Rate of Change

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/21/01 10:00:37 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

> But that doesn't contradict what I wrote.  "Systematic patterns of change"
> allow one to show that cognates are "derived from the same source."  So there
> must be some continuity between the source and what is derived from the
> source.

> -- continuity is not similarity.

> <<Eg., "pita" (Hindi) and "father" (English) are cognates, as are "pad" and
> "foot", despite having no surface similarity at all.>>

> But "pita" and "father" clearly do have som prima facie structural
> similarities.

-- they have one vowel in common -- and it isn't even the same vowel in each.
The Hindi word has "i" where the English has "a". "Pad" and "foot" don't have
even that much.  If you know the sound-shifts, you can tell the p/f
correspondences, etc.

> truly have no recognizable resemblances are rare.

-- well, you're wrong there.

Consider the following words, all cognates and all meaning "horse" and all
derived from *ekuos

jor
eoh
'sp
yuk

Or there's the word for "or", *aw

no
-ve
wat

Or there's *uper, for "over":

for
super
ylfir

Or there's *eudol, "pain":

adduwal
yolo
erkn

And I could go on for pages and pages.