The
Proto-Indo-European language
(
PIE) is the unattested,
reconstructed common ancestor of
the
Indo-European languages,
spoken by the
Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of
such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century,
and there have been many attempts at reconstruction. Nevertheless,
many disagreements and uncertainties remain.
Discovery and reconstruction

Classification of Indo-European
languages.
Historical and geographical setting
There are several competing hypotheses about when and where PIE was
spoken. The
Kurgan hypothesis is
"the single most popular" model, postulating that the Kurgan
culture of the
Pontic steppe were the
hypothesized speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European
language. However, alternative theories such as the
Anatolian urheimat and
Armenian hypothesis have also
gained acceptance.
The satemization process that resulted in the
Centum-Satem isogloss probably started
as early as the fourth millennium BC andthe only thing known for
certain is that the proto language must have been differentiated
into unconnected daughter dialects by the late
3rd millennium BC.
Mainstream
linguistic estimates of the time between PIE and the earliest
attested texts (ca. nineteenth century
BC; see Kültepe
texts
) range around 1,500 to 2,500 years, with extreme
proposals diverging up to another 100% on either side. Other
than the aforementioned, predominant Kurgan hypothesis, proposed
models include:
- the
4th millennium BC (excluding the
Anatolian branch) in Armenia
, according
to the Armenian hypothesis
(proposed in the context of Glottalic
theory);
- the 5th millennium BC
(4th excluding the Anatolian
branch) in the Pontic-Caspian
steppe, according to the popular Kurgan hypothesis;
- the 6th millennium BC or later
in Northern Europe according to Lothar Kilian's and, especially,
Marek Zvelebil's models of a broader homeland;
- the 6th millennium BC in
India, according to Koenraad Elst's Out of India model;
- the 7th millennium BC in
Ariana/BMAC according to
a number of scholars.
- the
7th millennium BC in Anatolia
(the
5th, in the Balkans, excluding the Anatolian branch), according
to Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis;
- the
7th millennium BC in Anatolia
(6th excluding the Anatolian branch),
according to a 2003 glottochronological study;
- before the 10th millennium BC,
in the Paleolithic
Continuity Theory.
History
The classical phase of Indo-European
comparative linguistics leads from
Franz Bopp's
Comparative Grammar
(1833) to
August Schleicher's 1861
Compendium and up to
Karl
Brugmann's
Grundriss published from the 1880s. Brugmann's
junggrammatische
re-evaluation of the field and
Ferdinand de Saussure's development of
the
laryngeal theory may be
considered the beginning of "contemporary" Indo-European
studies.
PIE as described in the early 1900s is still generally accepted
today; subsequent work is largely refinement and systematization,
as well as the incorporation of new information, notably the
Anatolian and
Tocharian branches unknown in the 19th
century.
Notably, the
laryngeal theory, in
its early forms discussed since the 1880s, became mainstream after
Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1927
discovery of the survival of at least some of these hypothetical
phonemes in Anatolian.
Julius
Pokorny's
Indogermanisches
etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959) gave an overview of the
lexical knowledge accumulated until the early 20th century, but
neglected contemporary trends of morphology and phonology, and
largely ignored Anatolian and Tocharian.
The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the
20th century (such as
Calvert
Watkins,
Jochem Schindler and
Helmut Rix) developed a better
understanding of morphology and, in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956
Apophonie, understanding of the
ablaut. From the 1960s, knowledge of
Anatolian became certain enough to establish its relationship to
PIE; see also
Indo-Hittite.
Method
There is no direct evidence of PIE, because it was never
written. All PIE sounds and words are
reconstructed from later Indo-European languages using the
comparative method and the method of
internal reconstruction. An
asterisk is used to mark reconstructed PIE
words, such as * '
water', * '
dog' (English
hound), or * 'three (masculine)'.
Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages seem to
have derived from such "protowords" via regular
sound changes (e.g.,
Grimm's law).
As the Proto-Indo-European language broke up, its sound system
diverged as well, according to various
sound
laws in the daughter languages. Notable among these are
Grimm's law and
Verner's law in
Proto-Germanic, loss of prevocalic
*p- in
Proto-Celtic,
reduction to
h of prevocalic
*s- in
Proto-Greek,
Brugmann's law and
Bartholomae's law in
Proto-Indo-Iranian,
Grassmann's law independently in both
Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian, and
Winter's law and
Hirt's
law in
Balto-Slavic.
Relationships to other language families
Proposed genetic connections
Many higher-level relationships between Proto-Indo-European and
other language families have been proposed, but these hypothesized
connections are highly controversial. A proposal often considered
to be the most plausible of these is that of an
Indo-Uralic family, encompassing PIE
and
Uralic. The evidence usually
cited in favor of this consists in a number of striking
morphological and lexical resemblances. Opponents attribute the
lexical resemblances to borrowing from Indo-European into Uralic.
Frederik Kortlandt, while
advocating a connection, concedes that "the gap between Uralic and
Indo-European is huge", while
Lyle
Campbell, an authority on
Uralic, denies
any relationship exists.
Other proposals, further back in time (and proportionately less
accepted), link Indo-European and Uralic with
Altaic and the other language families of
northern Eurasia, namely
Yukaghir,
Korean,
Japanese,
Chukotko-Kamchatkan,
Nivkh,
Ainu, and
Eskimo-Aleut, but excluding
Yeniseian (the most
comprehensive such proposal is
Joseph
Greenberg's
Eurasiatic), or
link Indo-European, Uralic, and Altaic to
Afro-Asiatic and
Dravidian (the traditional form of the
Nostratic hypothesis), and
ultimately to a single
Proto-Human family.
A more rarely mentioned proposal associates Indo-European with the
Northwest Caucasian
languages in a family called
Proto-Pontic.
Etruscan shows some similarities
to Indo-European. There is no consensus on whether these are due to
a genetic relationship, borrowing, chance and sound symbolism, or
some combination of these.
Proposed areal connections
The existence of certain PIE typological features in
Northwest Caucasian languages
may hint at an early
Sprachbund or
substratum that reached geographically to the PIE homelands. This
same type of languages, featuring complex verbs and of which the
current Northwest Caucasian languages might have been the sole
survivors, was cited by Peter Schrijver to indicate a local lexical
and typological reminiscence in western Europe pointing to a
possible
Neolithic
substratum.
Phonology
Consonants
Alternative notations: The aspirated plosives are
sometimes written as ; for the palatals, are often used; and can
replace .
The
pronunciation of the
laryngeals is disputed, at least *h₁ might not have been a
fricative.
Vowels
- Short vowels: , (and possibly ).
- Long vowels: , (and possibly ). Sometimes a
colon (:) is employed instead of the macron sign to indicate
vowel length (*a:, *e:, *o:).
- Diphthongs: .
Diphthongs are sometimes understood as combinations of a vowel plus
a semivowel, e. g. *ey or *ei̯ instead of *ei.
- Vocalic allophones of laryngeals, nasals,
liquids and semivowels: .
- Long variants of these vocalic allophones may
have appeared already in the proto-language by compensatory lengthening (for
example of a vowel plus a laryngeal): .
It is often suggested that all and were earlier derived from an
preceded or followed by , but
Mayrhofer has argued that PIE did in fact
have and phonemes independent of .
Morphology
Root
PIE was an
inflected language, in
which the grammatical relationships between words were signaled
through inflectional morphemes (usually endings). The
roots of PIE are basic
morphemes carrying a
lexical
meaning. By addition of
suffixes, they form
stems, and by addition of
desinences (usually endings), these form
grammatically inflected
words (
nouns or
verbs). PIE roots are
understood to be predominantly monosyllabic with a basic shape
CvC(C). This basic root shape is often altered by
ablaut. Roots which appear to be vowel
initial are believed by many scholars to have originally begun with
a set of consonants, later lost in all but the
Anatolian branch, called
laryngeals (usually indicated , and often
specified with a subscript number ). Thus a verb form such as the
one reflected in Latin , Greek (
ágousi), Sanskrit would be
reconstructed as , with the element constituting the root
per
se.
Ablaut
One of the distinctive aspects of PIE was its
ablaut
sequence that contrasted the vowel phonemes / Ø [no vowel] within
the same root. Ablaut is a form of vowel variation which changed
between these three forms perhaps depending on the adjacent sounds
and placement of stress in the word. These changes are echoed in
modern Indo-European languages where they have come to reflect
grammatical categories. These ablaut grades are usually referred to
as:
e-grade and
o-grade, sometimes collectively
termed
full grade;
zero-grade (no vowel, Ø); and
lengthened grade ( or ). Modern English
sing, sang,
sung is an example of such an ablaut set and reflects a
pre-Proto-Germanic sequence
*sengw-, *songw-, *sngw-. Some
scholars believe that the inflectional affixes of Indo European
reflect ablaut variants, usually
zero-grade, of older PIE
roots. Often the zero-grade appears where the word's accent has
shifted from the root to one of the affixes. Thus the alternation
found in Latin
est, sunt reflects PIE .
Noun
Proto-Indo-European nouns were declined for eight
or nine cases (
nominative,
accusative,
genitive,
dative,
instrumental,
ablative,
locative,
vocative, and possibly a directive or
allative). There were three genders:
masculine, feminine, and neuter.
There are two major types of declension,
thematic and athematic. Thematic
nominal stems are formed with a suffix (in vocative ) and the stem
does not undergo
ablaut. The
athematic stems are more archaic, and they are classified further
by their ablaut behaviour (
acro-dynamic,
protero-dynamic,
hystero-dynamic and
holo-dynamic, after the positioning of the early PIE
accent (
dynamis) in the paradigm).
Pronoun
PIE pronouns are difficult to reconstruct owing to their variety in
later languages. This is especially the case for
demonstrative pronouns. PIE had
personal
pronouns in the
first and second person, but not the
third person, where demonstratives 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. According to
Beekes, there were also two varieties for the accusative, genitive
and dative cases, a stressed and an
enclitic form.
As for demonstratives, Beekes tentatively reconstructs a system
with only two pronouns: "this, that" and "the (just named)"
(
anaphoric). He also
postulates three adverbial particles "here", "there" and "away,
again", from which demonstratives were constructed in various later
languages.
Verb
The Indo-European verb system is complex and, as the noun, exhibits
a system of
ablaut.
Verbs have at least four
moods (
indicative,
imperative,
subjunctive and
optative, as well as possibly the
injunctive, reconstructible from Vedic
Sanskrit), two
voices (
active and
mediopassive), as well as three
persons (first, second and third) and
three
numbers (
singular,
dual and
plural). Verbs are conjugated in at least three
"tenses" (
present,
aorist, and
perfect), which actually have primarily
aspect value. Indicative forms of
the
imperfect and (less likely) the
pluperfect may have existed. Verbs
were also marked by a highly developed system of
participles, one for each combination of tense
and mood, and an assorted array of
verbal
nouns and adjectival formations.
|
|
Buck |
Beekes |
|
|
Athematic |
Thematic |
Athematic |
Thematic |
Singular |
1st |
|
|
|
|
2nd |
|
|
|
|
3rd |
|
|
|
|
Plural |
1st |
|
|
|
|
2nd |
|
|
|
|
3rd |
|
|
|
|
Numbers
The Proto-Indo-European numerals are generally reconstructed as
follows:
|
Sihler |
Beekes |
one |
|
|
two |
|
|
three |
(full grade) / (zero grade) |
|
four |
(o-grade) / (zero grade)
(see also the ) |
|
five |
|
|
six |
; originally perhaps |
|
seven |
|
|
eight |
, or , |
|
nine |
|
|
ten |
|
|
twenty |
; originally perhaps |
|
thirty |
; originally perhaps |
|
forty |
; originally perhaps |
|
fifty |
; originally perhaps |
|
sixty |
; originally perhaps |
|
seventy |
; originally perhaps |
|
eighty |
; originally perhaps |
|
ninety |
; originally perhaps |
|
hundred |
; originally perhaps |
|
thousand |
; |
|
Lehmann believes that the numbers greater than ten were constructed
separately in the dialects groups and that originally meant "a
large number" rather than specifically "one hundred."
Particle
Many particles could be used both as
adverbs
and
postpositions, like "under,
below". The postpositions became prepositions in most daughter
languages. Other reconstructible particles include
negators ( ),
conjunctions ( "and", "or" and
others) and an
interjection ( , an
expression of woe or agony).
Sample texts
As PIE was spoken by a prehistoric society, no genuine sample texts
are available, but since the 19th century modern scholars have made
various attempts to compose example texts for purposes of
illustration. These texts are educated guesses at best;
Calvert Watkins in 1969 observes that in
spite of its 150 years' history, comparative linguistics is not in
the position to reconstruct a single well-formed sentence in PIE.
Nevertheless, such texts do have the merit of giving an impression
of what a coherent utterance in PIE might have sounded like.
Published PIE sample texts:
Notes
- . "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 Encyclopaedia
Britannica and the Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopédique
Larousse."
- . "The single most popular proposal is the Pontic steppes (see
the Kurgan hypothesis)..."
- ".. the satemization process can be dated to the last centuries
of the fourth millennium." [1] THE SPREAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS -Frederik
Kortlandt.
- Russell D. Gray and Quentin D. Atkinson,
Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of
Indo-European origin, Nature 426 (27 November 2003) 435-439
- [2] Frederik Kortlandt-GENERAL LINGUISTICS
AND INDO-EUROPEAN RECONSTRUCTION, 1993
- [3] The spread of the Indo-Europeans - Frederik
Kortlandt, 1989
- [4] Peter Schrijver - Keltisch en de buren:
9000 jaar taalcontact, University of Utrecht, March 2007.
- Mayrhofer 1986: 170 ff.
See also
Daughter proto-languages
References
- Lehmann, W., and L. Zgusta. 1979. Schleicher's
tale after a century. In Festschrift for Oswald Szemerényi on
the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. B. Brogyanyi, 455–66.
Amsterdam.
- Mallory, J.P., (1989). In
Search of the Indo-Europeans London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN
0-500-27616-1
- Renfrew, Colin (1987).
Archaeology & Language. The Puzzle of the
Indo-European Origins. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN
0-224-02495-7
- Vyacheslav V.
Ivanov and Thomas Gamkrelidze, The Early History of
Indo-European Languages, Scientific American, vol. 262, N3,
110116, March, 1990
- Remys, Edmund, General distinguishing features of various
Indo-European languages and their relationship to Lithuanian,
Indogermanische Forschungen, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, New York,
Band 112, 2007.
External links