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Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words?
Sometimes the changes between the root in a parent language (in your example, the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European) and the reflexes in different daughter languages is minimal and sometimes quite extensive (your example of PIE *bh- > L f-). For what it's worth, PIE *bh- stayed pretty much the same in Sanskrit, cf. bhrātṛ 'brother'. There are even some strangeer changes closer to our time in Romance languages (where we hav the parent language, Latin): e.g., in Ligurian dialects of Italian, initial ClV-, which in Standard Italian goes to a palatalized CjV-, becomes instead an affricate. L. plus ciu, VL *blancus 'white' > Lig. gianku; cf. Standard Italian piu and bianco.
The relationship between a PIE root and one of its daughter languages may seem arbitrary or tenuous, but after you studied historical phonology for a while, it starts to make sense. You can cannot predict how a language will develop out its parent,m but given enough time you can understand how a sound can change over a couple of thousand years from one that seems very different indeed.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
Entire Thread Subject Posted By Posted Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words? dakkumar 09/01/11 08:26 AM Re: Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words? Faldage 09/01/11 10:13 AM Re: what Faldo said zmjezhd 09/01/11 01:20 PM Re: Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words? LukeJavan8 09/01/11 03:57 PM Re: Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words? Jackie 09/02/11 12:45 AM Re: Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words? LukeJavan8 09/02/11 03:50 PM Re: Why are "roots" so unrelated to derived words? Jackie 09/03/11 01:52 AM
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