Indonesian vs. Bribri: Striking lexical similarities in two unrelated languages

 

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Verfasser: Krohn, Haakon Stensrud
Format: artículo original
Publikationsdatum:2021
Beschreibung:Despite the fact that Indonesian and Bribri belong to two different language families and are spoken on opposite sides of the world, their lexicons contain many words that are strikingly similar. In this paper I analyze the origin of three word pairs from these languages that not only sound similar, but also have almost exactly the same meaning: (1) Indonesian kulit and Bribri kuö ́lit ‘skin, hide, leather, crust, shell, bark, rind, peel’, (2) Indonesian kutu and Bribri kú̱ ‘louse’, and (3) Indonesian kupu-kupu and Bribri kua’kua ‘butterfly’. The intention is not to propose any genealogical link between the Austronesian and the Chibchan language families, but rather to show how phonological, morphological and semantic properties can converge in two unrelated languages and produce this kind of eye-catching similarities.
Land:Kérwá
Institution:Universidad de Costa Rica
Repositorio:Kérwá
Sprache:Inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:kerwa.ucr.ac.cr:10669/103772
Online Zugang:https://hdl.handle.net/10669/103772
https://doi.org/10.24036//jbs.v9i1.111535
Stichwort:Indonesian language
Bribri language
Austronesian languages
Chibchan languages
historical linguistics
phonology
morphology
semantics
lengua indonesia
lengua bribri
lenguas austronesias
lenguas chibchenses
lingüística histórica
fonología
morfología
semántica