Page "learned" Paragraph 589

It is evident that Swadesh has not only had much experience with basic vocabulary in many languages but has acquired great tact and feeling for the expectable behavior of lexical items.

Why then this urge to include unstable items in his basic list??

It is the urge to obtain a list as free of geographical and cultural conditioning as possible.

And why that insistence??

It is the hope of attaining a list of items of universal occurrence.

But it is becoming increasingly evident that such a hope is a snare.

Not that such a list cannot be constructed ; ;

but the nearer it comes to attaining universality, the less significant will it be linguistically.

Its terms will tend to be labile or vague, and they will fit actual languages more and more badly.