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Proto-Indo-European
المؤلف: P. John McWhorter
المصدر: The Story of Human Language
الجزء والصفحة: 3-25
2024-01-20
448
Proto-Indo-European
A. English, like all languages, is the product of change from a former language: that is, English is one step along a path of continuous development. The furthest back we can trace English, then, is Proto-Indo-European.
B. At this stage, “English” is barely perceptible. Here is a piece of a folk tale constructed in the Proto-Indo-European of about 2500 B.C. (hypothetically, of course):
Tod kekluwōs, owis agrom ebhuget.
that hearing sheep field fled
“On hearing that, the sheep ran off into the plain.”
The word *tod eventually did become that, and believe it or not, *kekluwōs was a form of the verb that did eventually become hear. But field traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to fill,” and flee to one meaning “flow”—these words are products of the semantic change.