How is it that such differently looking words like wheel, cycle and chakra could all have come from the same word in Proto-Indo-European? And how do we *know* that they do? By comparing a whole corpus of words from a number of languages and working out *sound laws* which describe how they all could have come from the same proto-language if each one followed a consistent series of sound changes. So you shouldnt even EXPECT cognates between English, Greek and Sanskrit to look the same, considering that the PIE root *kwel- underwent totally different sound shifts in each of these languages to get to wheel, cycle and chakra. And its not just about making sound shifts to explain one off words either, you have to show that they *consistently* explain *every* instance of that sound in the language. The rules you make have to be *predictive* and *falsifiable*. Linguistics is a *science*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_sound_laws
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 05:04:50 +0000
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