Reconstruction of the Proto-Slavic Swadesh wordlist

Mikhail Saenko (Southern State University /Rostov-on-Don/, veraetatis@yandex.ru)

Journal of Language Relationship, № 10, 2013 - p.139-148

Abstract: The article is an attempt to reconstruct the 100­word Swadesh list for the Proto-Slavic lan-guage. It is based on materials of 18 living and extinct Slavic languages including the lan-guage of birch-bark letters. The final list presented here is subdivided into 4 parts: 1) Proto-Slavic words preserved in all Slavic languages; 2) Proto-Slavic words preserved in the majority of the Slavic languages, with transparent innovations in the rest; 3) words attested in disparate languages, whose Proto-Slavic origin can be identified only with the help of external comparison; 4) words whose Proto-Slavic origin cannot be identified with 100% certainty even with the help of external comparison. Lexemes of the third and fourth groups are particularly analysed in the article.

Keywords: lexicostatistics, Proto-Slavic language

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