The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database or ABVD is a large database of basic vocabulary lists that mainly covers the
Austronesian languages. It also has a comprehensive inventory of basic vocabulary lists for
Kra–Dai languages,
Hmong–Mien languages,
Japonic languages, and other
languages of East Asia. It is currently the largest lexical database of Austronesian languages in terms of the number of languages covered.
History
The database was created by
Simon J. Greenhill
Simon James Greenhill is a New Zealand scientist who works on the application of quantitative methods to the study of cultural evolution and human prehistory. He is well known for creating and building various linguistics databases, including the ...
as part of a graduate research project that he was working on with
Russell Gray. Each vocabulary list in the database has 210 basic words. The list was originally from a set of printed 200-item word lists developed by
Robert Blust as a
lexicostatistic
Lexicostatistics is a method of comparative linguistics that involves comparing the percentage of lexical cognates between languages to determine their relationship. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a ...
al aid for classifying the
Austronesian languages. 10 more numerals were added after the original 200th item, 'four', giving the word list its present 210-item inventory.
In 2008, a computational analysis of the lexical database showed that the Austronesian languages had originated from Taiwan, rather than from Indonesia or other regions of Oceania.
Pacific people spread from Taiwan, language evolution, study shows
ScienceDaily.
The database was originally hosted by the University of Auckland, and is currently hosted by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. It operates under the CC BY 4.0 license.
References
External links
*{{official website, https://abvd.eva.mpg.de/austronesian/
Projects by Simon Greenhill
Word lists
Linguistics websites
Linguistics databases
Lexical databases
Creative Commons-licensed websites
Creative Commons-licensed databases