المرجع الالكتروني للمعلوماتية
المرجع الألكتروني للمعلوماتية

English Language
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Proto-Indo-European  
  
322   08:33 صباحاً   date: 2024-01-20
Author : P. John McWhorter
Book or Source : The Story of Human Language
Page and Part : 3-25


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Date: 28-2-2022 269
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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.