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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: 100 list (was: Norwegian and Danish)
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Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 16:49:26 GMT
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In article <3ol8m4$7v4@fs7.ece.cmu.edu>,
Marcelo Bruno <bruno@ibis.ece.cmu.edu> wrote:
[much deleted]
> Why do I argue the 100 list is "per se" not satisfactory? First, 100 words,
>although highly frequent, are not sufficient statistics. In Spanish and
>Portuguese, for example, there are substantial lexical divergence in some
>day-to-day areas of life such as the names used for food, animals or
>houseware. Some (maybe most) of this divergence is captured by the 100 list,
>but part of it is not. Besides, the 100 list assumes total ignorance of 
>morphology and phonology, concentrating on lexicon.

Furthermore, the list is--surprise!--rather Eurocentric in its choice
of "universals."  For example, I believe some numbers are on it.  While
these are relative conservative in Indo-European, they aren't in other
language groups.  Same thing with body parts.  Also, there are some terms
like "hand" and "arm," both of which are included on the Swadesh list,
that  are covered by the same term in languages as diverse as Greek and 
Japanese.

So it's not just a rough tool, it's a *very* rough tool.  Has anyone
attempted to refine it and remove some of the problems Mr. Bruno and
I mention?  Has anyone tried to come up with some kind of similar list
for morphological or syntactic features?  Yes, I know these don't "prove"
relationship in the way lexical cognates do, but such a list would be
a helpful adjunct, especially if one knows a priori that two languages
are related.

[more solid discussion of the shortcomings of the Swadesh list deleted]




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	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
