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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
We know a great deal about the Indo-European language family, and we can reconstruct a significant part of its vocabulary and its meaning-structure. Some words are virtual certainties, e.g. the form and meaning of the number ‘seven’, as well as other numerals. Other words are quite beyond confident recovery, both for form and for the notion itself, e.g. ‘good’. As a rule, we may say that in proportion as the lexeme is bound up with semantics that are or have been culturally relative the reconstruction becomes increasingly elusive.