Morris Swadesh

Morris Swadesh (1909–1967) was an American linguist who developed methods and word lists for comparing languages and reconstructing their histories.

Comparative method: A method for reconstructing ancestral languages by comparing systematic similarities among related languages. Swadesh’s vocabulary comparisons were one tool within this broader approach to language history.
Glottochronology: A method that estimates when languages diverged by using rates of change in shared basic vocabulary. Swadesh developed and promoted this quantitative approach to language divergence.
Glottolog: An online bibliographic database and classification of the world’s languages and language families. Modern language classification draws on the historical research traditions Swadesh helped shape.
Edward Sapir: An influential American linguist and anthropologist who studied Indigenous languages and language classification. Sapir’s scholarship formed part of the intellectual tradition in which Swadesh worked.
Historical linguistics: The study of how languages change over time and how they are historically related. This field encompasses Swadesh’s work on language change and relationships.
Lexicostatistics: The quantitative comparison of languages using the proportion of shared words in selected vocabulary lists. Swadesh’s lists supplied data for this form of language comparison.
Language family: A group of languages descended from a common ancestral language. Comparative work of the kind Swadesh pursued helps establish and investigate these relationships.
Benjamin Lee Whorf: An American linguist known for research on Indigenous languages and claims about language and thought. Whorf and Swadesh shared an era of American linguistic research, though their central questions differed.
Basic vocabulary: Words for common concepts such as body parts, natural features, and basic actions, often used in language comparison. Swadesh selected such words for lists intended to compare languages.
Swadesh list: A standardized list of basic vocabulary items designed for comparing languages. These lists are the practical instruments most closely associated with Swadesh.

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