Re: searching for common words for all today's languages

From: mkelkar2003
Message: 43359
Date: 2006-02-11

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <smykelkar@> wrote:
>
> > It is unlikely that a language would borrow a word for "water" from
> > another language. G & R's methods are undoubtedly more speculative
> > than IELs', but the words they have found are very basic. Water is #
> > 150 on the Swadesh list.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list#Swadesh_list_in_English
>
> No. 150 is not particularly stable. When I drew up the *100* word
> list for Thai in the recommended manner - taking first word from the
> dictionary, I was horrified to find obviously Pali/Sanskrit words
> appearing. I've just flicked through the list of meanings and checked
> against a different dictionary, and found a whole cluster:
>
> 40. wife - P/S
> 41. husband - P/S
> 42. mother - native
> 43. father - P/S
> 44. animal - P/S
> 45. fish - native
> 46. bird - native
> 47. dog - P/S
>
> That's mostly a register issue with the dictionary - I know the native
> word for all these but no. 44. However, the list you pointed at is
> *not* sorted by stability - it has the numbers 'one' to 'five' in
> sequence, whereas the stablest numbers are 'two' and 'five'. Thus
> perhaps it is not so surprising that the polite words for the family
> members should all be loans - you can add the words for 'son' and
> 'daughter' as well. It might be sheer luck that the P/S word for
> 'mother' wasn't the first word listed. Number systems can also be
> replaced. The words' survival is not independent.
>
> Another thing to note is that these lists were not originally drawn up
> for conservatism - they were drawn up as concepts every language
> should have a word for. 'Road' is a concept that changes its word
> very rapidly indeed.
>
> Finally, 'water' words can be borrowed for specific senses - isn't
> *akwa: 'running water'?
>
> Richard.
>

The following list for Thai does have water, drink, rain in the top
100. They are in "semantic" order. It may mean they are the 100 most
stable words.

http://v1.rosettaproject.org/live//search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=THJ

For Marathi and Hindi water and rain appear in the first 100
http://v1.rosettaproject.org/live//search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=MRT

http://v1.rosettaproject.org/live//search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=HND

Also see:

http://www.mail-archive.com/mythfolk@yahoogroups.com/msg00183.html

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~rockmore/new-lang-evo.pdf

Below is an interesting paper. pages 10-13. For a 35 world list PIE
has most cognates in Old Chinese

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/ANE/ANE-DIGEST/2000/v2000.n167

"i (vincent decaen) ran a rigorous crosstabulation of 200+ core vocab
items (Swadesh list)
against proposed members of the sino-caucasian/dene-caucasian phylum and
found results sufficient to maintain it as a working hypothesis; in
addition i crosstabulated grammatical formatives.

http://www.ee.cuhk.edu.hk/~wsywang/publications/lg_diversity.pdf

A review of Kesseler's book "The Significance of Word Lists"
http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-491.html

M. kelkar