meat ✔ ✔
19 arm/hand ✔ ✔
20 fly ✔
21 night ✔ ✔
22 ear ✔ ✔
23 neck ✔ ✔
24 far ✔
25 to do/make
26 house
27 stone/rock ✔ ✔
28 bitter
29 to say ✔ ✔
30 tooth ✔ ✔
31 hair ✔ ✔
32 big ✔ ✔
33 one ✔ ✔
34 who? ✔ ✔
35 3rd-person singular pronoun (he/she/it/him/her)
36 to hit/beat ✔
37 leg/foot ✔ ✔
38 horn ✔ ✔
39 this ✔ ✔
40 fish ✔ ✔
41 yesterday
42 to drink ✔ ✔
43 black ✔ ✔
44 navel
45 to stand ✔ ✔
46 to bite ✔ ✔
47 back ✔
48 wind ✔
49 smoke ✔ ✔
50 what? ✔ ✔
51 child (kin term) ✔
52 egg ✔ ✔
53 to give ✔ ✔
54 new ✔ ✔
55 to burn (intr.) ✔ ✔
56 not ✔ ✔
57 good ✔ ✔
58 to know ✔ ✔
59 knee ✔ ✔
60 sand ✔ ✔
61 to laugh ✔
62 to hear ✔ ✔
63 soil ✔ ✔
64 leaf ✔ ✔
65 red ✔ ✔
66 liver ✔ ✔
67 to hide
68 skin/hide ✔ ✔
69 to suck ✔
70 to carry
71 ant
72 heavy ✔
73 to take
74 old ✔
75 to eat ✔ ✔
76 thigh
77 thick ✔
78 long ✔ ✔
79 to blow ✔
80 wood
81 to run
82 to fall ✔
83 eye ✔ ✔
84 ash ✔ ✔
85 tail ✔ ✔
86 dog ✔ ✔
87 to cry/weep
88 to tie ✔
89 to see ✔ ✔
90 sweet
91 rope ✔
92 shade/shadow
93 bird ✔ ✔
94 salt ✔
95 small ✔ ✔
96 wide ✔
97 star ✔ ✔
98 in ✔
99 hard
100 to crush/grind

Other differences with the Swadesh list[edit]

Items on the 100-word Swadesh list but not on the Leipzig–Jakarta list:[7]

  • all
  • bark
  • belly
  • cloud
  • cold
  • die
  • dry
  • feather
  • fingernail
  • fly (verb)
  • full
  • grease
  • green
  • head
  • heart
  • hot
  • kill
  • lie
  • man
  • many
  • moon
  • mountain
  • path
  • person
  • round
  • seed
  • sit
  • sleep
  • sun
  • swim
  • that
  • tree
  • two
  • walk
  • we
  • white
  • woman
  • yellow

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jeanette Sakel; Daniel L. Everett (2012). Linguistic Fieldwork: A Student Guide. Cambridge University Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-1-107-37702-8.
  2. ^ a b c Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 72.
  3. ^ "The World Loanword Database (WOLD)". wold.clld.org. Retrieved February 24, 2019.
  4. ^ Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 71.
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ 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
  7. ^ a b Haspelmath & Tadmor, p. 74.

External links[edit]

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