Proto-Indo-European language

The **Proto-Indo-European language** (**PIE**) is the ancestor of the Indo-European languages.

It is the best understood of all proto-languages. It was put together by the methods of historical linguistics.

## Discovery and reconstruction

There are different theories about when and where Proto-Indo-European was spoken. PIE may have been spoken as a single language that began to separate, around 3700 BC. The exact date is not known. The most popular hypothesis for where it came from and how it spread is called the Kurgan hypothesis. In this hypothesis, its origin is in the Pontic-Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe.

### Method

There is no direct evidence of PIE because it was never written down. All PIE sounds and words are reconstructed from later Indo-European languages. The asterisk symbol is used to mark reconstructed PIE words: ***' 'water', ***' 'dog', or ***' 'three (masculine)'. Many words in modern Indo-European languages seem to have come from such "proto-words" by regular sound changes such as Grimm's law.

### Vowels

The vowels in commonly-used notation are:

||length|front|back|
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|short||||
|long||||

### Consonants

The consonants in commonly-used notation are:

|rowspan="2" colspan="2"||rowspan="2"|Labial|rowspan="2"|Coronal|colspan=3|Dorsal|rowspan="2"|Laryngeal|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|*|*|||||||||
|*|*|*|*|*||||||
|*|*|*|*|*||||||
|*|*|*|*|*||||||
||*||||*, *, *|||||
||* , *|*||*||||||

The following phonemes are generally accepted:
- **Short vowels**
- **Long vowels** . Usually the macron is used to mark long vowels. Sometimes, a colon is also used to say that the vowel is long (_a:, e:, o:_).
- **Diphthongs_'
- Vowel allophones of consonantal phonemes: .

### Accent

PIE had a free pitch accent_._ That means that the stress of a word could be on any syllable and change even for related words. Different meanings of a word could be marked only with high or low pitch.

## Morphology

PIE was an inflected language that had roots with suffixes. The basic root shape is often altered by the ablaut, a system of regular vowel changes. An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb _sing_, _sang_, _sung_ and the related noun _song_.

### Synthetic

Most Indo-European languages are synthetic. That means they have many morphemes per word. Morphemes may be combined to make complex words, as in German. Root words may be put on "bound morphemes" to show their function, which are morphemes that appear only as part of a larger word.
- German example: _Aufsichtsratsmitgliederversammlung_ => "Supervision + council + member + assembly"
- Spanish example: _escribiéndomelo_ => "writing it to me"

Those methods were probably used often in PIE. Languages like English, which have few such combinations, come from earlier, more typical Indo-European languages. English comes from Anglo-Saxon, a Western Germanic language. The fact that English once was synthetic like German is shown by cranberry morphemes, which are called that because the "cran-" is a remnant of a word that no longer exists. Also, in _mulberry_ and _raspberry_, their first syllable is a bound morpheme.

## Sample texts

Because PIE was spoken a very long time ago, there are no texts anymore. Scientists have tried many times to make example texts to show what it could be like. However, they are just educated guesses. Even so, such texts are still useful because they show what PIE might have looked and sounded like.

People have rewritten a text by Schleicher multiple times as an example text:

### Schleicher (1868)

_Avis akvāsas ka_

- Avis, jasmin varnā na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāgham garum vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam, manum āku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam. Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnām avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varnā na asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.

Schleicher's reconstruction says that the o/e vocalism was secondary. His version of PIE is more like Sanskrit than modern reconstructions are.

### Hirt (1939)

_Owis ek’wōses-kʷe_

- Owis, jesmin wьlənā ne ēst, dedork’e ek’wons, tom, woghom gʷьrum weghontm̥, tom, bhorom megam, tom, gh’ьmonm̥ ōk’u bherontm̥. Owis ek’womos ewьwekʷet: k’ērd aghnutai moi widontei gh’ьmonm̥ ek’wons ag’ontm̥. Ek’wōses ewьwekʷont: kl’udhi, owei!, k’ērd aghnutai vidontmos: gh’ьmo, potis, wьlənām owjôm kʷr̥neuti sebhoi ghʷermom westrom; owimos-kʷe wьlənā ne esti. Tod k’ek’ruwos owis ag’rom ebhuget.

Hirt introduced the o/e vocalist and some rather different consonants.

### English translation

_The Sheep and the Horses''

- [On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

Some of the differences between the texts are just different spelling conventions: w and u̯, for example, are only different ways to indicate the same sound, a consonantal u. However, many other differences are caused by the different ideas about the sounds and the structure of PIE.

## Related pages

- List of Indo-European languages

## Other websites

- American Heritage Dictionary:
    - Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, essay on the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European
    - Indo-European Roots, index
- Indo-European Etymological Dictionary  (Leiden University)
- Indo-European Etymological Dictionary  (University of Texas)
- Say something in Proto-Indo-European (by Geoffrey Sampson)
- An Overview of the Proto-Indo-European Verb System  (by Piotr Gąsiorowski)
- Many PIE example texts
- PIE root etymology database