Basic vocabulary

Basic vocabulary is a concept that is frequently encountered in __.

Lists for historical comparison

Swadesh-50 list

Distinct "stability quotients" have been determined for each of the Swadesh-100 entries by Sergei Starostin. On this basis, George Starostin proposes establishing a shortened version of the list for surveying the genetical affiliation of languages. For reasons of practicality, he excludes also a number of relatively stable word roots that show other issues:

• the pronouns "this" and "that": the structure of demonstrative pronoun systems in the world's languages may vary, and short monosyllabic demonstrative roots are prone to accidental similarities
• 'liver', a word frequently unrecorded in superficial surveys
• 'fish', a concept frequently unknown in desert communities
• 'neck', "breast": prone to sound-symbolism and polysemy (versus "throat" and "chest")
• 'full', "stand", "give": prone to synonymy

These nine words are substituted with three body parts ('foot', 'horn', 'head'), two universal food items ('meat', 'egg'), two semantically better-defined verbs ('to kill', 'to hear') as well as 'black', 'night'.

Yakhontov list

A brief 35-word list developed by Sergei Yakhontov that was used by the Russian Nostratics school as a preliminary approximation of the stablest basic vocabulary, prior to the development of the Swadesh-50 list.

Comparison

Abbreviations:

• LJ: the Leipzig-Jakarta list
• Sw50, 100, 200: various versions of the Swadesh list
• Y: the Yakhontov list

Lexeme	Semantic area	LJ	Sw50	Sw100	Sw200	Y
we	pronoun		√
two	numeral		√
I	pronoun		√
eye	body part		√
thou	pronoun		√
who	pronoun		√
fire	nature		√
tongue	body part		√
stone	nature		√
name			√
hand	body part		√
what	pronoun		√
die	verb		√
heart	body part		√
drink	verb: action		√
dog	animal		√
louse	animal		√
moon	celestial		√
fingernail	body part		√
blood	body part / substance		√
one	numeral		√
tooth	body part		√
new	adjective		√
dry	adjective		√
eat	verb: action		√
tail	body part		√
head hair	body part / substance		√
water	substance		√
nose	body part		√
not			√
mouth	body part		√
ear	body part		√
bird	animal		√
bone	body part / substance		√
sun	celestial		√
smoke	substance		√
tree			√
ashes	substance		√
rain			√
star	celestial		√
leaf			√
kill	verb: action		√
foot	body part		√
horn	body part		√
hear	verb: perception		√
meat (food)	substance		√
egg			√
black	adjective		√
head	body part		√
night			√