Proto-Indo-European language

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Proto-Indo-European
PIE
Reconstruction of Indo-European languages
Region Pontic–Caspian steppe (Proto-Indo-European homeland)
Erac.4500 – c.2500 BC
Lower-order reconstructions

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. [1] No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. [2]

Contents

Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result.[ citation needed ]

PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE [3] during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. [4]

As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages.

PIE is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song) and accent. PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension, and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed.

Asterisks are used as a conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as *wódr̥, *ḱwn̥tós, or *tréyes; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water, hound, and three, respectively.

Development of the hypothesis

No direct evidence of PIE exists; scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method. [5] For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot, padre and father, pesce and fish. Since there is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants (p and f) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language. [6] Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support the Neogrammarian rule: the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception.

William Jones, an Anglo-Welsh philologist and puisne judge in Bengal, caused an academic sensation when in 1786 he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, the Celtic languages, and Old Persian, [7] but he was not the first to state such a hypothesis. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages, [8] and as early as 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic, Romance, Greek, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic, and Iranian. [9] In a memoir sent to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux , a French Jesuit who spent all his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. [10] According to current academic consensus, Jones's famous work of 1786 was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi.

In 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences in his prize essay Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse ('Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language'), where he argued that Old Norse was related to the Germanic languages, and had even suggested a relation to the Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Latin and Romance languages. [11] In 1816, Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit, in which he investigated the common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833, he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, and German. [12]

In 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what became known as Grimm's law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik. Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages and demonstrated that sound change systematically transforms all words of a language. [13] From the 1870s, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound laws have no exceptions, as illustrated by Verner's law, published in 1876, which resolved apparent exceptions to Grimm's law by exploring the role of accent (stress) in language change. [14]

August Schleicher's A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages (1874–77) represented an early attempt to reconstruct the proto-Indo-European language. [15]

By the early 1900s, Indo-Europeanists had developed well-defined descriptions of PIE which scholars still accept today. Later, the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages added to the corpus of descendant languages. A subtle new principle won wide acceptance: the laryngeal theory, which explained irregularities in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology as the effects of hypothetical sounds which no longer exist in all languages documented prior to the excavation of cuneiform tablets in Anatolian. This theory was first proposed by De Saussure in 1879 on the basis of internal reconstruction only, [16] and progressively won general acceptance after Jerzy Kuryłowicz's discovery of consonantal reflexes of these reconstructed sounds in Hittite. [17]

Julius Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Indo-European Etymological Dictionary', 1959) gave a detailed, though conservative, overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated by 1959. Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie gave a better understanding of Indo-European ablaut. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became robust enough to establish its relationship to PIE.

Historical and geographical setting

Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic steppes and across Central Asia according to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis Indo-European migrations.jpg
Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic steppes and across Central Asia according to the widely held Kurgan hypothesis

Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis, first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas, has become the most popular. [lower-alpha 1] It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. [22] :305–7 [23] According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse, which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. [23] By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout the Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. [24]

Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis, [25] which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia with agriculture beginning c. 7500–6000 BCE, [26] the Armenian hypothesis, the Paleolithic continuity paradigm, and the indigenous Aryans theory. The latter two of these theories are not regarded as credible within academia. [27] [28] Out of all the theories for a PIE homeland, the Kurgan and Anatolian hypotheses are the ones most widely accepted, and also the ones most debated against each other. [29] Following the publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew, the original author and proponent of the Anatolian hypothesis, has accepted the reality of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic steppe towards Northwestern Europe. [30] [31]

Classification of Indo-European languages. Red: Extinct languages. White: categories or unattested proto-languages. Left half: centum languages; right half: satem languages IndoEuropeanTree.svg
Classification of Indo-European languages. Red: Extinct languages. White: categories or unattested proto-languages. Left half: centum languages; right half: satem languages

Descendants

The table lists the main Indo-European language families, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Indo-European.

CladeProto-languageDescriptionHistorical languagesModern descendants
Anatolian Proto-Anatolian All now extinct, the best attested being the Hittite language. Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Lycian, Lydian, Carian, Pisidian, Sidetic There are no living descendants of Proto-Anatolian.
Tocharian Proto-Tocharian An extinct branch known from manuscripts dating from the 6th to the 8th century AD and found in northwest China.Tocharian A, Tocharian BThere are no living descendants of Proto-Tocharian.
Italic Proto-Italic This included many languages, but only descendants of Latin (the Romance languages) survive. Latin, Faliscan, Umbrian, Oscan, African Romance, Dalmatian, Volscian, Marsi, Pre-Samnite, Paeligni, Sabine Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Ladino, Catalan, Occitan, French, Italian, Friulian, Romansh, Romanian, Aromanian, Sardinian, Corsican, Venetian, Latin (as a liturgical language of the Catholic Church and the official language of the Vatican City), Picard, Mirandese, Aragonese, Walloon, Piedmontese, Lombard, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Emilian-Romagnol, Ligurian, Ladin
Celtic Proto-Celtic Once spoken across Europe, but now mostly confined to its northwestern edge. Gaulish, Lepontic, Noric, Pictish, Cumbric, Old Irish, Middle Welsh, Gallaecian, Galatian Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Breton, Cornish, Manx
Germanic Proto-Germanic Branched into three subfamilies: West Germanic, East Germanic (now extinct), and North Germanic. Old English, Old Norse, Gothic, Old High German, Old Saxon, Vandalic, Burgundian, Crimean Gothic, Norn, Greenlandic Norse English, German, Afrikaans, Dutch, Yiddish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Frisian, Icelandic, Faroese, Luxembourgish, Scots, Limburgish, Wymysorys, Elfdalian
Balto-Slavic Proto-Balto-Slavic Branched into the Baltic languages and the Slavic languages. Old Prussian, Old Church Slavonic, Sudovian, Semigallian, Selonian, Skalvian, Galindian, Polabian, Knaanic Baltic: Latvian, Latgalian and Lithuanian;

Slavic: Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Macedonian, Kashubian, Rusyn

Indo-Iranian Proto-Indo-Iranian Branched into the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani languages. Vedic Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit languages; Old Persian, Parthian, Old Azeri, Median, Elu, Sogdian, Saka, Avestan, Bactrian Indo-Aryan: Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), Marathi, Sylheti, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, Konkani, Gujarati, Nepali, Dogri, Romani, Sindhi, Maithili, Sinhala, Dhivehi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sanskrit (revived);

Iranic: Persian, Pashto, Balochi, Kurdish, Zaza, Ossetian, Luri, Talyshi, Tati, Gilaki, Mazandarani, Semnani, Yaghnobi; Nuristani

Armenian Proto-Armenian Branched into Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian. Classical Armenian Armenian
Hellenic Proto-Greek Modern Greek and Tsakonian are the only surviving varieties of Greek. Ancient Greek, Ancient Macedonian Greek, Tsakonian
Albanian Proto-Albanian Albanian is the only surviving representative of the Albanoid branch of the Indo-European language family. [32] [33] Illyrian (disputed); Daco-Thracian (disputed) Albanian (Gheg and Tosk)

Commonly proposed subgroups of Indo-European languages include Italo-Celtic, Graeco-Aryan, Graeco-Armenian, Graeco-Phrygian, Daco-Thracian, and Thraco-Illyrian.

There are numerous lexical similarities between the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian languages due to early language contact,[ citation needed ] though some morphological similarities—notably the Indo-European ablaut, which is remarkably similar to the root ablaut system reconstructible for Proto-Kartvelian. [34] [35]

Marginally attested languages

The Lusitanian language was a marginally attested language spoken in areas near the border between present-day Portugal and Spain.

The Venetic and Liburnian languages known from the North Adriatic region are sometimes classified as Italic.

Albanian and Greek are the only surviving Indo-European descendants of a Paleo-Balkan language area, named for their occurrence in or in the vicinity of the Balkan peninsula. Most of the other languages of this area—including Illyrian, Thracian, and Dacian—do not appear to be members of any other subfamilies of PIE, but are so poorly attested that proper classification of them is not possible. Forming an exception, Phrygian is sufficiently well-attested to allow proposals of a particularly close affiliation with Greek, and a Graeco-Phrygian branch of Indo-European is becoming increasingly accepted. [36] [37] [38]

Phonology

Proto-Indo-European phonology has been reconstructed in some detail. Notable features of the most widely accepted (but not uncontroversial) reconstruction include:

Notation

Vowels

The vowels in commonly used notation are: [39]

Type length front back
Mid short*e *o
long *ō

Consonants

The corresponding consonants in commonly used notation are: [40] [41]

Type Labial Coronal Dorsal Laryngeal
palatalplainlabial
Nasals *m*n
Stops voiceless *p*t*ḱ*k*
voiced (*b)*d*g*
aspirated ***ǵʰ**gʷʰ
Fricatives *s *h₁, *h₂, *h₃
Liquids *r,*l
Semivowels *y*w

All sonorants (i.e. nasals, liquids and semivowels) can appear in syllabic position. The syllabic allophones of *y and *w are realized as the surface vowels *i and *u respectively. [42]

Accent

The Proto-Indo-European accent is reconstructed today as having had variable lexical stress, which could appear on any syllable and whose position often varied among different members of a paradigm (e.g. between singular and plural of a verbal paradigm). Stressed syllables received a higher pitch; therefore it is often said that PIE had a pitch accent. The location of the stress is associated with ablaut variations, especially between full-grade vowels (/e/ and /o/) and zero-grade (i.e. lack of a vowel), but not entirely predictable from it.

The accent is best preserved in Vedic Sanskrit and (in the case of nouns) Ancient Greek, and indirectly attested in a number of phenomena in other IE languages, such as Verner's Law in the Germanic branch. Sources for Indo-European accentuation are also the Balto-Slavic accentual system and plene spelling in Hittite cuneiform. To account for mismatches between the accent of Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, as well as a few other phenomena, a few historical linguists prefer to reconstruct PIE as a tone language where each morpheme had an inherent tone;[ citation needed ] the sequence of tones in a word then evolved, according to that hypothesis, into the placement of lexical stress in different ways in different IE branches.[ citation needed ]

Morphology

Root

Proto-Indo-European roots were affix-lacking morphemes that carried the core lexical meaning of a word and were used to derive related words (cf. the English root "-friend-", from which are derived related words such as friendship,friendly, befriend, and newly coined words such as unfriend). Proto-Indo-European was probably a fusional language, in which inflectional morphemes signaled the grammatical relationships between words. This dependence on inflectional morphemes means that roots in PIE, unlike those in English, were rarely used without affixes. A root plus a suffix formed a word stem, and a word stem plus a desinence (usually an ending) formed a word. [43]

Ablaut

Many morphemes in Proto-Indo-European had short e as their inherent vowel; the Indo-European ablaut is the change of this short e to short o, long e (ē), long o (ō), or no vowel. The forms are referred to as the "ablaut grades" of the morpheme—the e-grade, o-grade, zero-grade (no vowel), etc. This variation in vowels occurred both within inflectional morphology (e.g., different grammatical forms of a noun or verb may have different vowels) and derivational morphology (e.g., a verb and an associated abstract verbal noun may have different vowels). [44]

Categories that PIE distinguished through ablaut were often also identifiable by contrasting endings, but the loss of these endings in some later Indo-European languages has led them to use ablaut alone to identify grammatical categories, as in the Modern English words sing, sang, sung.

Noun

Proto-Indo-European nouns were probably declined for eight or nine cases: [45]

Late Proto-Indo-European had three grammatical genders:

This system is probably derived from an older two-gender system, attested in Anatolian languages: common (or animate) and neuter (or inanimate) gender. The feminine gender only arose in the later period of the language. [48] Neuter nouns collapsed the nominative, vocative and accusative into a single form, the plural of which used a special collective suffix *-h2 (manifested in most descendants as -a). This same collective suffix in extended forms *-eh2 and *-ih2 (respectively on thematic and athematic nouns, becoming and in the early daughter languages) became used to form feminine nouns from masculines.

All nominals distinguished three numbers:

These numbers were also distinguished in verbs (see below), requiring agreement with their subject nominal.

Pronoun

Proto-Indo-European pronouns are difficult to reconstruct, owing to their variety in later languages. PIE had personal pronouns in the first and second grammatical person, but not the third person, where demonstrative pronouns were used instead. The personal pronouns had their own unique forms and endings, and some had two distinct stems; this is most obvious in the first person singular where the two stems are still preserved in English I and me. There were also two varieties for the accusative, genitive and dative cases, a stressed and an enclitic form. [49]

Personal pronouns [49]
CaseFirst personSecond person
SingularPluralSingularPlural
Nominative *h₁eǵ(oH/Hom)*wei*tuH*yuH
Accusative *h₁mé, *h₁me*n̥smé, *nōs*twé*usmé, *wōs
Genitive *h₁méne, *h₁moi*ns(er)o-, *nos*tewe, *toi*yus(er)o-, *wos
Dative *h₁méǵʰio, *h₁moi*nsmei, *ns*tébʰio, *toi*usmei
Instrumental *h₁moí*nsmoí*toí*usmoí
Ablative *h₁med*nsmed*tued*usmed
Locative *h₁moí*nsmi*toí*usmi

Verb

Proto-Indo-European verbs, like the nouns, exhibited a system of ablaut.

The most basic categorisation for the reconstructed Indo-European verb is grammatical aspect. Verbs are classed as:

Verbs have at least four grammatical moods:

Verbs had two grammatical voices:

Verbs had three grammatical persons: first, second and third.

Verbs had three grammatical numbers:

Verbs were probably marked by a highly developed system of participles, one for each combination of tense and voice, and an assorted array of verbal nouns and adjectival formations.

The following table shows a possible reconstruction of the PIE verb endings from Sihler, which largely represents the current consensus among Indo-Europeanists.

PersonSihler (1995) [50]
Athematic Thematic
Singular 1st *-mi*-oh₂
2nd*-si*-esi
3rd*-ti*-eti
Dual1st*-wos*-owos
2nd*-th₁es*-eth₁es
3rd*-tes*-etes
Plural1st*-mos*-omos
2nd*-te*-ete
3rd*-nti*-onti

Numbers

Proto-Indo-European numerals are generally reconstructed as follows:

NumberSihler [50]
one*(H)óynos/*(H)óywos/*(H)óyk(ʷ)os; *sḗm (full grade), *sm̥-(zero grade)
two*d(u)wóh₁ (full grade), *dwi-(zero grade)
three*tréyes (full grade), *tri-(zero grade)
four*kʷetwóres (o-grade), *kʷ(e)twr̥-(zero grade)
(see also the kʷetwóres rule )
five*pénkʷe
six*s(w)éḱs; originally perhaps *wéḱs, with *s- under the influence of *septḿ̥
seven*septḿ̥
eight*oḱtṓ(w)or *h₃eḱtṓ(w)
nine*h₁néwn̥
ten*déḱm̥(t)

Rather than specifically 100, *ḱm̥tóm may originally have meant "a large number". [51]

Particle

Proto-Indo-European particles were probably used both as adverbs and as postpositions. These postpositions became prepositions in most daughter languages.

Reconstructed particles include for example, *upo "under, below"; the negators *ne, *; the conjunctions *kʷe "and", * "or" and others; and an interjection, *wai!, expressing woe or agony.

Derivational morphology

Proto-Indo-European employed various means of deriving words from other words, or directly from verb roots.

Internal derivation

Internal derivation was a process that derived new words through changes in accent and ablaut alone. It was not as productive as external (affixing) derivation, but is firmly established by the evidence of various later languages.

Possessive adjectives

Possessive or associated adjectives were probably created from nouns through internal derivation. Such words could be used directly as adjectives, or they could be turned back into a noun without any change in morphology, indicating someone or something characterised by the adjective. They were probably also used as the second elements in compounds. If the first element was a noun, this created an adjective that resembled a present participle in meaning, e.g. "having much rice" or "cutting trees". When turned back into nouns, such compounds were Bahuvrihis or semantically resembled agent nouns.

In thematic stems, creating a possessive adjective seems to have involved shifting the accent one syllable to the right, for example: [52]

  • *tómh₁-o-s "slice" (Greek tómos) > *tomh₁-ó-s "cutting" (i.e. "making slices"; Greek tomós) > *dr-u-tomh₁-ó-s "cutting trees" (Greek drutómos "woodcutter" with irregular accent).
  • *wólh₁-o-s "wish" (Sanskrit vára-) > *wolh₁-ó-s "having wishes" (Sanskrit vará- "suitor").

In athematic stems, there was a change in the accent/ablaut class. The reconstructed four classes followed an ordering in which a derivation would shift the class one to the right: [52]

acrostatic → proterokinetic → hysterokinetic → amphikinetic

The reason for this particular ordering of the classes in derivation is not known. Some examples:

  • Acrostatic *krót-u-s ~ *krét-u-s "strength" (Sanskrit krátu-) > proterokinetic *krét-u-s ~ *kr̥t-éw-s "having strength, strong" (Greek kratús).
  • Hysterokinetic *ph₂-tḗr ~ *ph₂-tr-és "father" (Greek patḗr) > amphikinetic *h₁su-péh₂-tōr ~ *h₁su-ph₂-tr-és "having a good father" (Greek εὑπάτωρ, eupátōr).
Vrddhi

A vrddhi derivation, named after the Sanskrit grammatical term, signifying "of, belonging to, descended from". It was characterised by "upgrading" the root grade, from zero to full (e) or from full to lengthened (ē). When upgrading from zero to full grade, the vowel could sometimes be inserted in the "wrong" place, creating a different stem from the original full grade.

Examples: [53]

  • full grade *swéḱuro-s "father-in-law" (Vedic Sanskrit śváśura-) > lengthened grade *swēḱuró-s "relating to one's father-in-law" (Vedic śvāśura-, Old High German swāgur "brother-in-law").
  • full grade *dyḗw-s > zero grade *diw-és "sky" > new full grade *deyw-o-s "god, sky god" (Vedic devás, Latin deus, etc.). Note the difference in vowel placement, *dyew- in the full-grade stem of the original noun, but *deyw- in the vrddhi derivative.
Nominalization

Adjectives with accent on the thematic vowel could be turned into nouns by moving the accent back onto the root. A zero grade root could remain so, or be "upgraded" to full grade like in a vrddhi derivative. Some examples: [54]

  • PIE *ǵn̥h₁-tó-s "born" (Vedic jātá-) > *ǵénh₁-to- "thing that is born" (German Kind).
  • Greek leukós "white" > leũkos "a kind of fish", literally "white one".
  • Vedic kṛṣṇá- "dark" > kṛ́ṣṇa- "dark one", also "antelope".

This kind of derivation is likely related to the possessive adjectives, and can be seen as essentially the reverse of it.

Affixal derivation

Syntax

The syntax of the older Indo-European languages has been studied in earnest since at least the late nineteenth century, by such scholars as Hermann Hirt and Berthold Delbrück. In the second half of the twentieth century, interest in the topic increased and led to reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European syntax. [55]

Since all the early attested IE languages were inflectional, PIE is thought to have relied primarily on morphological markers, rather than word order, to signal syntactic relationships within sentences. [56] Still, a default (unmarked) word order is thought to have existed in PIE. In 1892, Jacob Wackernagel reconstructed PIE's word order as subject–verb–object (SVO), based on evidence in Vedic Sanskrit. [57]

Winfred P. Lehmann (1974), on the other hand, reconstructs PIE as a subject–object–verb (SOV) language. He posits that the presence of person marking in PIE verbs motivated a shift from OV to VO order in later dialects. Many of the descendant languages have VO order: modern Greek, Romance and Albanian prefer SVO, Insular Celtic has VSO as the default order, and even the Anatolian languages show some signs of this word order shift. Tocharian and Indo-Iranian, meanwhile, retained the conservative OV order. Lehmann attributes the context-dependent order preferences in Baltic, Slavic and Germanic to outside influences. [58] Donald Ringe (2006), however, attributes these to internal developments instead. [59]

Paul Friedrich (1975) disagrees with Lehmann's analysis. He reconstructs PIE with the following syntax:

Friedrich notes that even among those Indo-European languages with basic OV word order, none of them are rigidly OV. He also notes that these non-rigid OV languages mainly occur in parts of the IE area that overlap with OV languages from other families (such as Uralic and Dravidian), whereas VO is predominant in the central parts of the IE area. For these reasons, among others, he argues for a VO common ancestor. [60]

Hans Henrich Hock (2015) reports that the SVO hypothesis still has some adherents, but the "broad consensus" among PIE scholars is that PIE would have been an SOV language. [57] The SOV default word order with other orders used to express emphasis (e.g., verb–subject–object to emphasise the verb) is attested in Old Indo-Aryan, Old Iranian, Old Latin and Hittite, while traces of it can be found in the enclitic personal pronouns of the Tocharian languages. [56]

See also

Notes

  1. See:
    • Bomhard: "This scenario is supported not only by linguistic evidence, but also by a growing body of archeological and genetic evidence. The Indo-Europeans have been identified with several cultural complexes existing in that area between 4,500—3,500 BCE. The literature supporting such a homeland is both extensive and persuasive [...]. Consequently, other scenarios regarding the possible Indo-European homeland, such as Anatolia, have now been mostly abandoned." [18]
    • Anthony & Ringe: "Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined." [19]
    • Mallory: "The Kurgan solution is attractive and has been accepted by many archaeologists and linguists, in part or total. It is the solution one encounters in the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique Larousse." [20]
    • Strazny: "The single most popular proposal is the Pontic steppes (see the Kurgan hypothesis)..." [21]

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In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel *e or *o from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and those without it are athematic. Used more generally, a thematic vowel is any vowel found at the end of the stem of a word.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Germanic language</span> Ancestor of the Germanic languages

Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hittite language</span> Extinct Bronze Age Indo-European language

Hittite, also known as Nesite, is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people of Bronze Age Anatolia who created an empire centred on Hattusa, as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia. The language, now long extinct, is attested in cuneiform, in records dating from the 17th to the 13th centuries BC, with isolated Hittite loanwords and numerous personal names appearing in an Old Assyrian context from as early as the 20th century BC, making it the earliest attested use of the Indo-European languages.

Vṛddhi is a technical term in morphophonology given to the strongest grade in the vowel gradation system of Sanskrit. The term is derived from Sanskrit वृद्धि vṛddhi, IPA:[ˈʋr̩d̪ːʱi], lit. 'growth', from Proto-Indo-European *werdʰ- 'to grow'.

Proto-Indo-European verbs reflect a complex system of morphology, more complicated than the substantive, with verbs categorized according to their aspect, using multiple grammatical moods and voices, and being conjugated according to person, number and tense. In addition to finite forms thus formed, non-finite forms such as participles are also extensively used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Baltic language</span>

Proto-Baltic is the unattested, reconstructed ancestral proto-language of all Baltic languages. It is not attested in writing, but has been partly reconstructed through the comparative method by gathering the collected data on attested Baltic and other Indo-European languages. It represents the common Baltic speech that approximately was spoken between the 3rd millennium BC and ca. 5th century BC, after which it began dividing into West and East Baltic languages. Proto-Baltic is thought to have been a fusional language and is associated with the Corded Ware and Trzciniec cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Indo-Iranian language</span> Reconstructed proto-language

Proto-Indo-Iranian, also called Proto-Indo-Iranic or Proto-Aryan, is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are often connected with the Sintashta culture of the Eurasian Steppe and the early Andronovo archaeological horizon.

Brugmann's law, named for Karl Brugmann, is a sound law stating that in the Indo-Iranian languages, the earlier Proto-Indo-European *o normally became *a in Proto-Indo-Iranian but *ā in open syllables if it was followed by one consonant and another vowel. For example, the Proto-Indo-European noun for 'wood' was *dόru, which in Vedic became dāru. Everywhere else, the outcome was *a, the same as the reflexes of PIE *e and *a.

Internal reconstruction is a method of reconstructing an earlier state in a language's history using only language-internal evidence of the language in question.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proto-Anatolian language</span> Reconstructed ancestor of the Anatolian languages

Proto-Anatolian is the proto-language from which the ancient Anatolian languages emerged. As with almost all other proto-languages, no attested writings have been found; the language has been reconstructed by applying the comparative method to all the attested Anatolian languages as well as other Indo-European languages.

Proto-Indo-European nominals include nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. Their grammatical forms and meanings have been reconstructed by modern linguists, based on similarities found across all Indo-European languages. This article discusses nouns and adjectives; Proto-Indo-European pronouns are treated elsewhere.

The phonology of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) has been reconstructed by linguists, based on the similarities and differences among current and extinct Indo-European languages. Because PIE was not written, linguists must rely on the evidence of its earliest attested descendants, such as Hittite, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, and Latin, to reconstruct its phonology.

The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic parts of words to carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots usually have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run". Roots never occurred alone in the language. Complete inflected verbs, nouns, and adjectives were formed by adding further morphemes to a root and potentially changing the root's vowel in a process called ablaut.

Szemerényi's law is both a sound change and a synchronic phonological rule that operated during an early stage of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). Though its effects are evident in many reconstructed as well as attested forms, it did not operate in late PIE, having become morphologized. It is named for Hungarian-British linguist Oswald Szemerényi.

Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the accentual (stress) system of the Proto-Indo-European language.

Jay Harold Jasanoff is an American linguist and Indo-Europeanist, best known for his h2e-conjugation theory of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system. He teaches Indo-European linguistics and historical linguistics at Harvard University.

Historical linguistics has made tentative postulations about and multiple varyingly different reconstructions of Proto-Germanic grammar, as inherited from Proto-Indo-European grammar. All reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk (*).

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Bibliography