and people believed that swearing falsely by a god would bring the terrible wrath of that god upon them. |
In fact, the book shows that language is in a rough state of equilibrium: some words disappear and some structures are eroded, but new ones are created at the same time, and these do the job just as well as the old ones, ... It is true, of course, that decay is one prominent force in the course of language evolution. But there are also forces of creation and generation operating at the same time. |
In some cultures, swear words are drawn mainly from sex and bodily functions, whereas in others, they're drawn mainly from the domain of religion. |
This is a very tricky question, because ultimately no one knows where the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans was, and when they started spreading into Europe and Asia, |