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
thumb|Classification of Indo-European languages. (click to enlarge)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
[".. the satemization process can be dated to the last centuries of the fourth millennium." THE SPREAD OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS -Frederik Kortlandt.] and
the 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:
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.
[ The spread of the Indo-Europeans - Frederik Kortlandt, 1989] 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.
[ Peter Schrijver - Keltisch en de buren: 9000 jaar taalcontact, University of Utrecht, March 2007.]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
aspectual 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.
Numbers
The Proto-Indo-European numerals are generally reconstructed as follows:
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:
