Meanings: Semantic Fields

The words collected in the World Loanword Database vocabularies are based on the 1460 lexical meanings of the Loanword Typology meaning list. This list is divided into 24 semantic fields (following the 22 fields of the IDS list). The meanings can be viewed by semantic field, or as a complete list.

Field No. Semantic field Number of meanings Borrowed score Age score Simplicity score
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Field Number

The number in this column is the semantic field number. It is the first part of the Loanword Typology Code of the words in the corresponding field.

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Semantic field

The first 22 fields are the fields of the Intercontinental Dictionary Series meaning list, proposed by Mary Ritchie Key, and ultimately based on Carl Darling Buck's (1949) Dictionary of selected synonyms in the principal Indo-European languages. The other two fields were added for the Loanword Typology project.

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Number of meanings

This gives the number of different meanings in each semantic field.

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Borrowed score

This gives the average borrowed score of all words corresponding to a meaning in this field. The following borrowed scores are assigned to words depending on the degree of likelihood of borrowing:

 
score
1. clearly borrowed
1.00
2. probably borrowed
0.75
3. perhaps borrowed
0.50
4. very little evidence for borrowing
0.25
5. no evidence for borrowing
0.00

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Age score

This gives the average age score of all words corresponding to a meaning in this field. The following age scores are assigned to words depending on the estaimated age of their age class:

 
score
1. first attested or reconstructed earlier than 1000
1.00
2. earlier than 1500
0.90
3. earlier than 1800
0.80
4. earlier than 1900
0.70
5. earlier than 1950
0.60
6. earlier than 2007
0.50

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Simplicity score

This gives the average simplicity score of all words corresponding to a meaning in this field. The following simplicity scores are assigned to words depending on their analyzability:

 
score
1. unanalyzable
1.00
2. semi-analyzable
0.75
3. analyzable
0.50

1 The physical world 86 0.21 0.83 0.85
2 Kinship 102 0.23 0.84 0.80
3 Animals 155 0.32 0.80 0.91
4 The body 171 0.17 0.83 0.86
5 Food and drink 103 0.37 0.81 0.87
6 Clothing and grooming 68 0.40 0.80 0.88
7 The house 53 0.40 0.80 0.86
8 Agriculture and vegetation 128 0.45 0.80 0.91
9 Basic actions and technology 112 0.33 0.81 0.89
10 Motion 89 0.21 0.83 0.84
11 Possession 53 0.34 0.82 0.84
12 Spatial relations 77 0.15 0.83 0.86
13 Quantity 47 0.33 0.84 0.85
14 Time 62 0.28 0.83 0.84
15 Sense perception 55 0.19 0.82 0.84
16 Emotions and values 63 0.30 0.84 0.81
17 Cognition 58 0.29 0.82 0.81
18 Speech and language 53 0.36 0.82 0.85
19 Social and political relations 76 0.64 0.82 0.89
20 Warfare and hunting 48 0.34 0.80 0.83
21 Law 28 0.36 0.79 0.72
22 Religion and belief 40 0.49 0.79 0.85
23 Modern world 58 0.64 0.76 0.86
24 Miscellaneous function words 29 0.44 0.76 0.93