(Redirected from PIE)
The 'Proto-Indo-European language' ('PIE') is the
hypothetical common ancestor of the
Indo-European languages, spoken by the
Proto-Indo-Europeans. Although the existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for a long time, there has been debate about many specific details.
Discovery and reconstruction
When was PIE spoken?
There are several competing hypotheses about when and where PIE was spoken. The only thing known for certain is that the language must have been differentiated into unconnected daughter dialects by the late
3rd millennium BC. Mainstream estimates of the time between PIE and the earliest attested texts (ca.
nineteenth century; see
Kültepe texts) range around 1,500 to 2,500 years, with extreme proposals diverging up to another 100% on either side:
★ the
3rd 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 mainstream
Kurgan hypothesis;
★ the
6th millennium BC in
India, according to
Koenraad Elst's
Out of India model;
★ 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 (
6th excluding the Anatolian branch), according to a 2003
glottochronological study
[1];
★
before the 10th millennium BC, in the
Paleolithic Continuity Theory.
History
Main articles: Indo-European studies
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
Main articles: Historical linguistics,
Indo-European sound laws
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. The
asterisk is used to mark reconstructed PIE words, such as
★ '' '
water',
★ '' '
dog', 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, and
Grassmann's law independently in both Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian.
Relationship to other language families
Many higher-level relationships between PIE and other language families have been proposed. But these speculative connections are highly controversial. Perhaps the most widely accepted proposal is of an
Indo-Uralic family, encompassing PIE and
Uralic. The evidence usually cited in favor of this is the proximity of the proposed
Urheimaten of the two families, the
typological similarity between the two languages, and a number of apparent shared morphemes.
Frederik Kortlandt, while advocating a connection, concedes that "the gap between Uralic and Indo-European is huge", while
Lyle Campbell, an authority of Uralic, denies any relationship exists.
Other proposals, further back in time (and correspondingly less accepted), model PIE as a branch of Indo-Uralic with a
Caucasian substratum; link PIE and Uralic with
Altaic and certain other families in Asia, such as
Korean,
Japanese,
Chukotko-Kamchatkan and
Eskimo-Aleut (representative proposals are
Nostratic and
Joseph Greenberg's
Eurasiatic); or link some or all of these to
Afro-Asiatic,
Dravidian, etc., and ultimately to a single
Proto-World family (nowadays mostly associated with
Merritt Ruhlen). Various proposals, with varying levels of skepticism, also exist that join some subset of the putative Eurasiatic language families and/or some of the
Caucasian language families, such as
Uralo-Siberian,
Ural-Altaic (once widely accepted but now largely discredited),
Proto-Pontic, and so on.
Phonology
Main articles: Proto-Indo-European phonology
★ 'Short
vowels'
★ 'Long vowels' ; sometimes a colon ''(:)'' is employed to indicate
vowel length instead of the macron sign (''a:, e:, o:'').
★ '
Diphthongs'
★ vocalic allophones of consonantal phonemes: .
Other long vowels may have appeared already in the proto-language by
compensatory lengthening: .
Morphology
Root
Main articles: Proto-Indo-European 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 ''H'', and often specified with a subscript number ''h
1, h
2, h
3''). Thus a verb form such as the one reflected in Latin ''agunt'', Greek ἄγουσι (''ágousi''), Sanskrit would be reconstructed as , with the element constituting the root ''per se''.
Ablaut
Main articles: Indo-European ablaut
One of the unique aspects of PIE was its ''ablaut'' sequence that contrasted the vowel phonemes o/e/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, o-grade, zero-grade and lengthened grade.'' 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 apears where the word's accent has shifted off of the root to one of the affixes. Thus the alternation found in Latin ''est, sunt'' reflects PIE ''h
1és-ti, h
1s-ónti''
Noun
Main articles: Proto-Indo-European noun
'
Proto-Indo-European nouns' were declined for eight cases (
nominative,
accusative,
genitive,
dative,
instrumental,
ablative,
locative,
vocative). 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 ''-o-'' (in vocative ''-e'') 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
Main articles: Proto-Indo-European pronouns and particles
PIE pronouns are difficult to reconstruct due 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 (1995), there were also two varieties for the accusative, genitive and dative cases, a stressed and an
enclitic form.
As for demonstratives, Beekes (1995) 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
Main articles: Proto-Indo-European 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.
| | 'Buck 1933' | 'Beekes 1995' |
|---|
| | 'Athematic' | 'Thematic' | 'Athematic' | 'Thematic' |
| 'Singular' | '1st' | | | | |
| '2nd' | | | | |
| '3rd' | | | | |
| 'Plural' | '1st' | | | | |
| '2nd' | | | | |
| '3rd' | | | | |
Numbers
Main articles: Proto-Indo-European numerals
The
Proto-Indo-European numerals are generally reconstructed as follows:
| Sihler 1995, 402–24 | Beekes 1995, 212–16 |
| one |
★ |
★ |
| two |
★ |
★ |
| three |
★ (full grade)/
★ (zero grade) |
★ |
| four |
★ (o-grade)/
★ (zero grade),
see also the rule |
★ |
| 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 (1993, 252-255) 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."
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:
★
Schleicher's fable ('') by
August Schleicher (1868), modernized by
Hermann Hirt (1939) and
Winfred Lehmann and
Ladislav Zgusta (1979)
★
The king and the god ('') by S. K. Sen, E. P. Hamp et al. (1994)
Notes
1. 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
References
★ Vyacheslav V. Ivanov and Thomas Gamkrelidze, The Early History of Indo-ÂEuropean Languages, Scientific American, vol. 262, N3, 110Â116, March, 1990
★ A. Kammenhuber, "Aryans in the Near East," Haidelberg, 1968
★
Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, , Robert S. P., Beekes, John Benjamins, 1995, ISBN 90-272-2150-2 (Europe), ISBN 1-55619-504-4 (U.S.)
★
Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, , Carl Darling, Buck, University of Chicago Press, 1933, ISBN 0-226-07931-7
★ 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.
★
Indogermanische Grammatik, i/2: Lautlehre, , Manfred, Mayrhofer, Winter, 1986,
★
Indo-European Linguistics, , Michael, Meier-Brügger, de Gruyter, 2003, 3-11-017433-2
★
New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, , Andrew L., Sihler, Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-508345-8
★
Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics, , Oswald, Szemerényi, Oxford, 1996,
★
Sanskrit Grammar, , William Dwight, Whitney, Harvard University Press, 1889, ISBN 81-208-0621-2 (India), ISBN 0-486-43136-3 (Dover, US)
See also
★
Laryngeal theory
★
Proto-Indo-Europeans
★
Indo-European studies
★
Proto-Indo-European religion
★
Proto-World language
★
Indo-European s-mobile
Daughter proto-languages
★
Proto-Armenian language
★
Proto-Balto-Slavic language
★
Proto-Celtic language
★
Proto-Germanic language
★
Proto-Greek language
★
Proto-Indo-Iranian language
External links
★
Indo-European Dictionary by Gerhard Köbler (contains Indo-European Grammar in Vorwort section)
★
Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European (by Vyacheslav V. Ivanov)
★ American Heritage Dictionary:
★
★
Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, essay on the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European
★
★
Indo-European Roots, index
★
PIE grammar
★
Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (Leiden University)
★
Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (University of Texas)
★
Indo-European Documentation Center at the
University of Texas
★
"The Indo-Uralic Verb" by
Frederik Kortlandt
★
Say something in Proto-Indo-European (by Geoffrey Sampson)
★
An Overview of the Proto-Indo-European Verb System (by Piotr GÄ…siorowski)
★
Many PIE example texts
★
PIE root etymology database (by S.L.Nikolaev and S.A.Starostin)
★
On the internal classification of Indo-European languages: survey by
Václav Blažek.
Linguistica ONLINE. ISSN 1801-5336 (
Brno,
Czech Republic)
★ (from Wiktionary)
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