Something should be said about the four primary questions....what, when, why, how...relative to linguistics. I would argue that the word HOW is established first in the development of primitive languages...with the words for WHY and WHAT coming much later, as well as the answers to those questions in the development of science. Discovering HOW the sun appears to traverse the sky is much easier than discovering WHAT the sun actually is. Even today, we know much about HOW gravity works...but not WHAT gravity is.
