Proto-Indo-European

**Proto-Indo-European**, or simply **Indo-European** (**PIE** and **IE**) (Indo-European: *bhāmṇ Prāmosindhueuropāyóm* and *bhāmṇ Sindhueuropāyóm*) is the linguistically reconstructed language that is the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is by far the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The vast majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter proto-languages (e.g. Proto-Germanic), and most of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction such as the comparative method were developed as a result. These methods supply all of the knowledge concerning PIE since there is no written record of the language.

Knowledge of them comes chiefly from that reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics. The Proto-Indo-Europeans likely lived during the late Neolithic, or roughly the 4th millennium BCE. Mainstream scholarship places them in the forest-steppe zone immediately to the north of the western end of the Pontic-Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe, according to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis. Some archaeologists would extend the time depth of PIE to the middle Neolithic (5500 to 4500 BCE) or even the early Neolithic (7500 to 5500 BCE), and suggest alternative location hypotheses.

The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has also provided insight into the culture and religion of its speakers. As Proto-Indo-Europeans became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the dialects of PIE spoken by the various groups diverged by undergoing certain sound laws and shifts in morphology to transform into the known ancient and modern Indo-European languages.

PIE had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, for example, as preserved in English *sing, sang, sung*) 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. Today, the most widely-spoken daughter languages of PIE are English (which is spoken by more than 1 billion people worldwide), Spanish, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, Persian, French, Italian and Marathi.

## The Indo-European language family and discovery

The IE languages are a family of several hundred modern languages and dialects, including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many in Asia. Contemporary languages in this family include English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Hindustani (i.e., Hindi and Urdu among other modern dialects), Persian and Russian. It is the largest family of languages in the todays world. One of the Indo-European languages is the mother tongue of approximately half the world’s population. Furthermore, the majority of the other half speaks at least one of them as a second language.

Romans didn’t perceive similarities between Latin and Celtic dialects, but they found obvious correspondences with Greek. After grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus:

“Suppum antiqui dicebant, quem nunc supinum dicimus ex Graeco, videlicet pro adspiratione ponentes
 litteram, ut idem ὕλας dicunt, et nos silvas; item ἕξ sex, et ἑπτά
septem”

Such findings are not striking, though, as Rome was believed to have been originally funded by Trojan hero Aeneas and, consequently, Latin was derived
from Old Greek.

Florentine merchant Filippo Sassetti travelled to the Indian subcontinent, and was among the first European observers to study the ancient Indian language, Sanskrit. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian, e.g. deva/dio ‘God’, sarpa/serpe ‘snake’, sapta/sette ‘seven’, ashta/otto ‘eight’, nava/nove ‘nine’. This observation is today credited to have foreshadowed
the later discovery of the Indo-European language family.

The first proposal of the possibility of a common origin for some of these languages came from Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn in 1647. He discovered the similarities among Indo-European languages, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called ‘Scythian’. He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, adding later Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. He excluded languages such as Hebrew from his hypothesis. However, the suggestions of van Boxhorn did
not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.

On 1686, German linguist Andreas Jäger published De Lingua
Vetustissima Europae, where he identified an remote language, possibly spreading from the Caucasus, from which Latin, Greek, Slavic, ‘Scythian’ (i.e. Persian) and Celtic (or ‘Celto-Germanic’) were derived, namely Scytho-Celtic. The hypothesis re-appeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Persian:

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so
strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family”

Danish Scholar Rasmus Rask was the first to point out the connection between Old Norwegian and Gothic on the one hand, and Lithuanian, Slavonic, Greek and Latin on the other. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by the young German linguist Franz Bopp supported the theory, and his Comparative Grammar, appearing between 1833 and 1852, counts as the starting-point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.

### Major Sub-Families

* Anatolian
* Hellenic
* Indo-Iranian
	+ Indo-Aryan
	+ Iranian
	+ Nuristani
* Italic
	+ Sabellic
	+ Latino-Faliscan
* Celtic
	+ Gaulish
	+ Celtiberian
	+ Goidelic
	+ Brythonic
* Germanic
* Armenian
* Tocharian
* Slavic
* Baltic
* Albanian

## Modern Indo-European

**Modern Indo-European** (**MIE**) (Indo-European: *bhāmṇ Ópityom Sindhueurōpāyóm*) is a set of conventions or ‘rules’ applied to systematise the reconstructed North-West Indo-European dialect of
Late Indo-European. Such conventions refer to its writing system, morphology and syntax, and are conceived to facilitate the transition of the reconstructed language into a learned and living one. Because proto-languages were spoken by prehistoric societies, no genuine sample texts are available, and thus comparative linguistics is not in the position to reconstruct exactly how the language was, but more or less certain approximations, whose statistical confidence decrease as we get further back in time. The hypothesised language will then be always somewhat controversial. Features of Late Indo-European that are common to IEDs (North-West Indo-European, Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian), like most of the nominal and verbal inflection, morphology, and syntax, make it possible for LIE to be proposed as *Dachsprache* for the living languages.

Modern Indo-European words to complete the lexicon of North-West Indo-European, in case that no common vocabulary is found in Late Indo-European, are to be loan-translated from present-day Northwestern IE languages. Common loan words from sister dialects can also be loan-translated or borrowed as loan words. Examples of loan translations from modern NWIE languages are e.g. from Latin aquaeduct (Lat. *aquaeductus* → MIE **aqāsduktos**) or *universe* (Lat. *uniuersus<\*oin(i)-uors-o-<\*oino-wṛt-to-* → MIE **oinowṛstós** ‘turned into one’); from English, like *software* (from Gmc. *samþu-, warō* → MIE **somtúworā**); from French, like *ambassador* (from Cel. *amb(i)actos* → MIE **ambhíagtos** ‘public servant’); or *chamber* (from O.Lat. *camera*, from PGk. *kamárā*, ‘vault’ → MIE **kamarā**); from Russian, like bolshevik (MIE **beliyówikos**); or vampire, from Serbo-Croatian *vàmpīr*, from Proto-Slavic *\*ǫpyrь,* borrowed into Byzantine Greek as bampúros (MIE **wampūros**), etc.

Loan words from sister IE dialects can be either loan-translated or directly taken as loan-words; as e.g. ‘photo’, which should be taken directly as loan-word o-stem pháwotos, from Gk phawots, gen. phawotós, as Gk. φῶς (<φάϝος), φωτός, in compound phawotogṛphjā, photography, derived from IE root **bhā-**, shine, which could be loan-translated as MIE ˟**bháwots**, from ˟**bhawotogṛbhyā**, but without having a meaning for extended ***bha-wes-***, still less for ***bha-wot-***, in North-West Indo-European or even Proto-Indo-European, as it is only found in Ancient Greek dialects. Or MIE **skholā́**, from Lat. schola, taken from Gk. σχολή (<PGk. skhol ā́) 'spare time, leisure, tranquility’, borrowed from Greek with the meaning ‘school’, which was in O.Gk. σχολεῖον (scholeíon),translated as PGk. **skholehjom** <\*-esjo-m, from IE root segh-, which could also be loantranslated as MIE ˟**sgholā́** or even more purely (and artificially) ˟**sgholesyom**, none of them being Proto-Indo-European or common Indo-European terms. Examples from Indo-Iranian include **wasāḳáranas**, bazaar, from O.Ira. vahacarana ‘sale-traffic, bazaar’, which could also be translated as proper MIE ˟**wesāqólenos**, from PIE roots wes- and qel-; or *ḳatúrangam*, chess, from Skt. *caturaŋgam* (which entered Europe from Pers. shatranj) a bahuvrihi compound, meaning ‘having four limbs or parts’, which in epic poetry often means ‘army’, possibly shortened from ḳaturangabalam, Skt. caturaŋgabalam, lit. ‘four-member force’, ‘an army comprising of four parts’, could be loan-translated as MIE ˟**qaturangom** and **qaturangobelom**, from roots **qetur-**, **ang-** and **bel-**.

Loan words and loan translations might also coexist in specialised terms; as, from *\*h1rudhrós*, red, PGk eruthrós, in loan ***eruthrókutos**, erythrocyte*, proper MIE **rudhrós**, in rudhr (ésenos) **kētyā**, red (blood) cell; cf. also MIE **mūs**, **musós**, mouse, muscle, PGk *mūs*, *muhós*, in loan ***muhokutos***, *myocyte,* for muskosyo kētyā, muscle cell.

## Sound laws

### Stang's law

**Stang's law** is a Proto-Indo-European phonological rule named after the Norwegian linguist Christian Stang. The law governs the word-final sequences of a vowel, followed by a semivowel (\**y* or \**w*) or a laryngeal (\**h₁*, \**h₂* or \**h₃*),
 followed by a nasal. According to the law these sequences are
simplified such that laryngeals and semivowels are dropped, with compensatory lengthening of a preceding vowel.

This rule is usually cited in more restricted form as: \**Vwm* > \**Vːm* and \**Vh₂m* > \**Vːm* (\**V* denoting a vowel and \**Vː* a long vowel).

Often the rules \**Vmm* > \**Vːm* and also \**Vyi* > \**Vːy* are added:[1]

* PIE \**dyéwm* 'sky' (accusative singular) > \**dyḗm* > Sanskrit *dyā́m*, acc. sg. of *dyaús*, Latin *diem* (which served as the basis for Latin *diēs* 'day'), Greek Ζῆν (*Zên*) (reformed after Homeric Greek to Ζῆνα *Zêna*, subsequently Δία *Día*), acc. of Ζεύς (*Zeús*)
* PIE \**gʷowm* 'cow' (acc. sg.) > \**gʷōm* > LIE *cōm* > Sanskrit *gā́m*, acc. sg. of *gaús*, Greek (Homeric and dialectal) βών (*bṓn*), acc. sg. of βοῦς (*boûs*) 'cow'
* acc. sg. of PIE \**dom-* 'house' is \**dṓm*, not \*\**dómm̥*. LIE *dōmom*
* acc. sg. of PIE \**dʰoHn-éh₂* 'grain' after laryngeal colouring is the disyllabic \**dʰoHnā́m*, not trisyllabic \*\**dʰoHnáh₂m̥* > \*\**dʰoHnā́m̥*. LIE dhonām

### Szemerényi's law

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

### Overview

The rule deleted coda fricatives \*s or laryngeals \*h₁, \*h₂ or \*h₃ (cover symbol \*H), with compensatory lengthening occurring in a word-final position. In other words:

\*/-VRs/, \*/-VRH/ > \*-VːR
\*/-VRH-/ > \*-VR- (no examples of *s*-deletion can be reconstructed for PIE)
### Morphological effects

The law affected the nominative singular forms of the many masculine and feminine nouns whose stem ended in a resonant:

* PIE \*/ph₂térs/ "father" > \*ph₂tḗr > Late Indo-European *pətḗr* (Ancient Greek *patḗr*, Sanskrit *pitā́*)
* PIE \*/ǵénh₁tors/ "parent" > \*ǵénh₁tōr > LIE *gentōr* (Ancient Greek *genétōr*, Latin *genitor*)
* PIE \*/dʰéǵʰoms/ "earth" > \*dʰéǵʰōm > LIE *dhéǵhōm* (Ancient Greek *khthṓn*, Sanskrit *kṣa*, Hittite *te-e-kán*)

The rule also affected the nominative-accusative forms of neuter plural/collective nouns, which ended in \*-h₂:

* PIE \*/ǵénh₁monh₂/ "seeds" > \*/ǵénh₁mōn/ > \*ǵénh₁mō > LIE *ǵénmō* (on *n*-deletion see below)

Also in the third-person plural perfect ending:

* PIE \*/-ers/ (the third-person plural perfect ending) > \*-ēr > LIE *-ēr* (Latin *ēr-e*, Hittite *-er*, *-ir*)

Compare:

* PIE \*/werh₁-dʰh₁-o-/ "word" > \*werdʰh₁o- > LIE *wṛdhom* (Latin *verbum*)

#### Further effects

####

According to another synchronic PIE phonological rule, word-final \*n was deleted after \*ō, usually by the operation of Szemerényi's law:

* PIE \*/ḱwóns/ "dog" > \*/ḱwṓn/ > \*ḱwṓ LIE *ḱwōn* (Sanskrit *ś(u)vā́*, Old Irish *cú*)

The PIE reconstruction for "heart" is the single instance where \*d is
 deleted after \*r, with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. It is not clear whether that is an isolated example or a part of a
broader process such as Szemerényi's law.

* PIE \*/ḱérd/ "heart" LIE > *kṛdi*, *kṛdyom* > \*ḱḗr (Ancient Greek *kêr*, Hittite *ker*)

#### Exceptions

Some cases were apparently not affected by Szemerényi's law:

* The accusative plural *\*-ons* of thematic nominals.
* The genitive singular of stems ending in sonorants, such as *\*déms* "of the house" (fossilised in the phrase *\*dems potis* "master of the house").
* Secondary 2nd person singular verb ending *\*-s* with verbs ending in sonorants, such as *\*gʷéms* (from the root *\*gʷem-* > LIE *cémtum* "to step, to come").

#### Morphologization

In PIE, the resulting long vowels had already begun to spread
analogically to other nominative singular forms that were not
phonologically justified by the law (PIE \*pṓds
 'foot'). The word-final sonorants other than \*-n were sometimes dropped
 as well, which demonstrates that this law was already morphologized in
the period of "PIE proper", and the long vowel produced was no longer
synchronically viewed as the outcome of a process of fricative deletion.
 Exceptions to Szemerényi's law are found in word-final:

* PIE \*/gʷénh₂s/ "woman" > LIE cénā > \*gʷḗn (Old Irish *bé*) but also \*gʷénh₂ (Sanskrit *jáni*)
* PIE \*wih₁roms "men" (and not \*\*wih₁rōm) > Gothic *wairans*
* PIE \*sals "salt" (and not \*\*sāl) > LIE sāls > Ancient Greek *háls*

as well as medial positions:

* PIE \*gen- > LIE ǵenmṇ > Sanskrit *janman*, PIE \*genh₁- > Sanskrit *jánitrī*

The forms without a laryngeal are considered to be more archaic and
were likely to have been lexicalized at a later stage of PIE.

### Boukólos rule

The **boukólos rule** is a phonological rule. It states that a labiovelar stop (\**kʷ* \**gʷ* \**gʷʰ*) dissimilates to an ordinary velar stop (\**k* \**g* \**gʰ*) next to the vowel \**u* or its corresponding glide \**w*. The rule is named after an example, the Ancient Greek word βουκόλος (*boukólos*) (= Mycenaean Greek *qo-u-ko-ro* /gʷou̯kolos/[1]) "cowherd", from PIE \**gʷo**u-k**olos* < \**gʷo**u-kʷ**olos*. The second constituent of this word was originally \**-kʷolos*, which can be seen from the analogously constructed αἰ**π**όλος (*ai**p**ólos*) "goatherd" < \**ai(ǵ)-**kʷ**olos*.[2] The same dissimilated form \**gʷou-kolos* is the ancestor of Proto-Celtic \**bou-koli-*, the source of Welsh *bugail* (which would have had *-b-* rather than *-g-* if it had come from a form with \**-kʷ-*).[3]

Another example could be the Greek negation οὐκ[ί] (*ouk[í]*), which Warren Cowgill has interpreted as coming from pre-Greek \**ojukid* < \**(ne) oju kʷid*, meaning approximately "not on your life". Without the boukólos rule, the result would have been \*\*οὐτ[ί] (*out[í]*).[4]
The rule is also found in Germanic, mainly in verbs, where labiovelars are delabialised by the epenthetic -u- inserted before syllabic resonants:

* Old High German *queman* ("to come"), past participle *cuman* ("come"), from Proto-Germanic \**kwemaną* and \**kumanaz*
* Gothic *saiƕan*, Old High German *sehan* ("to see"), past plural OHG *sāgun* ("saw"), from Proto-Germanic \**sehwaną* and \**sēgun* (-g- results from earlier -h- through Verner's law)

## Phonology

Main article: *Proto-Indo-European phonology*

Proto-Indo-European phonology
 has been reconstructed in some detail. Notable features of the most
widely accepted (but not uncontroversial) reconstruction include three
series of stop consonants reconstructed as voiceless, voiced, and breathy voiced; sonorant consonants that could be used syllablically; three so-called laryngeal
 consonants, whose exact pronunciation is not well-established but which
 are believed to have existed in part based on their visible effects on
adjacent sounds; the fricative /s/; and a five-vowel system of which /e/ and /o/ were the most frequently occurring vowels.

#### Loss of the laryngeals

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 pitch accent.
 The location of the stress is associated with ablaut variations,
especially between normal-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.
 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; 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 which carried the core lexical meaning of a word and were used to derive related words (e.g., "-*friend*-" in the English words "*befriend*", "*friends*", and "*friend*" by itself). Proto-Indo-European was a fusional language,
 in which inflectional morphemes signalled the grammatical relationships
 between words. This dependence on inflectional morphemes means that
roots in PIE, unlike those found in English, were rarely found by
themselves. A root plus a suffix formed a word stem, and a word stem plus a desinence (usually an ending) formed a word.[24]

### 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. 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).[25]
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 are declined for eight or nine cases:[26]

* nominative: marks the subject of a verb, such as *They* in *They ate*. Words that follow a linking verb and rename the subject of that verb also use the nominative case. Thus, both *They* and *linguists* are in the nominative case in *They are linguists*. The nominative is the dictionary form of the noun.
* accusative: used for the direct object of a transitive verb.
* genitive: marks a noun as modifying another noun.
* dative: used to indicate the indirect object of a transitive verb, such as *Jacob* in *Maria gave Jacob a drink*.
* instrumental: marks the *instrument* or means by, or with which, the subject achieves or accomplishes an

action. It may be either a physical object or an abstract concept.

* ablative: used to express motion away from something.
* locative: corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions *in*, *on*, *at*, and *by*.
* vocative:

 used for a word that identifies an addressee. A vocative expression is
one of direct address where the identity of the party spoken to is set
forth expressly within a sentence. For example, in the sentence, "I
don't know, John", *John* is a vocative expression that indicates the party being addressed.

* allative: used as a type of locative case

 that expresses movement towards something. Only the Anatolian languages
 maintain this case, and it may not have existed in Proto-Indo-European
at all.[27]
There were three grammatical genders:

* masculine
* feminine
* neuter

### 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.

The personal (non-reflexive) pronouns are declined as follows:

1) For 1st P. Nom. eghóm (<\*egh2-óm), emphatic from egṓ (<\*eg-óh2), cf. O.Ind. ahám,
Av. azəm, Hom.Gk. εγων, Ven. ehom.

2) Enclitics moi, mei, and t(w)oi, t(w)ei, are found in genitive, dative and locative, but
they are deliberately specialised in this table.

3) 1st sg. dative is often found reconstructed as mebhi/mebhei, following the 2nd pl.
tebhei/tebhi.

4) -es endings in nom. pl., ṇsmés, (j)usmés (<\*juswés?) attested in Att.-Ion. Greek and
Gothic.

5) An older ju(s)wes is probably behind the generally reconstructed nominative \*jūHs?
based on Balto-Slavic (and Germanic) forms, which would therefore be a contraction of the
original form (cf. Skt. yū-yám, Gk. u-meis, Lat. uōs, Cel. s-wīs, Goth. iz-wis<\*uz-wes?)

6) Zero-grade forms in jus- are also found as us- (from wes-? cf. Goth. izwis<\*uswes?).

7) Possibly accusatives jusmé<\*jusmēn<\*\*jusmens, and ṇsmé<\*ṇsmēn<\*\*ṇsmens.

8) Probably acc. pl. \*\*nos-m-s→nōns and \*\*wos-m-s→wōns.
8) Gen. n som, w som, is also attested.

9) Osc.-Umb., O.Ind. variant (orthotonic) series of Acc. Sg. in -m, as mēm(e), twēm,
tewem, usóm, s(w)ēm.

10) Dual forms (in \*-h1) are for the 1st nom. wē, acc. tonic ṇwé, enclitic nō; for the 2nd jū,
acc. tonic ūwé, enclitic wō.

## References

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-Europeans
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European\_language
* http://learnanylanguage.fandom.com/wiki/Indo-European
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szemer%C3%A9nyi%27s\_law
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stang%27s\_law
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouk%C3%B3los\_rule