Proto-Indo-European or PIE's wider affinities are unknown, but by some linguists it is linked with Etruscan and/or Afro-Asiatic and/or Finno-Ugrian. (This is the Nostratic theory.)
The grammar resembles that of Sanskrit or Lithuanian more than any other descendant, and for this reason it is sometimes absurdly claimed that a modern Lithuanian could understand Sanskrit. They are, I'm afraid, far too different. But archaic features they share are locative and instrumental cases, a dual number, and tones. Most other IE descendants have lost some or all of these.
For example, with ekwos, the masculine word for "horse", giving rise to the familiar Latin equus and Greek hippos, and to Sanskrit asvah. This is an o-stem, like most masculines, meaning that -o- runs through the declension, between the stem and the ending:
Nominative ekw-o-s Vocative ekw-e Accusative ekw-o-m Genitive ekw-o-syo Dative ekw-o-ey or ekw-ooy Ablative ekw-o-od Locative ekw-o-y Instrumental ekw-o-o And in the plural: Nom./Voc. ekw-o-es Acc. ekw-o-ns Gen. ekw-o-om Dat./Abl. ekw-o-ibhyos Loc. ekw-o-isu Inst. ekw-o-oys
The nom., voc., and acc. singular are obvious to anyone who knows a bit of Latin or Greek, but some other cases have travelled a great deal to get to their classical form: e.g. Greek gen. sg. -osyo > -ohyo > -oyo > -oo > -ou.
As Muke discusses below, there was a series of labiovelar consonants including kw, but it is noteworthy that ekwos doesn't contain this. It's a sequence k-w, as shown by the fact that in the satem language Sanskrit the k shifts to a sibilant, and the w separately changes to v.
It's unknown where the case endings came from originally. If they were just postpositions (as in Japanese ga and o and ni), why are the plural endings not recognisably formed from the same singular marker plus a plural element (as in an agglutinative language like Turkish)? These fused or analytic case markings are rare outside IE.
It's also unknown how the gender system came about, because although males belong to masculine and females belong to feminine, all other words are scattered unpredicyably through masculine, feminine, and neuter in the way that makes such a pain for people studyng most modern European languages. One idea is that the -om of the neuter is originally the accusative ending, because neuter things don't usually actively do anything (see animacy hierarchy) so don't need a subject ending.
Proto-Indo-European is a language hypothesized to be the ancestor of most of the languages of Europe and quite a few languages of Asia. These descendants are called Indo-European languages (or Indogermanic or Aryan in some sources).
PIE itself would have been spoken several thousand years ago--at least two thousand years before the invention of writing--so we can have no written records of it. What we know of its words has been reconstructed using the comparative method, which means searching for correspondences in the daughter languages and hypothesizing regular changes to account for them. For example, we can say that English "brother" and Greek "phrater" are related, as English b and Greek ph regularly correspond to PIE *bh, and th and t to IE *t. (The full root is *bhreH2-ter-.)
PIE has usually been reconstructed as having five series of stops:
Labial: p b bh Dental: t d dh Palatal: k' g' gh' Velar: k g gh Labiovelar: kw gw ghw
The first column are voiceless, the second voiced, the third voiced aspirated, although these were most likely not their actual values. For example, PIE *b is rare, and it's not common in existing languages to have voiced aspirates without also having voiceless aspirates. The Glottalic Hypothesis reinterprets the second column as "glottalized" voiceless (ejectives) and the third column as voiced. This fits the reconstruction better, as it is common for languages with ejectives to not have a labial ejective. An alternate theory is that *b had already merged with *w in pre-PIE times, and IIRC this hypothesis is supported by several *w-initial homophonous roots (but I'm not sure of this offhand).
The generic root structure of Proto-Indo-European was CVC, where the vowel is usually *e, but can ablaut to *o or to zero (nothing). A regular PIE root cannot have two consonants from the second column, and it cannot have both one from the first column and one from the third column.
The only fricative in PIE is *s. There are two nasals, *m and *n; two liquids, *r and *l; and two glides, *y and *w. The laryngeals may have been fricatives, though, and are occasionally so reconstructed.
PIE had very few vowels. For certain, there is *e. There are also *i and *u, which are syllabic versions of *y and *w. *o interchanges with *e by ablaut. *a and *o also can appear as *e is colored by a laryngeal. The laryngeals are sounds that disappeared from PIE and only appear historically in Anatolian languages like Hittite. Their effect was to "color" the preceding or following *e to another vowel, and to lengthen a preceding vowel. *H1 was "uncolored", *H2 was "a-colored", and *H3 was "o-colored".
If that's difficult, an example: later PIE *do:- would represent an earlier PIE *deH3- and a later PIE *an- would probably represent earlier PIE *H2an-.
Besides laryngeals, the palatals were also lost in many languages. Rather, the palatals in many languages (the "centum" languages) merged with the velars. In other languages (the "satem" languages) the palatals remained distinct from the velars, usually becoming sibilants. The terms centum and satem come from the Latin and Sanskrit words for "a hundred" and are examples of the division. An alternate theory is that the "plain" velar *k *g *gh series didn't exist; the number of *k/*g/*gh-containing roots is thought to be overestimated because this is the "default" bin they are put into when comparative evidence can't place them firmly in the conventional palatal or labiovelar series. Under this theory satem languages shifted the conventional palatals to sibilants, and the centum ones kept them as velar stops.
PIE nouns decline for case and number. There are different endings depending on the ending of the root/stem. The cases generally reconstructed are nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, genitive, ablative, and locative.
The following table is appropriated from New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin by Andrew Sihler. An equals sign follows a syllabic resonant, and 0 indicates an absence of an ending. (neut) indicates the nominative and accusative of neuter nouns, which are identical. eH2-stems are more commonly recognized as a:-stems.
Singular Cons-stem o-stem eH2-stem i-stem u-stem Nom -s/-0 -o-s -eH2-0 -i-s -u-s Voc -0 -e-0 -eH2-0 -ey-0 -ew-0 Acc -m= -o-m -eH2-m -i-m -u-m (neut) -0 -o-m N/A -i-0 -u-0 Ins -bhi, -o-H1, -eH2-bhi, -i-bhi -u-bhi -mi, -e-H1 -eH2-eH1 ? -i-H1 -u-H1 -(e)H1 Dat -ey -o:y -eH2-ey -ey-ey -ew-ey Gen -s, -i:, -eH2-es, -oy-s -ow-s -os, -osyo -eH2-os -e s Abl = Gen -o:t, = Gen = Gen = Gen -a:t Loc -i/-0 -o-y -eH2-i -e:y-0 -e:w-0 -e-y Plural Cons-stem o-stem eH2-stem i-stem u-stem Nom/Voc -es -o:s -eH2-es -ey-es -ew-es (pron.) -oy Acc -m=s -o-ms -eH2-ms -i-ms -u-ms neut. -H2 -eH2 N/A -i-H2 -u-H2 Ins -bhis, -o:ys, -eH2-bhis, -i-bhis, -u-bhis, -mis, -o-mis,? -eH2-mis, -i-mis, -u-mis, -mi:s -o-mi:s? -eH2-mi:s, -i-mi:s, -u-mi:s Gen -om ? -o:m -eH2-om -y-om -w-om (pron.) -oyso:m -eH2so:m Dat/Abl -bhos, -o-bhos, -eH2-bhos, -i-bhos, -u-bhos, -mos, -o-mos -eH2-mos, -i-mos -u-mos Loc -su (-o-su)? -eH2-su -i-su -u-su (pron.) -oysu
There was a dual, which is weak even in PIE and doesn't survive in many IE languages, and reconstructing the endings appears to be problematic, the most secure appears to be the m./f. dual nom./acc./voc., being *-H1 (although it might have been *-H1e, or *-e, or even *-H3 apparently).
Ablaut also appears, especially in root nouns. The details of this are complicated and will appear later...
...verbs are also complicated. I will put up more later, but till then here are the personal endings for active verbs as reconstructed (source same as above)
Secondary Endings sg du pl 1st -m/-m= -we(:) -me(:) 2nd -s -tom -te 3rd -t -ta:m -nt/-n=t/-r=/-e:r Primary Endings sg du pl 1st -oH2/-mi -wos -mos 2nd -si -tH1es -te 3rd -ti/-i -tes -nti/-n=ti
PIE gave birth to the following families:
The Italic and Celtic families are generally thought to be closer to each other (or even Italo-Celtic), and similarly with Balto-Slavic and Germanic.
There are theories that Proto-Indo-European is related to other language families. Some proposals, like Nostratic, try to continue the comparative method, but it is not universally agreed that the comparative method can give accurate results with the span of time involved. Others, such as Greenberg's Eurasiatic, use different methods that are not as widely approved.
Whew, glad that's over...
S. K. Sen has translated an extract from Old Indic literature (an IE language) into Proto-Indo-European. Its English meaning is this:
Once there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son. He asked his priest, "May a son be born to me!" The priest said to the king, "Pray to the god Varuna." The king approached the god Varuna to pray now to the god. "Hear me, father Varuna!" The god Varuna came down from heaven. "What do you want?" "I want a son." "Let this be so," said the bright god Varuna. The king's lady bore a son.
The king approached the god Varuna to pray now to the god. "Hear me, father Varuna!" The god Varuna came down from heaven. "What do you want?"
"I want a son."
"Let this be so," said the bright god Varuna. The king's lady bore a son.
To réecs éhest. So nnputlos éhest. So réecs súhnum éwelt. Só tóso gceutérmm prrcset, "Súhnus moi ccnnhyotaam!" So gceutéer tom réeccmm éweuqet, "Ihkkeswo tteiwóm Wérunom." So réecs tteiwóm Werunom húpo-sesore nu tteiwóm ihkketo. Cludí moi, phhter Werune!" Tteiwós Wérunos kmmta ttiwós éqqeht. "Qítt welsi?" "Wélmi súhnum." "Tótt héstu," wéuqet loukós tteiwos Werunos." Reeccós pótnih súhnum kkekkonhe."
So réecs tteiwóm Werunom húpo-sesore nu tteiwóm ihkketo. Cludí moi, phhter Werune!" Tteiwós Wérunos kmmta ttiwós éqqeht. "Qítt welsi?"
"Wélmi súhnum."
"Tótt héstu," wéuqet loukós tteiwos Werunos." Reeccós pótnih súhnum kkekkonhe."
A slightly longer passage was written in the 19th century by August Schleicher. Instead of adapting a known early Indo-European text to Proto-Indo-European, he wrote a fable of his own, called "The Sheep and the Horses". Our knowledge of PIE has moved on since Schleicher's time, and the passage is now usually written in updated form. One such version is given in Jared Diamond's The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee; the original update came from W.P. Lehmann and L. Zgusta in 1979, and Diamond himself adapts the text for the benefit of non-linguists, with advice from Jaan Puhvel.
In English the fable reads like this:
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.
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.
Gwrreei, quesyo wlhnaa ne eest, ekwoons espeket, oinom ghe gwrrum woghom weghontm, oinomque megam bhorom, oinomque ghmmenm ooku bherontm. Odwis nu ekwomos ewewquet, "Keer aghnutoi moi ekwoons agontm nerm widntei." Ekwoos tu ewewquont, "Kludhi, owei, keer ghe aghnutoi nsmei widntmos: neer, potis, owioom r wlhnaam sebhi gwhermom westrom qurnneuti. Neghi owioom wlhnaa esti." Tod kekluwoos owis agrom ebhuget.
Odwis nu ekwomos ewewquet, "Keer aghnutoi moi ekwoons agontm nerm widntei."
Ekwoos tu ewewquont, "Kludhi, owei, keer ghe aghnutoi nsmei widntmos: neer, potis, owioom r wlhnaam sebhi gwhermom westrom qurnneuti. Neghi owioom wlhnaa esti."
Tod kekluwoos owis agrom ebhuget.
Proto-Indo-European is the hypothetical mother-tongue of all the Indo-European languages. The vocabulary of PIE allows anthropologists to make a pretty educated guess as to the homeland of the Indo-Europeans somewhere in Southwest Asia, perhaps on the steppes of the Volga. Being a very expansive culture, the archaeological record traces the movements of these people with such typically Indo-European things as horses, wheel vehicles, double-headed axes, pastoral economy, and patricarchal society. The lexicon of the reconstructed PIE shows a lot about culture, economy, religion, etc. Here are a few common PIE roots, with examples in later languages.
Since my main source for this write-up is Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics, ©1998, I will use his classifications, which are very good, in my opinion. The following are not in IPA, but there are guides to pronunciation. A consonant followed by 'h' indicates aspiration, 'ë' indicates a schwa, an acute accent mark indicates length, 'j' will indicate palatization, 'w' will indicate labialization, an underline will indicate voicelessness, 'j' also represents the 'y' sound of English, 'x' will be used to represent the 'laryngeals' when they occur. The '*' indicates a supposed proto-form. Here're the words:
Social Structure: PIE Society was patriarchal, patrilineal (descent through the father), and patrilocal (brides moved in with the husband's family). Societies were stratified, with a tribal king, noble and warrior class, and a peasant and farmer class.
Economy
Agriculture
Domestic Animals
Transport
Technology (tools, implements, metals, weapons, musical instruments)
Household and food terms
Clothing and textiles
Religion
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