Proto-Indo-European .– Center: Steppe cultures1 (black): Anatolian languages (archaic PIE)2 (black): Afanasievo culture (early PIE)3 (black) Yamnaya culture expansion (Pontic-Caspian steppe, Danube Valley) (late PIE)4A (black): Western Corded Ware4B-C (blue & dark blue): Bell Beaker; adopted by Indo-European speakers5A-B (red): Eastern Corded ware5C (red): Sintashta (Proto-Indo-Iranian)6 (magenta): Andronovo7A (purple): Indo-Aryans (Mittani)7B (purple): Indo-Aryans (India)[NN] (dark yellow): Proto-Balto-Slavic8 (grey): Greek9 (yellow):Iranians– [not drawn]: Armenian, expanding from western steppe The proposed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the
reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the
Proto-Indo-Europeans. During the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became certain enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Using the method of
internal reconstruction, an earlier stage, called Pre-Proto-Indo-European, has been proposed. PIE is an
inflected language, in which the grammatical relationships between words were signalled through inflectional morphemes, usually endings. The
roots of PIE are basic
morphemes carrying a
lexical meaning. By addition of
suffixes, they form
stems, and by addition of
endings, these form grammatically inflected words, such as
nouns or
verbs. The reconstructed
Indo-European verb system is complex and, like the noun, exhibits a system of
ablaut.
Diversification The diversification of the parent language into the attested branches of daughter languages is historically unattested. The timeline of the evolution of the various daughter languages is mostly undisputed. Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology,
Donald Ringe and
Tandy Warnow proposed the following evolutionary tree of Indo-European branches: • Pre-
Anatolian before 3500 BC • Pre-
Tocharian • Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic before 2500 BC • Pre-Armenian and Pre-Greek after 2500 BC • Proto-
Indo-Iranian • Pre-Germanic and Pre-Balto-Slavic; Proto-Germanic David Anthony proposes the following sequence: • Pre-
Anatolian • Pre-
Tocharian •
Pre-Germanic • Pre-Italic and Pre-Celtic • Pre-Armenian • Pre-Balto-Slavic • Pre-Greek • Proto-
Indo-Iranian ; split into Iranian and Old Indic From 1500 BC the following sequence may be given: • 1500–1000 BC: • The
Nordic Bronze Age of
Scandinavia developed
pre-Proto-Germanic, and the (pre-) Proto-Celtic
Urnfield and
Hallstatt cultures emerged in Central Europe, introducing the
Iron Age. • Migration of the Proto-
Italic speakers into the Italian peninsula (
Bagnolo stele). •
Migration of Aryans to India followed by the redaction of the
Rigveda; rise of the
Vedic civilization and
beginning of Iron Age in the
Punjab. • The
Mycenaean civilization gave way to the
Greek Dark Ages. • Hittite went extinct. •
Iranian speakers started migrating southwards to
Greater Iran. •
Balto-Slavic split into ancestors of modern
Baltic and
Slavic. • 1000–500 BC: • The
Celtic languages spread over Central and Western Europe, including
Britain. •
Baltic languages were spoken in a large area from present-day Poland to
Moscow. •
Pre-Proto-Germanic gave rise to
Proto-Germanic in southern Scandinavia. •
Homer and the beginning of
Classical Antiquity. • The Vedic civilization gave way to the
Mahajanapadas as the Indo-Aryan tongue reaches eastwards, giving rise to the
Greater Magadha cultural sphere, where
Mahavira preached
Jainism and
Siddhartha Gautama preached
Buddhism. •
Zoroaster composed the
Gathas, rise of the
Achaemenid Empire, replacing the
Elamites and
Babylonia. • Separation of Proto-Italic into
Osco-Umbrian,
Latin-Faliscan, and possibly
Venetic and
Siculian. • A variety of
Paleo-Balkan languages besides Greek were spoken in Southern Europe, including
Thracian,
Dacian and
Illyrian, and in
Anatolia (
Phrygian). • Development of
Prakrits across the northern Indian subcontinent, as well as migration of Indo-Aryan speakers to
Sri Lanka and the
Maldives. • 500–1 BC,
Classical Antiquity: • Spread of
Greek and
Latin throughout the Mediterranean and, during the
Hellenistic period (
Indo-Greeks), to Central Asia and the
Hindukush. • The Magadhan power and influence rose in ancient India, especially with the conquests of the
Nandan and
Mauryan empires. • Germanic speakers started migrating southwards to occupy formerly Celtic territories. •
Scythian cultures extended from Eastern Europe (
Pontic Scythians) to Northwest China (
Ordos culture). • 1 BC–AD 500;
Late Antiquity,
Gupta period: • Attestation of
Armenian.
Proto-Slavic. • The
Roman Empire and then the
Germanic migrations marginalized the Celtic languages to the British Isles. •
Sogdian, an
eastern Iranian language, became the of the
Silk Road in Central Asia leading to China, due to the proliferation of
Sogdian merchants there. • Greek settlements and
Byzantine rule made the last Anatolian languages
extinct. •
Turkic languages started replacing
Scythian languages. • 500–1000,
Early Middle Ages: • The
Viking Age formed an Old Norse
koine spanning Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland. • Phrygian became extinct. • The
Islamic conquests and the
Turkic expansion resulted in the
Arabization and
Turkification of significant areas where Indo-European languages were spoken, and
Persian developed under Islamic rule and extended into
Afghanistan and
Tajikistan. • Due to further
Turkic migrations,
Tocharian became fully extinct while Scythian languages were overwhelmingly replaced. • Slavic languages spread over wide areas in central, eastern and southeastern Europe, largely replacing Romance in the Balkans—with the exception of Romanian—and whatever was left of the
Paleo-Balkan languages—with the exception of Albanian. • Pannonian Basin was taken by the
Magyars from the western
Slavs. • 1000–1500,
Late Middle Ages: • Attestation of
Albanian and
Baltic. • Modern dialects of Indo-European languages started emerging. • 1500–2000,
early modern period to present: • Colonialism resulted in the spread of Indo-European languages to every habitable continent, most notably
Romance (North, Central and South America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia),
West Germanic (
English in North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Australia; to a lesser extent Dutch and German), and
Russian to Central Asia and North Asia.
Key languages for reconstruction In reconstructing the history of the Indo-European languages and the form of the
Proto-Indo-European language, some languages have been of particular importance. These generally include the ancient Indo-European languages that are both well-attested and documented at an early date, although some languages from later periods are important if they are particularly
linguistically conservative, most notably,
Lithuanian. Early poetry is of special significance because of the rigid
poetic meter normally employed, which makes it possible to reconstruct a number of features, e.g.
vowel length, that were either unwritten or corrupted in the process of transmission down to the earliest extant written
manuscripts. Most noticeably: •
Vedic Sanskrit (). This language is unique in that its source documents were all composed orally, and were passed down through
oral tradition (
shakha schools) for c. 2,000 years before being written down. The oldest documents are all in poetic form; oldest and most important of all is the
Rigveda (). The oldest inscriptions in the language of the
Rigveda, are
found in northern Syria, where the
Mitanni kingdom was located. Though it is also likely that the language of the Mitanni kingdom was a related but older
Indo-Aryan language. •
Ancient Greek ().
Mycenaean Greek () is the oldest recorded form, but its value is lessened by the limited material, restricted subject matter, and highly ambiguous writing system.More important is Ancient Greek, documented extensively beginning with the two
Homeric poems (the
Iliad and the
Odyssey, ). •
Hittite (). This is the earliest recorded of all Indo-European languages, and highly divergent from the others due to the early separation of the
Anatolian languages from the remainder. It possesses some highly archaic features found fragmentarily, if at all, in other languages. It appears to have undergone many early phonological and grammatical changes which, combined with the ambiguities of its writing system, hinder its usefulness somewhat. Other primary sources: •
Latin, attested in a large amount of poetic and prose material in the
Classical period () and limited
Old Latin material from as early as . •
Gothic (the most archaic well-documented
Germanic language, ), along with the combined witness of the other old Germanic languages: most importantly,
Old English (),
Old High German () and
Old Norse (, with limited earlier sources dating to ). •
Old Avestan () and
Younger Avestan ()). Documentation is sparse, but nonetheless quite important due to its highly archaic nature. • Modern
Lithuanian, with limited records in
Old Lithuanian (). •
Old Church Slavonic (). Other secondary sources, due to poor attestation: •
Luwian,
Lycian,
Lydian and other
Anatolian languages (). •
Oscan,
Umbrian and other
Old Italic languages ()). •
Old Persian (). •
Old Prussian (); more archaic than Lithuanian. Other secondary sources, due to extensive phonological changes and relatively limited attestation: •
Old Irish (). •
Tocharian (), underwent large phonetic shifts and mergers in the proto-language, and has an almost entirely reworked declension system. •
Classical Armenian (). •
Albanian (present).
Sound changes As speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) dispersed, the language's sound system diverged as well, changing according to various
sound laws evidenced in the
daughter languages. PIE is normally reconstructed with a complex system of 15
stop consonants, including an unusual three-way
phonation or
voicing distinction between
voiceless,
voiced and "
voiced aspirated", i.e.
breathy voiced, stops, and a three-way distinction among
velar consonants—
k-type sounds—between palatal
ḱ ǵ ǵh, plain velar
k g gh and
labiovelar kʷ gʷ gʷh. The correctness of the terms
palatal and
plain velar is disputed. All daughter languages have reduced the number of distinctions among these sounds, often in divergent ways. As an example, in
English, one of the
Germanic languages, the following are some of the major changes that happened: None of the daughter-language families, except possibly
Anatolian, particularly
Luvian, reflect the plain velar stops differently from the other two series, and there is even a certain amount of dispute whether this series existed in PIE. The major distinction between
centum and satem languages corresponds to the outcome of the PIE plain velars: • The central
satem languages—
Indo-Iranian,
Balto-Slavic,
Albanian, and
Armenian—reflect both plain velar and labiovelar stops as plain velars, often with secondary
palatalization before a
front vowel (
e i ē ī). The palatal stops are palatalized and often appear as
sibilants, usually distinct from the secondarily palatalized stops. • The peripheral
centum languages—
Germanic,
Italic,
Celtic,
Greek,
Anatolian and
Tocharian—reflect both palatal and plain velar stops as plain velars, while the labiovelars continue unchanged, often with later reduction into plain
labial or
velar consonants. The three-way PIE distinction between voiceless, voiced and voiced aspirated stops is considered extremely unusual from the perspective of
linguistic typology—particularly in the existence of voiced aspirated stops without a corresponding series of voiceless aspirated stops. None of the various daughter-language families continue it unchanged, with numerous resolutions to the unstable PIE situation: • The
Indo-Aryan languages preserve the three series unchanged and have evolved a fourth series of voiceless aspirated consonants. • The
Iranian languages probably passed through the same stage, subsequently changing the aspirated stops into fricatives. •
Greek converted the voiced aspirates into voiceless aspirates. •
Italic probably passed through the same stage, and reflects the voiced aspirates as
f or
h, or sometimes plain voiced stops in
Latin. •
Celtic,
Balto-Slavic,
Anatolian, and
Albanian merge the voiced aspirated into plain voiced stops. •
Germanic and
Armenian change all three series in a
chain shift, e.g. with
bh b p becoming
b p f, known as ''
Grimm's law'' in Germanic. Among the other changes affecting consonants are: • The
Ruki sound law, in which
s becomes after
r, u, k, i in the
satem languages. • Loss of prevocalic
p in
Proto-Celtic. • Development of prevocalic
s to
h in
Proto-Greek, with later loss of
h between vowels. •
Verner's law in
Proto-Germanic. •
Grassmann's law, the dissimilation of aspirates, independently in Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian. There are various basic outcomes of PIE consonants in some of the most important daughter languages for the purposes of reconstruction. :Notes: •
C- At the beginning of a word. • -
C- Between vowels. • -
C At the end of a word. • `-
C- Following an unstressed vowel (
Verner's law). • -
C-(rl) Between vowels, or between a vowel and '''''' (on either side). •
CT Before a (PIE) stop (''''''). •
CT− After a (PIE) obstruent ('
, etc.; '). •
C(T) Before or after an obstruent ('
, etc.; '). •
CH Before an original laryngeal. •
CE Before a (PIE) front vowel (''''''). •
CE' Before secondary (post-PIE) front-vowels. •
Ce Before ''''''. •
C(u) Before or after a (PIE) '''''' (
boukólos rule). •
C(O) Before or after a (PIE) '''''' (
boukólos rule). •
Cn− After ''''''. •
CR Before a
sonorant (''''''). •
C(R) Before or after a
sonorant (''''''). •
C(r),l,u− Before '
or after '. •
Cruki− After '''''' (
Ruki sound law). •
C..Ch Before an aspirated consonant in the next syllable (
Grassmann's law, also known as
dissimilation of aspirates). •
CE..Ch Before a (PIE) front vowel ('''''') as well as before an aspirated consonant in the next syllable (
Grassmann's law, also known as
dissimilation of aspirates). •
C(u)..Ch Before or after a (PIE) '''''' as well as before an aspirated consonant in the next syllable (
Grassmann's law, also known as
dissimilation of aspirates).
Comparison of conjugations Aa comparison of conjugations of the
thematic present indicative of the verbal root of the English verb
to bear and its reflexes in various early attested IE languages and their modern descendants or relatives, shows that all languages had in the early stage an inflectional verb system. Similarities are visible between the modern descendants and relatives of these ancient languages, and the differences have increased over time. Some IE languages have moved from
synthetic verb systems to largely
periphrastic systems. Some of these verbs have undergone a change in meaning as well. • In
Modern Irish beir usually only carries the meaning
to bear in the sense of bearing a child; its common meanings are
to catch, grab. Apart from the first person, the comparative forms are dialectical or obsolete. The second and third person forms are typically instead conjugated
periphrastically by adding a pronoun after the verb:
beireann tú, beireann sé/sí, beireann sibh, beireann siad. • The
Hindustani (
Hindi and
Urdu) verb
bʰarnā, the continuation of the Sanskrit verb, can have a variety of meanings, but the most common is "to fill". The comparative forms are etymologically derived from the
present indicative, and now have the meaning of
future subjunctive. The loss of the
present indicative in Hindustani is roughly compensated by the periphrastic
habitual indicative construction, using the
habitual participle (etymologically from the Sanskrit present participle
bʰarant-) and an auxiliary:
ma͠i bʰartā hū̃, tū bʰartā hai, vah bʰartā hai, ham bʰarte ha͠i, tum bʰarte ho, ve bʰarte ha͠i (masculine forms). • The Gothic forms are a close approximation of what the early West Germanic forms of would have looked like. The descendant of Proto-Germanic
*beraną (English
bear) survives in German only in the compound
gebären, meaning "bear (a child)". • The Latin verb
ferre is irregular, and not representative of a normal thematic verb. In most Romance languages such as Portuguese, other verbs now mean "to carry" (e.g. Pt.
portar < Lat.
portare) and
ferre was borrowed and nativized only in compounds such as "to suffer" (from Latin
sub- and
ferre) and "to confer" (from Latin
con- and
ferre). • In Modern
Greek,
phero φέρω (modern transliteration
fero) "to bear" is still in specific contexts and is most common in such compounds as αναφέρω, διαφέρω, εισφέρω, εκφέρω, καταφέρω, προφέρω, προαναφέρω, προσφέρω etc. The form that is very common today is
pherno φέρνω (modern transliteration
ferno) meaning "to bring". Additionally, the perfective form of
pherno, used for the subjunctive voice and also for the future tense, is also
phero. • The dual forms are archaic in standard Lithuanian, and are now used only in some dialects, e.g.
Samogitian. • Among modern Slavic languages, only Slovene continues to have a dual number in the standard variety. == Comparison of cognates ==