INDO-EUROPEAN AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

INDO-EUROPEAN HYPOTHESIS

Sir William Jones, 1786, hypothesis that most European languages and others (in India, parts of the Middle East,and Asia) are cognates (are related, as a family, by common origins)

notion of a common ancestor language, the Indo-European language, which was the origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Latin, Greek, Romance, Germanic and Celtic languages, andothers

development of Indo-European theory in the early 19th century:

Franz Bopp (1816), comparisons of verbal systems Rasmus Rask (1818) and Jacob Grimm (1822), notice of

systematic phonological changes A. Schleicher, reconstruction of pre-historic Indo-

European forms, Stammbaumtheorie (tree stem theory)

DESCENDANTS OF THE COMMON INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE

Indo-European Language Subfamilies and examples:

Indo-Iranian (Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Persian) Hellenic (Greek) Armenian (Western Armenian, Eastern Armenian) Balto-Slavic (Russian, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian) Albanian (Gheg, Tosk) Celtic (Irish Gaelic, Welsh) Italic (Latin, Spanish, Italian, French) Germanic (German, English, Danish, Dutch, Swedish,

Norwegian)

Anatolian (extinct) (Hittite) Tocharian (extinct) (Tocharian A, Tocharian B)

THE ORIGINAL INDO-EUROPEAN PEOPLE

Kurgan culture

It's speculated that the so called Kurgan were the original Indo-European people; lived northwest of the Caucasus, north of the Caspian Sea, as early as the fifthmillennium B.C.

Their language is known by scholars as Common Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European.

Aspects of Kurgan culture: domesticated cattle and horses, farming, herding, four-wheeled wagons, mobility, mound builders, hilltop forts, complex sense of family relationship and organization; counting skills; used goldand silver; drank a honeybased alcoholic beverage, mead; multiple gods (worship of sky/thunder, sun, horse, boar, snake), belief in life after death, elaborate burials (Reference: Marija Gimbutas , "The Beginning of the BronzeAge in Europe and the Indo-Europeans" 1973)

Descendants of words for trees (ash, apple, oak, linden, aspen, pine), animals (bear, wolf), and other (honey, snow, cold, winter, father, mother) allow for hypotheses regarding their original homeland and culture.

Beginning around 3000 BC the Indo-European people abandoned their homeland and migrated in a variety of directions (found in Greece by 2000 BC, in northern Indiaby 1500 BC)

 

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COMMON INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE

Proto-Indo-European or Common Indo-European (CIE): spokenaround 5000-3000 BC in areas of Eastern Europe/Western Asia

Lexicon

Words derived from the Common Indo-European language are preserved in a large number of languages: numerals from one to ten; the word meaning the sum of ten tens (Latin "centum," Avestan "satem," English "hundred"); words for certain bodily parts (heart, lung, head, foot); words forcertain natural phenomena (air, night, star, snow, sun, moon, mind); certain plant and animal names (beech, corn,wolf, bear); certain cultural terms (yoke, mead, weave, sew); monosyllables that pertain to sex and excretion (example: modern English "fart" likely derived from Indo-European "perd"; also modern English slang "f---" perhapsderived from Indo-European "peig" or "pu" meaning respectively "hostile, evil-minded" and "to soil, defile")

Phonology

many stops, voiced, voiceless, and aspirated ([bh] [dh])

poor in fricatives (only [s] and [z])

several laryngeal (h-like) consonants (could double as vowels)

nasals [n], [m], and liquids [l] and [r], and glides [y] and [w] (also could double as vowels)

vowels: [a],  , [i],  , [u], 

Morphology

The Common Indo-European language was inflected. It used suffixes and internal (root) vowel changes (ablaut system) to indicate grammatical information like case, number, tense, person, mood, etc.

Nouns

Indo-European nouns were inflected for eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, locative, and instrumental.

vocative: person addressed (Students, listen!) accusative: direct object (They bought a car) genitive: possessor or source (the dog's bone) dative: indirect object, recipient (She gave the

boy a flower) ablative: what is separated (He abstained from it) locative: place where (We danced at the bar) instrumental: means, instrument (She ate with

chopsticks)

Example:

nominative: subject of a sentence (The soldiers saw me.) Hypothetical declension of Indo-European word EKWOS ("horse") (ancestor of Modern English, "horse," Latin: "equus," and Old English, "eoh")

Nominative: ekwos Accusative: ekwom

Genitive: ekwosyoDative: ekwoy

Hypothetical declension of Indo-European word KWON ("dog") (ancestor of Modern English "canine" and Latin "canis")

Nominative: kwonAccusative: kwónmGenitive: kunés

If the Indo-European verb "gwhenti" is the third person singular present of "to kill," what is the meaning of thefollowing expressions:

kwon gwhenti ekwom

ekwom gwhenti kwon

gwhenti kwon ekwom

kwon ekwom gwhenti

How about:

ekwos gwhenti kwónm

gwhenti ekwos kwónm

kwónm gwhenti ekwos

If the Indo-European noun "pastrom" meant "shepherd,"and if we assume something like "pastres" was its genitive case, what is the meaning of:

pastres kwon

pastres ekwos

kunés pastrom

pastrom kunés

ekwos gwhenti pastres kwónm

Verbs

Indo-European verbs had six "aspects" (we would call them"tenses"):

present: continuing action in progress (I go) imperfect: continuing action in the past (I was

going) aorist: momentary action in the past (I went) perfect: completed action (I have gone) pluperfect: completed action in the past (I had

gone) future: actions to come (I shall go)

Indo-European had three voices: active, passive and middle (reflexive)

Indo-European had five moods: indicative(fact), subjunctive(will), optative(wish), imperative (command), injunctive (unreality)

Indo-European had seven verb classes (distinguished by root vowels and following consonants)

Syntax

Indo-European had a flexible word order, tendency to Subject-Object-Verb (SOV)

Prosody/Accent

Indo-European accent could be on any syllable and was characterized by pitch rather than loudness

 

FROM COMMON INDO-EUROPEAN TO GERMANIC

Transition from Common Indo-European (CIE) (around 3000 BC) to Common Germanic (CGmc) (around 100 BC)

One of the oldest records of a Germanic language is a runic inscription identifying the workman who made a hornabout A.D. 400. Transliterated it reads as follows:

ek hlewagastir holtijar horna tawido

Translated, it roughly means:

I, Hlewagastir Holtson, [this] horn made

Prosody

Indo-European free, pitch accent became strong stresson the initial syllable in Germanic

Phonology

loss of Indo-European laryngeal consonants, articulation shifting higher up in the vocal tract

Grimm's Law (Jakob Grimm, 1822):

o Indo-European voiceless stops (p, t, k) became Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, th, h): 

Indo-European pœter, Germanic (English) father (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin pater)

Indo-European treyes, Germanic (English) three (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin tres)

Indo-European kerd, Germanic (English) heart, (compare with non-Germanic: Latin cord)

o Indo-European voiced stops (b, d, g) became Germanic voiceless stops (p, t, k): 

Indo-European abel, Germanic (English) apple (contrast with non-Germanic: Russian jabloko)

Indo-European dent, Germanic (English) tooth (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin dentis)

Indo-European grœno, Germanic (English) corn (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin granum)

o voiced aspirated stops(bh, dh, gh) to voiced stops (b, d, g): 

Indo-European bhrater, Germanic (English) brother (contrast with non-Germanic:Latin frater)

Verner's Law (Karl Verner, 1877)

o explanation of an exception to Grimm's Law, sometimes Indo-European voiceless stops (p, t, k

) became Germanic voiced stops (b, d, g) when surrounded by voiced sounds and preceded by unaccented syllable or accent falling after the consonant in question), also; s became r; phenomenon explained by Verner as a result of original IE accent falling after consonant in question: 

Indo-European kmtóm, English hundred (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin centum)

Indo-European pœtér, Germanic (Old English) fæder (contrast with non-Germanic: Latin pater)

Indo-European snusós ("daughter-in-law),Old English snoru (contrast with non-Germanic: Sanskrit snusá)

Morphology

Relative preservation of Indo-European ablaut system (also known as apophony or vowel gradation): changes in root vowels indicated tense, number, part of speech (English sing, sang, sung is a survival of this system). The stability of this system was however undermined because the position of the Indo-European accent was a conditioning factor for the vowel changes and the accent/stress became fixed in the Germanic languages.

Simplification of the case system: In Germanic there was a fusion of ablative/locative/instrumental/dativeand vocative/nominative; three numbers and genders retained

The deterioration of the case system (i.e. inflectional suffixes) is related to the initial-syllable stress patterns of Germanic (final syllablesbecame unstressed or weakly stressed and lost their distinctness).

Verbso tense/aspect: change from six aspects to only

two tenses, present and preterito mood: retained indicative and imperative and

fused subjunctive, injunctive and optativeo seven verb classes in Indo-European

(distinguished by their vowel changes) were retained in Germanic

o Germanic added weak verbs (also called dental preterite verbs), featuring a dental sound [d] at the end of a verb to indicate past tense (theancestor of our regular past tenses: e.g. walk, walked)

Syntax

Germanic retained a relatively free word order, but made greater use of prepositions to compensate for the loss of inflections

Lexicon

Germanic inheritance of many basic words of the Indo-European vocabulary (e.g. cold, winter, honey, wolf, snow, beech, pine, father, mother, sun, tree, long, red, foot, head, and verbs such as be, eat, lie) and forms for grammatical concepts (negation, interrogation)

borrowings from Italic, Celtic and Balto-Slavic languages

large common and unique vocabulary of the Germanic languages (not present in other Indo-European languages and perhaps borrowed from non-Indo-Europeanlanguages) (e.g. back, blood, body, bone, bride, child, gate, ground, oar, rat, sea, soul)

extensive use derivative affixes and compounding to create new words

References

Marija Gimbutas , "The Beginning of the Bronze Age in Europe and the Indo-Europeans" 1973

Calvert Watkins, "Indo-European and the Indo- Europeans"

http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/fajardo/teaching/eng520/indoeur.htm

  

Hans C. Boas, Director :: PCL 5.556, 1 University Station S5490 :: Austin, TX 78712 :: 512-471-4566 

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Indo-European LanguagesEvolution and Locale Maps

Jonathan SlocumAll living languages evolve over time, adding & losing vocabulary, morphological behavior, and syntactic structures, and changing in the ways they are pronounced by their speakers. Even without knowing how or why these evolutionary mechanisms operate, one can still get a feel for their effects; for example, they account for the differences between American and British English, and for the fact that neither Americans nor Brits canunderstand Beowulf at all without first being taught how to read the Old English language in which it was composed. Even the writings of Shakespeare -- much more recent than Beowulf -- can be difficult for modern English speakers to interpret. The field of study that concerns itself with language evolution is calledhistorical linguistics.

A large number of related languages form what is called the Indo-European macrofamily. These languages all evolved from a common ancestral tongue called Proto-Indo-European (PIE), spoken ca. 6,000 years ago by a people living (by "traditional" hypothesis) somewhere in the general vicinity of the Pontic Steppe north of the Black Sea and east to the Caspian -- an area that, perhaps not accidentally, seems to coincide with the land of the ancient Scythians, from the Ukraine across far southwestern Russia to western Kazakhstan. (N.B. Many claims on this page are debated, in their details, but on the whole they seem best to fit the evidence and are accepted by most scholars; herein, we shall not bother to acknowledge the myriad debates but insteadpresent a broad-brush picture for a general audience.)

Proto-Indo-European speakers grew in number and influence -- they are credited with the domestication of horses and the invention of the chariot, among many other innovations -- and spread east & west, north & south. But before the invention of any writing system known to its speakers, PIE had died out: as Indo-Europeans expanded from the ancestral homeland and brought forth new generations, PIE evolved, first into disparate dialects, and then into mutually incomprehensible daughter languages. Ten "proto-language" families are identified today: using what historical linguists call the comparative method, their probable forms (and that of Proto-Indo-European itself) can be reconstructed based on similarities and differences among descendants that were attested in inscriptions and literary & religious texts. (Such written records began to appear about a thousand years after PIE was last spoken.) For a sketch of the evolution of PIE intoits major proto-languages, see Evolution of IE Families.

The Indo-European proto-languages themselves evolved, each giving rise to its own family of languages. Each family is identified with the proto-language from which it sprung; these families are conventionally listed in order, roughly from west to east with respect to the homelands their speakers came to occupy. The ten families, linked to modern maps of their homeland areas (which open in a separate window), are:

1. Celtic, with languages spoken in the British Isles, in Spain, and across southern Europe to central Turkey;

2. Germanic, with languages spoken in England and throughout Scandinavia & central Europe to Crimea;

3. Italic, with languages spoken in Italy and, later, throughout the Roman Empire including modern-day Portugal, Spain, France, and Romania;

4. Balto-Slavic, with Baltic languages spoken in Latvia & Lithuania, and Slavic throughout eastern Europe plus Belarus & the Ukraine & Russia;

5. Balkan (exceptional, as discussed below), with languages spoken mostly in the Balkans and far western Turkey;

6. Hellenic, spoken in Greece and the Aegean Islands and, later, in other areas conquered by Alexander (but mostly around the Mediterranean);

7. Anatolian, with languages spoken in Anatolia, a.k.a. Asia Minor, i.e. modern Turkey;8. Armenian, spoken in Armenia and nearby areas including eastern Turkey;9. Indo-Iranian, with languages spoken from India through Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iran and Kurdish

areas of Iraq and Turkey;10. Tocharian, spoken in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang, in far western China.

Each table that follows presents a highly schematic sketch of the evolutionary paths leading from the family ancestor to later, attested languages -- up to the present time, in the case of families that did not entirely die out. (Anatolian and Tocharian are the only known families that are now extinct.) By highly schematic we mean, for example, that dates are very approximate: we adopt, for sheer presentation convenience,quite arbitrary ranges of 500 or 1000 years that have little to do with accurate dates even when these mightbe known, which is seldom. What is important is that thegeneral picture is instructive; for details the reader is referred to the vast literature of historical linguistics, now well over 200 years in the making and brimming with hypotheses, supporting arguments, and disagreements major & minor.

In the tables that follow, columns show 500/1000-year ranges, reading left to right; successive rows displaygroupings of sub-families (in bold face), languages within them (italicized if dead), and, reading left to right, not just a chronological but an evolutionary sequence (except for the Balkan languages). After each family section heading, important points related to the table that follows are briefly surveyed; for the reader's convenience, most geographic names are in modern English. Note: even where surviving languages in a family may number in the hundreds, and may be spoken by over a billion people (as in the case of the Indo-Iranian family), only a very few languages are selected for illustration here. For every family except Balkan, thereare one or more languages for which online texts & lessons are or will be available in our Early Indo-European Online (EIEOL) series; links are provided from those languages to their series introductions.

CELTIC

Proto-Celtic speakers moved generally west from the PIE homeland, probably alongside groups from the Italic branch, spreading across southern Europe into central Turkey, northern Italy, France,Spain, and eventually the British Isles. As centuries passed, their language evolved into one group of languages labelled Continental (spoken by "Gauls" across southern Europe and mentioned by Julius Caesar among others),and another labelled Insular (spoken in the British Isles). Continental Celts later adopted Latin, or Greek inthe case of those in Turkey, and the Continental Celticlanguages, attested from the 6th century B.C., were lost. Insular Celtic split into a Goidelic subgroup that developed in Ireland, and a Brythonic subgroup that developed in England & Wales. Later in history, Goidelic Celts migrated to Scotland; also later in history, Brythonic Celts under pressure from the Anglo-Saxons returned to the Continent and settled in Brittany, on the western point ofFrance.

2000-1000

 1000-500  500-1 BC

1-500 AD  500-1000  1000-1500  1500-2000

Proto-Celtic

 Continental

 Celtiberian

          

      Gaulish           

      Lepontic           

      Noric           

      Galatian           

   Insular  Goidelic

Ogham Irish

 Old Irish  Middle Irish  Irish Gaelic

                 Scots Gaelic

                 Manx

      Brythonic

   Old Welsh  Middle Welsh  Welsh

           Old Cornish

 Middle Cornish

 Cornish

           Old Breton  Middle Breton

 Breton

See also:

more about Celtic ; Old Irish Online  (language lessons); Web Links to Celtic resources  (incl. culture & modern archaeology).

GERMANIC

The Germanic tribes generally followed behind the Celts, but moved somewhat further north. Their language developed into three groups of tongues labelled East, North, and West for their geographic distribution, with Runic now being considered the likely ancestor of the latter two. Gothic is the only attested language from the east, with a 4th century translation of the Bible, although Vandalic is known to have been spoken by Vandals who migrated across the fading Roman Empire through Spain to north Africa (see also map of the Germanic Kingdoms in 526). Most of the Goths blended into the Empire and their language was replaced by local Latin dialects, but some migrated east into Crimea, where their language survived to the 16th century.

Limited amounts of "Northwest Germanic" text survive from the 1st/2nd centuries A.D., carved in Runic script;later, the North Germanic languages developed in far north Europe (primarily the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and their islands). Old Norse was the language of the Vikings, who settled Iceland as well as Scandinavia.

West Germanic languages developed in two main groups, one ("High German") at higher elevations, in southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, and the other ("Low German") further north and along the coast, including the Netherlands and Belgium. Modern German evolved from the former; modern English, via Old English a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon (see the map of Angles & Saxons about 600 A.D.), from the latter. (The term "Pennsylvania Dutch" is a modern misnomer: the original speakers came from central & southern Germany, even Switzerland -- not from the Netherlands.)

2000-500 500-1 B  1-500 A  500-1000 1000-1500 1500-2000

C D

Proto-Germanic

East  Gothic    Crimean Gothic  

     Vandalic       

  Runic  North  Old Norse Old Icelandic Icelandic

          Old Norwegian Norwegian

          Old Swedish Swedish

          Old Danish Danish

     West  Old High German

Middle High German

German

            Swiss German

            Pennsylvania Dutch

            Yiddish

        Old Saxon Middle Low German

Low German

        Old English Middle English English

        Old Dutch Middle Dutch Dutch

            Afrikaans

See also:

more about Germanic ; Gothic Online  (language lessons); Old Norse Online  (language lessons); Old English Online  (language lessons); Web Links to Germanic resources  (incl. language & history).

ITALIC

The Italic peoples began their descent into the Italian peninsula around the 2nd millenium B.C. Two subgroups developed from Proto-Italic -- Sabellic and Latino-Faliscan, both attested by 7th century B.C. inscriptions (the former in Umbrian, the latter in Faliscan). But the growing strength of the Latin speakers, culminating inthe Roman Empire, resulted in most competing tongues in Italy (and many elsewhere, for example Continental Celtic) being extinguished. With the collapse of the Empire, the provincial Vulgar Latin dialects rather than Classical Latin survived, and in time developed into the Romance languages (see map of the European Provinces of Rome).

2000-1000

 1000-500  500-1 BC

 1-500 AD  500-1000

 1000-1500  1500-2000

Proto-Italic  Sabellic  Oscan            

      Umbrian            

   Latino-Faliscan

 Faliscan            

      Latin  Classical Latin

 Vulgar     Romanian

               Old Italian  Italian

               Old French  French

               Old Provençal  Provençal

               Old Spanish  Spanish

               Old Portuguese

 Portuguese

See also:

more about Italic ; Latin Online  (language lessons); Old French Online  (language lessons); Web Links to Italic resources  (Latin language & texts).

BALTO-SLAVIC

While the Balto-Slavic (and especially the Baltic) languages of eastern Europe are attested only late, even by Indo-European standards, there are characteristics that strongly suggest they are highly conservative (most especially Baltic) and retain features akin to Proto-Indo-European. No Slavic language is attested until the mid-9th century A.D. (Old Church Slavonic), and no Baltic language until the 14th century (some Old

Prussian words & phrases). Old Church Slavonic and Old Prussian became extinct, but Slavic and Baltic sibling languages survived.

2000-1000  1000-1 BC

 1-500 AD

 500-1000

 1000-1500  1500-2000

Proto-Balto-Slavic

 Proto-Baltic

    Western  Old Prussian   

         Eastern  Old Lithuanian  Lithuanian

            Old Latvian  Latvian

   Proto-Slavic

    South  Old Church Slavonic

  

            Eastern South  Bulgarian

            Western South  Serbian

         East  Old Russian  Russian

         West  Old Polish  Polish

See also:

more about Balto-Slavic ; Baltic Online  (Lithuanian & Latvian lessons); Old Church Slavonic Online  (language lessons); Web Links to Baltic resources and Slavic resources (incl. languages, history, etc).

BALKAN

The "family" of Balkan languages (see also the old map of Macedonia, Thrace, Illyria, Moesia and Dacia) is exceptional in that there are far too few early texts to support strong hypotheses about genetic relationships among the erstwhile members. This doesn't mean there are no hypotheses -- they are, in fact, numerous! -- but it does mean that no firm conclusions can be drawn because evidence is paltry or absent. Asone example, the "traditional" hypothesis is that Illyrian is the ancestor of Albanian; but as there are no native texts in Illyrian, it is difficult to say much of anything certain about it. It seems nevertheless that these two differ in a fundamental manner that, in Indo-European linguistics, has always marked a crucial distinction (denoted by the terms "centum" vs. "satem"). The languages in the table below are grouped into a"family" for reasons as much geographic as linguistic, and the chronological sequence of languages, left to right, cannot be taken to suggest their evolutionary sequence.

2000-1000  1000-  500-1 B  1-500 A  500-  1000-  1500-

500 C D 1000 1500 2000

Proto-Balkan

 Phrygian  Thracian  Dacian        Albanian

      Illyrian            

See also:

more about Balkan ; Web Links re: Balkan languages  (Albanian, etc).

HELLENIC

For all practical purposes, the Hellenic family is represented by a single language spoken in Greece and theAegean Islands: Greek, which is attested in a number of dialects spanning more than three millenia. The oldest, Mycenaean Greek texts pre-date the 14th century B.C. (see map of Mycenaean Greece), and were writtenin the script known as Linear B. But an invasion of (illiterate?) Dorian tribes ca. 1100 B.C. was followed by the collapse of Mycenaean civilization and the loss of the art of Greek writing. A few hundred years later the Greeks adapted a Phoenician script -- adding, for the first time, letters representing vowels. This script developed into what we know as the Greek alphabet, which formed the early basis of the Etruscan & Roman alphabets among others (a more modern example being Cyrillic).

2000-1500

 1500-1000

 1000-500  500-1 BC

 1-500 AD 500-1500 1500-2000

Proto-Greek

 Mycenaean

 Ancient Greek  Attic Greek

 Koine Greek

Middle Greek

Greek

      Homeric Greek

         

      Doric Greek          

See also:

more about Hellenic ; Classical (Attic) Greek Online  (language lessons); New Testament (Koine) Greek Online  (language lessons); Web Links to Hellenic resources  (incl. scripts & texts).

ANATOLIAN

The Anatolian family includes the oldest attested Indo-European languages: some Hittite documents are dated as early as the 18th century B.C. It is thought to have been the first branch of Indo-European to separate fromPIE, and it was also the first branch [known to us] to become extinct, being replaced by Greek ca. 2nd/1st century B.C. Buried and lost until modern times, Hittitecuneiform tablets were first unearthed in the early

20th century in north-central Turkey, and helped revolutionize Indo-European linguistics. A sister language, Luwian, was probably spoken in Homer's Troy, located southwest of the Dardanelles.

2500-2000  2000-1500

 1500-1000  1000-500

 500-1 BC

 1-1000 AD

 1000-2000

Proto-Anatolian

 Old Hittite  Middle/New Hittite

    Lydian      

   Luwian        Lycian      

See also:

more about Anatolian ; Hittite Online  (language lessons); Web Links to Anatolian resources  (incl. archaeology & history).

ARMENIAN

The earliest documentary evidence re: the Armenians is a 6th century B.C. inscription at Behistun by the Persian king Darius I. Herodotus, writing a century later, stated that the Armenians had lived in Thrace andmoved into Phrygia, from which they crossed into the [later] territory of Armenia. But though Armenians are known to history as a people, their language was first attested by a translation of the Bible a full thousand years later, following the invention by Mesrop, a Christian monk, of a suitable alphabet; by that time, Classical Armenian evidenced strong influence by Iranian tongues, especially Parthian. Other loan words from Anatolian languages attest to early Armenian presence in western and central Turkey. Due to manifold linguistic influences, evidenced for example by many isoglosses with Greek, it is difficult to support arguments for a close connection with any other Indo-European language family in particular.

2000-1000 1000-500

 500-1 BC

 1-500 AD

 500-1000 1000-1500 1500-2000

Proto-Armenian

         Classical Armenian

Middle Armenian

Armenian

See also:

more about Armenian ; Classical Armenian Online  (language lessons); Web Links re: Armenian  (language & history).

INDO-IRANIAN

Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers moved east & south from the PIE ancestral homeland. Then, still in prehistoric times, the Indo-Iranian family split into Indic and Iranian branches, labelled for their early literary centers (roughly speaking) in India and Iran.

Although written Indic documents do not exist of an age comparable to that of Hittite, the language of the Rigveda is thought to be well-preserved from a form dating to perhaps the early 2nd millenium B.C. In

particular, when the grammar for Sanskrit was being composed by Panini ca. 400 B.C., Rigvedic was already archaic and, in many respects, no longer understood -- a situation analogous to modern English speakers' problems understanding the language of Beowulf. Even some of the poetic structures of the Rigveda were no longer recognized -- again, a situation analogous to our modern ignorance of Old English poetic structures. Nevertheless, oral transmission of liturgy and poetry can be, and for the Rigveda is believed to have been, amazingly accurate. Accordingly, early Indic compositions can be studied with almost as much confidence as is invested in later, written texts in Pali, Prakrit, etc.

Somewhat like Rigvedic (a close descendant of Proto-Indic), Avestan (a descendant of Proto-Iranian) was represented by memorized religious compositions for centuries before they were written down. The Avestan language itself, then, is of unknown but great age. Although it is still important in Zoroastrian liturgy, it does not have living descendants. Two languages closely related to it,Bactrian and Old Persian, have many modern descendants including Pashto and Farsi.

2000-1500 1500-1000

1000-500

 500-1 BC

1-500 AD

 500-1000 1000-1500

1500-2000

Proto-Indo-Iranian

Proto-Indic Rigvedic  Sanskrit         

       Pali Prakrit  Apabhramsha

Old Hindi Hindi/Urdu

  Proto-Iranian

Avestan            

    Eastern Bactrian    Sogdian   Pashto

    Western Old   Persia n

   Pahlavi   Farsi

See also:

more about Indo-Iranian ; Ancient Sanskrit Online  (Rigvedic language lessons); Old Iranian Online  (Avestan and Old Persian lessons); Web Links to Indic resources and Iranian resources (incl. languages, history, etc).

TOCHARIAN

Like the Anatolian language family, the Tocharian family is extinct; also like Anatolian, Tocharian texts were deciphered in the early 20th century and their study has suggested major changes to theories about early Indo-European (IE) languages. Prominent among these is the fact that Tocharian exhibits some fundamental affinities to the more western language families, such as Celtic, Italic, Hellenic and especially Germanic, that distinguish it from the geographically much closer eastern language families, such as Indo-Iranian or even Balto-Slavic. This does not mean that Tocharian is particularly close to any western European language family, though many individual parallels have been drawn, but only that it seems closer to them as a group than to the eastern IE languages. How western European (?) Tocharian speakers came to live in the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, China, is a mystery yet unresolved. However, it is noteworthy that the Silk Road was established through that area around the same time Tocharian speakers seem to have arrived: the appearance of a highly mobile European people at the inception of a major Eurasian trade link might not be a coincidence.

It is by no means certain that western European affinities demonstrate a prior western European presence: sometimes similarities exist by chance; but if chance is ruled out, there may have been sufficient linguistic contact between Proto-Tocharian speakers and others destined to live in western Europe, before the IE break-up. It seems rather likely that Tocharian peoples migrated directly east from the PIE homeland and discovered exotic trade goods awaiting further exploitation. Tocharian, unattested, later evolved into two separate languages, conventionally denoted as Tocharian A(eastern, a.k.a. Turfanian) and Tocharian B (western, a.k.a. Kuchean), both located along the north rim of the Tarim Basin; in the 6th-8th century A.D. texts so far discovered, A seems to have been in liturgical use only, while B was yet a living vernacular. Evidence for yet a third offshoot, Tocharian C, somewhat older than the other two, has been unearthed along the southernrim of the Tarim Basin.

2000-1000  1000-500

 500-1 BC

 1-500 AD  500-1000  1000-1500

 1500-2000

Proto-Tocharian

 Tocharian?

       Tocharian A

     

            Tocharian B

     

         Tocharian C

        

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/general/

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Indo-European Language Family By Irene Thompson  |  Updated May 13, 2013 by Irene Thompson

introduction|dialects|structure|writing|difficulty|comments

IntroductionIndo-European is a family of languages that first spread throughout Europe and many parts of South Asia,and later to every corner of the globe as a result of colonization. The term Indo-European is essentially geographical since it refers to the easternmost extension of the family from the Indian subcontinent to its westernmost reach in Europe. The family includes most of the languages of Europe, aswell as many languages of Southwest, Central and South Asia. With over 2.6 billion speakers (or 45% of the world’s population), the Indo-European language family has the largest number of speakers of all language families as well as the widest dispersion around the world.

The cradle of the Indo-Europeans may never be known but an ongoing scholarly debate about the original homeland of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), may some day shed light on the ancestors of all Indo-European languages as well as the people who spoken it. There are two schools of thought:

Some scholars (e.g., Marija Gimbutas) propose that PIE originated in the steppes north of the Blackand Caspian Seas (the Kurgan hypothesis). Kurgan is the Russian word of Turkic origin for a type of burial mound over a burial chamber. The Kurgan hypothesis combines archaeology with linguistics to trace the diffusion of kurgans from the steppes into southeastern Europe, providing support for the existence ot a Kurgan culture that reflected an early presence of Indo-European peoplein the steppes and southeastern Europe from the 5th to the 3rd millenium BC.

Other scholars (e.g., Gamkrelidze and Ivanov) suggest that PIE originated around 7,000 BC in Anatolia,a stretch of land that lies between the Blackand Mediterranean seas. It lies across the Aegean Sea to the east of Greece and is thus usually known by its Greek name Anatolia (Asia Minor). Today, Anatolia is the Asian part of modern Turkey.

It would not have been possible to establish the existence of the Indo-European language family if scholars had not compared the systematically recurring resemblances among European languages and Sanskrit, the oldest language of the Indian subcontinent that left many written documents. The common origin of European languages and Sanskrit was first proposed by Sir William Jones(1746-1794). Systematic comparisons between these languages by Franz Bopp supported this theory and laid the foundation for postulating that all Indo-European languages descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European (PIE), thought to have been spoken before 3,000 B.C. It then split into different brancheswhich, in turn, split into different languages in the subsequent millennia.

Since PIE left no written records, historical linguists construct family trees, an idea pioneered by August Schleicher, on the basis of the comparative method. The comparative method takes shared features among languages and uses procedures to establish their common ancestry. It is not the only method available but is one that has been most widely used. The examples below show how this method actually works with some Indo-European languages.

PIE *dekm >

Proto-Germanic *texun > Old English teon > Modern English tenProto-Italic *dekem > Latin decem > Modern Italian dieciOld Church Slavonic desenti > Modern Bulgarian desetSanskrit dáça > Hindi/Urdu dasGreek deka

proto means ‘old’ in Greek * means the form was reconstructed, not attested. > means ‘became’

Indo-European languages are classified into 11 major groups, 2 of which are extinct, comprising 449 languages (Ethnologue).BalticThis conservative group has preserved many archaic features thought to have been present in PIE. Some scholars think that Baltic languages share a common ancestral language with the Slavic languages. This hypothetical language is called Balto-Slavic.Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Latvian 1.5 million Latvia

Lithuanian 3.1million Lithuania

Celtic   Celtic languages were largely unknown until the modern period. They were once spread over Europe in the pre-Christian era. The oldest records of these languages date back to the 4th century AD.Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Breton 533,000. France

Irish 355,000 Ireland

Scottish (Scots Gaelic) 62,175. Scotland

Welsh 575,000 Wales

GermanicWest Germanic

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Afrikaans 6 million South Africa

Dutch 17 million Holland

English 309 million UK, US, Australia, Canada

German 95 million Germany

Yiddish 50,000 Germany, Israel

North Germanic

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Danish 5.3million Denmark

Icelandic 240,000 Iceland

Norwegian 4.6 million Norway

Swedish 8.8 million Sweden

Romance (Italic)Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Catalan 6.7 million Spain

French 65 million France

Italian 61.5 million Italy

Portuguese 178 million Portugal, Brazil

Romanian 23.5 million Romania

Spanish 322 million Spain, Latin America

SlavicWest Slavic

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Czech 11.5 million Czech Republic

Polish 43 million Poland

Slovak 5 million Slovakia

Sorbian 70,000 to 110,000 Germany

 

East Slavic

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Belarusian 9 million Belorusia

Russian 9 million Russia

Ukrainian 37.1 million Ukraine

 

South Slavic

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Bosnian 4 million Bosnia & Hercegovina

Croatian 6.2 million Croatia

Macedonian 1.6 million Macedonia

Serbian 11.1 million Serbia

Slovenian 2 million Slovenia

Indo-IranianIndo-Aryan (Indic)

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Balochi 1.8 million Pakistan

Bengali

100 million 1st language; 211million 1st & 2nd language speakers Bangladesh

Bhojpuri 26.6 million India

Hindi 180.8 million India

Gujarati 46.1 million India

Kashmiri 4.6 million India

Marathi 68 million India

Nepali 17.2 million Nepal

Maithili 24.8 million India

Oriya 31.7 million India

Punjabi 60.8 million India

Romani 1.5 million Romania & elsewhere

Sanskrit 194,000 2nd language speakers India & elsewhere

Sindhi 21.3 million Pakistan

Sinhalese 13.2 million Sri Lanka

Urdu 60.5 million Pakistan

 

Iranian

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Dari 7.6 million Afghanistan

Farsi (Persian) 24.3 million Iran

Kurdish 11 million Iraq & elsewhere

Pashto 19 million Afghanistan & elsewhere

Tajik 4.3 million Tajikistan

 

Language Number of speakers Where spoken primarily

Albanian 5 million Albania

Armenian 6.7 million Armenia

HellenicGreek   is the only surviving language of this group. 12.3 million Greece

 

Tocharian (extinct)Attested by texts dating to 500-1000 AD that were found in early 20th century in Chinese Turkestan

Anatolian (extinct)Unknown until the 20th century when it was discovered during excavations in Turkey. Texts written in cuneiform date to 13th-7th centuries BC.

In addition to these main groups, there are fragmentary records of other Indo-European languages. These records, mostly in the form of inscriptions, do not provide sufficient material for the reconstruction of PIE.

DialectsTop

StructureTop

Sound systemThere have been numerous attempts to reconstruct the vowels and consonants of PIE, all of which encountered serious problems due to the uneven nature of the written records and to the huge differencesin the age of the records. As a result, the reconstruction of PIE phonology continues to be a matter of scholarly debate and speculation. Among the most notable reconstructions are those by August Schleicher, Karl Brugmann, Winfred Lehmann, Oswald Szemerènyi, and Jacob Grimm.First Germanic Sound Shift (Grimm’s Law)You probably know of Jacob Grimm   as the author of fairy tales. But he was also one of the great linguists of the 19th century. He found evidence for the unity of all the modern Germanic languages in the phenomenon known as the First Germanic Sound Shift (also known as Grimm’s law ), which set the Germanic branch apart from the other branches of the Indo-European family. This shift occurred before the 7th century when records started to be kept. According to Grimm’s law, the shift occurred when /p, t, k/ in the classical Indo-European languages (Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit) became /f, t, h/ in Germaniclanguages. For example, Latin pater > English father, Latin cornu > English horn.You can easily see the resemblances among four common words across five Indo-European languages.

English GreekLatin

Sanskrit

father pater pater pita

brotherPhrater frater

bhratar

foot Podapedem pada

three Tris tres trí

Click here for an amusing illustration of Grimm’s Law and of words for family, plants, animals, sky, and counting in nine Indo-European languages.Centum-Satem divisionThe Centum-Satem division explains the evolution of PIE labiovelar, velars, and palatovelar consonants.

Labiovelar   consonants include [kw, gw, xw, ngw] which are pronounced like [k, g, x, ng] but with rounded lips.

Velars  are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). They include [k, g, x, ng].

Palatovelar consonants are articulated with the back part of the tongue against the hard palate. They include [k', g', x', ng']. For example, [k'] is pronounced as the k in keen.

The terms centum-satem come from the words for ‘one hundred’ in representative languages of each group. Please note that not all languages fall neatly into these categories.

Satem languages include Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian languages. For example, Sanskrit satam, Lithuanian simtas, Russiansto.Click here to see the complete satem language tree.

Centum languages include Romance, Celtic, Germanic, and Greek. For example, Latincentum, Irish cead, English hundred, Greek.

Click here to see the complete Centum language tree.StressIt is believed that PIE had a pitch accent system. All words had only one accented syllable which received a high pitch. Stress could fall on any syllable of a word.Grammar Unevenness of existing records and huge gaps in the chronology among Indo-European languages make the reconstruction of PIE grammar a difficult task. Discoveries of Hittite, Tocharian and Mycenaean Greek inthe 20th century have made changes in the data base on which the reconstruction of PIE is based that in turn have modified existing views of PIE. .Many of the older well-documented languages, such as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, have rich morphologies with clearly marked gender and number, as well as elaborately marked case systems for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs in these languages also have elaborately marked systems of tense, aspect, mood, and voice, in addition to person, number, and gender. Reconstructed PIE is based on the assumption that it contained all the features found in attested languages. If a given language lacks a particular feature, it is assumed that the feature was lost or that it had merged with other features.

Modern Indo-European languages reflect the rich morphology of PIE to various degrees. For instance, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic, Armenian have extremely rich morphologies. On the other hand, Germanic, Romance, Albanian, and Tocharian do not possess quite as many finely differentiated morphological features.

Nouns, pronouns and adjectives Case

Sanskrit had the most cases (8), followed by Old Church Slavonic, Lithuanian, and Old Armenian (7), Latin (6), Greek, Old Irish, Albanian (5), Germanic (4).

GenderThe three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) have survived in a number of Indo-European languages.

NumberThe three numbers (singular, dual, plural) survived in Sanskrit, Greek, and Old Irish. Vestiges of thedual number can be found in many other Indo-European languages.

Adjective-Noun agreementAdjective-noun agreement has survived in many Indo-European languages.

VerbsReconstructed PIE verbs had different sets of endings tense/aspect, voice and mood in addition to personand number. :

Tense and aspectIt is thought that the PIE verb system was aspect-based, although traditionally, aspect has been confused with tense. Although tense was not formally marked in PIE, most Indo-European languages define their verbal systems in terms of tense, rather than aspect. .

VoicePIE had two voices: active (e.g., The child broke the glass) and medio-passive which combined reflexive and passive voices (e.g., The child washed himself and The child was washed by his mother). In addition to the active voice, various Indo-European languages use the middle or the passive voices.

MoodIt is hypothesized the PIE had four moods: indicative, optative, subjunctive, and imperative. Most of these moods exist in all Indo-European languages.

Person and numberPIE verbs were marked for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular, dual, plural).

Word orderLess is know about the syntax of PIE than about its morphology. What is known about PIE word order, therefore, is a subject of conjecture and debate. It is thought likely that word order in PIE sentences was Subject-Object-Verb. This word order is found in Latin, Hittite, Vedic Sanskrit, Tocharian, and to some extent in Greek.VocabularyThe comparative method enables linguists to reconstruct a basic PIE vocabulary referring to many common elements of their culture. This basic vocabulary is not uniformly attested across all Indo-European languages which suggests that some words may have developed later or were borrowed from other languages.Among words that are reliably reconstructed are words for day, night, the seasons, celestial bodies (sun, moon, stars), precipitation (rain, snow), animals (sheep, horse, pig, bear, dog, wolf, eagle), kinship terms (father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter), tools (axe, yoke, arrow).Click here to explore cognates in different Indo-European languagesWritingTop

Written records for various Indo-European languages have different date lines. The table below shows when the first written records appeared, what writing system was used, and which writing systems are used by the languages today.

Branches

Earliest written records

Earliest writing system Current writing system(s)

Armenian 500 AD Armenian alphabet Armenian alphabet

Albanian

15th century AD Greek alphabet Modified Latin alphabet

Greek 1,400 BC Greek alphabet Greek alphabet

Celtic 4th century AD Ogham alphabet Modified Latin alphabet

Baltic16 th century AD

Modified Latin alphabet Modified Latin alphabet

Romance 6th century BC

Latin alphabet, adapted from Etruscan Modified Latin alphabet

Germanic 3rd century AD runic Futhark Modified Latin alphabet

Slavic 9th century ADOld Church Slavonic alphabet Cyrillic and Latin alphabets

Indo-Aryan 3rd century BC Brāhmī script

Bengali, Devanāgarī,   Gujarati,   Oriya , Gurmukhi, Sinhala, Kaithi, modified Perso-Arabic

Iranian 9th century AD Perso-Arabic script

Modified Perso-Arabic, Arabic, modified Cyrillic, modified Latin.

Tocharian 500-1,000 AD Brāhmī script

http://aboutworldlanguages.com/indo-european-language-family