Welcome
to the Turkic database at Elegant Lexicon.This site hosts a searchable database of lexical items, with further projects in progress. There are currently 30,262 entries in the lexical database.
Please e-mail corrections, questions, and suggestions to chris@elegantlexicon.com, or send me a message using a contact form.
Further information about me and my background can be found at the Elegant Lexicon main page.
Notes on the Lexical Database
Choosing what should go into this database was challenging because I wanted the data to be valuable, but also had to acknowledge that most of this data is tediously entered by hand.
I settled on the 575 lexical items by employing three criteria:
- Ability to compare with other languages - hence, all forms from the long Swadesh list are in here (excepting a couple of prepositions and other concepts that are expressed by bound morphemes rather than lexemes), as well as a few extra terms from the Leipzig-Jakarta list.
- Ability to compare Turkic languages with each other - additional forms were taken from Doerfer's lists and comparative studies of Turkic, as well as words for things found throughout the Turkic cultural sphere (e.g. stirrup, camel, deer)
- Words that I found interesting for one reason or another. Month names, for example, aren't particularly useful for linguistic comparison (they're mostly borrowed or neologisms), but are still interesting from a cultural point of view
- Words that I receive inquiries about. If there's interest, I'll see what I can do.
To see a full list of English glosses represented in this database, click here.
I do add new forms from time-to-time, so be sure to follow the update blog for further information.