Comparative termlist

Edgar Suter and Timothy Usher

We have designed a termlist that is tailored to Papuan languages. The full list consists of 800 English terms. There is also an abridged list of about 400 terms selected from the full list. If time constraints do not permit the elicitation of the full list, the abridged list can be chosen. These termlists are attached and downloadable below in both open office and excel formats.

If you are planning to do fieldwork on a little-known Papuan language, consider using our vocabulary list. It will help you elicit a comprehensive set of body part and kinship terms as well as cultural concepts the regional universality of which is not a priori obvious. Many of these terms do not occur frequently in narrative discourse, and thus cannot easily be gathered from recorded texts but must be proactively elicited. Our vocabulary list will also help you elicit a stock of common verbs which are needed for grammatical studies.

If you mean to collect some lexical data on languages in the vicinity of the language you are studying, consider using one of our vocabulary lists. They focus on widely attested and historically stable lexical items and ensure comparability with vocabularies of other Papuan languages which are being created in the same format.

Our termlists can be cited as follows:

Suter, Edgar and Timothy Usher 2018. New Guinea comparative terms: Full list. Universität zu Köln: Institut für Linguistik.

Suter, Edgar and Timothy Usher 2018. New Guinea comparative terms: Abridged list. Universität zu Köln: Institut für Linguistik.

If you use one of our termlists in elicitation, we would love to see the results. We can be reached under the following email addresses:

Edgar Suter: esut@sunrise.ch

Timothy Usher: timothyusher@gmail.com