Towards a Semantically Organized Meaning List for Cognate Searches
Towards a Semantically Organized Meaning List for Cognate Searches

Summary/Abstract: In this contribution I present a meaning list for cognate searches in which meanings are, unlike in similar lists of “basic vocabulary” for the same purpose, organized according to semantic principles. This list is designed to identify possible cognates, which can then be scrutinized more closely in search for hitherto undetected genealogical relationships between languages, in a more effective way. Rather than proposing a completely new set of meanings to be featured, the list combines those most commonly used in extant lists of basic vocabulary such as the Swadesh or the Leipzig/Jakarta List, but introduces several design principles which are jointly able to represent also complex semantic relationships in the context of wordlists.

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