Dolgopolsky list

The Dolgopolsky list is a word list compiled by Aharon Dolgopolsky in 1964 based on a study of 140 languages from across Eurasia.[1] It lists the 15 lexical items that he found have the most semantic stability, i.e. the 15 words least likely to be replaced.

List

The words, with the first being the most stable, are:

  1. I/me
  2. two/pair
  3. you (singular, informal)
  4. who/what
  5. tongue
  6. name
  7. eye
  8. heart
  9. tooth
  10. no/not
  11. nail (finger-nail)
  12. louse/nit
  13. tear/teardrop
  14. water
  15. dead

The first item in the list, I/me, has been replaced in none of the 140 languages during their recorded history; the fifteenth, dead, has been replaced in 25% of the languages. The twelfth item, louse/nit, is well kept in the North Caucasian languages, Dravidian and Turkic, but not in some other proto-languages.

The Leipzig–Jakarta list of 100 lexical items includes all of these words with the exception of: two/pair, heart, nail (fingernail), tear, die/dead.

See also

References
  1. Dolgopolsky, Aharon B. 1964. Gipoteza drevnejšego rodstva jazykovych semej Severnoj Evrazii s verojatnostej točky zrenija [A probabilistic hypothesis concerning the oldest relationships among the language families of Northern Eurasia]. Voprosy Jazykoznanija 2: 53-63.
  • Trask, Robert Lawrence (2000). The dictionary of historical and comparative linguistics. p. 96.
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