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There's pretty clear reconstructions for abstract terms in PIE. And there were certainly copula verbs to indicate existence. PIE was not cavemen grunting. The fact that we can reconstruct it so well from languages spanning two continents indicates it was both stable and well-featured.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_copula

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_vocabulary



Who said it was?


I'm not even sure this question means. My previous post is the counter to the book's author's proposal. PIE had abstract vocabulary and several words for existence, including a pure copula "to be", and words such as "to live" and "to grow / become". Furthermore, the fact that we could even reconstruct these words in PIE indicates they were stabilized well before the various child languages began to develop.

If you're trying to make a different proposal, you need to articulate it instead of just being argumentative.




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