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Swadesh list

Compilation of concepts primarily for the purposes of lexicostatistics

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Translations of a Swadesh list into a set of languages allow for researchers to quantify the interrelatedness of those languages. Swadesh lists are used in lexicostatistics (the quantitative assessment of the genealogical relatedness of languages) and glottochronology (the dating of language divergence). For instance, the terms on a Swadesh list can be compared between two languages (since both languages will have them) to see if they are related and how closely, thus giving useful information that can be further applied to comparison of the languages. (Actual lexicostatistics is quite complicated, and usually sets of languages are compared.)

Versions and authors

Morris Swadesh created several versions of his list. He started with a list of 215 meanings (falsely introduced as a list of 225 meanings in the paper due to a spelling error), which he reduced to 165 words for the Salish-Spokane-Kalispel language. In 1952, he published a list of 215 meanings, of which he suggested the removal of 16 for being unclear or not universal, with one added to arrive at 200 words. In 1955, he wrote, "The only solution appears to be a drastic weeding out of the list, in the realization that quality is at least as important as quantity. Even the new list has defects, but they are relatively mild and few in number." After minor corrections, the final 100-word list was published posthumously in 1971 and 1972.

Other versions of lexicostatistical test lists were published e.g. by Robert Lees (1953), John A. Rea (1958:145f), Dell Hymes (1960:6), E. Cross (1964 with 241 concepts), W. J. Samarin (1967:220f), D. Wilson (1969 with 57 meanings), Lionel Bender (1969), R. L. Oswald (1971), Winfred P. Lehmann (1984:35f), D. Ringe (1992, passim, different versions), Sergei Starostin (1984, passim, different versions), William S-Y. Wang (1994), M. Lohr (2000, 128 meanings in 18 languages). B. Kessler (2002), and many others. The Concepticon, a project hosted at the Cross-Linguistic Linked Data (CLLD) project, collects various concept lists (including classical Swadesh lists) across different linguistic areas and times, currently listing 240 different concept lists.

Frequently used and widely available on the internet, is the version by Isidore Dyen (1992, 200 meanings of 95 language variants). Since 2010, a team around Michael Dunn has tried to update and enhance that list.

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