Correspondences of the Basic Words between Old Chinese and Proto-Indo-European
by Zhou Jixu
Abstract
In order to ascertain the genetic relationship between different languages, the comparison of "the basic words" between them has been an important component of Comparative Historical Linguistics. The 89 groups of correspondent words between Old Chinese and ancient Indo-European, which belong to M. Swadesh's "200 basic words", are listed in the paper. This evidence gives us a clue: there must have been an intimate relationship between Chinese and Indo-European in the prehistoric period.