Glottochronologic Counts of Hokaltecan Material
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2909119 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William Bright (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1956 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 42 |
| Publication date | 1956-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Language (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-8507 • E-ISSN: 1535-0665 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/410651 |
| OpenAlex | W2333497515 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
A recently published paper by Gordon H. Fairbanks discusses a question pertinent to the glottochronologic counts of Morris Swadesh and others: On what phonological basis are words to be correlated for lexicostatistical purposes? The most desirable basis is undoubtedly that of determining cognates on the basis of phonemic correspondences. But if this is the only basis, glottochronological methods must be largely inapplicable at present to such groupings as Hokan and Penutian, where few phonemic correspondences have been established. It is apparent that Swadesh does not always limit himself to such a basis. To take an example from his more recent work, his relating of words for ‘man’ in languages of both Americas, ranging from Kwakiutlan *wism to Yamana win , can hardly be based on knowledge of a regular correspondence between Kwakiutlan *w and Yamana w. The basis must then be general phonetic similarity, rather than correspondence. We may apply the term correlate to pairs connected either as cognate or as phonetically similar. The question then remains, what degree of phonetic similarity is necessary to establish a pair or set of correlates? To judge from Swadesh's list of cognate words for ‘man’, which includes such diverse items as Lokono uadili , Caxinaua ina , and Quechua runa , the degree need not be great. The exact degree appears to be determined more by intuitition than by any objective factor
| Citations per year | 0.09 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1960 - 2015 (56) |
| Highly cited | No |