The
Indo-European languages are a
familyA language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
(or
phylum) of several hundred related
languages and dialects, including most major languages of
EuropeMost of the many languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Another major family is the Finno-Ugric. The Turkic family also has several European members. The North and South Caucasian families are important in the southeastern extremity of geographical Europe...
,
IranThe population of Iran, based on a census carried out in 2006, is 70,472,846 people.Different publications have reported different statistics for the languages of Iran; however, it is important to point out that these studies are not based on any official census and that statistics presented by...
, and northern
IndiaThe languages of India belong to several major linguistic families, the two largest being the Indo-European languages—Indo-Aryan —and the Dravidian languages...
, and historically also predominant in
AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Iranian plateau to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west...
and
Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
. Attested since the
Bronze AgeThe Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking in that culture utilised bronze. This could either have been based on the local smelting of copper and tin from ores, or trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere...
, in the form of Mycenaean Greek and
Anatolian languagesThe Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages, which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
, the Indo-European family is significant to the field of
historical linguisticsHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
as possessing the longest recorded history after the Afroasiatic family.
The languages of the Indo-European group are spoken by approximately three billion native speakers, the largest number of the recognised families of languages. (Several disputed proposals merge Indo-European with other major language families.)
History of Indo-European linguistics
Suggestions of similarities between Indian and European languages began to be made by European visitors to India in the 16th century. In 1583 Thomas Stephens, an English Jesuit missionary in
GoaGoa is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located on the west coast of India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its western coast.Panaji is...
, noted similarities between Indian languages, specifically
KonkaniKonkani is an Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-European family of languages spoken in the Konkan coast of India...
, and Greek and Latin. These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.
The first account to mention Sanskrit came from
Filippo SassettiFilippo Sassetti was a Florentine merchant who was born in Florence, Italy in 1540. 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...
(born in Florence, Italy in 1540 AD), a Florentine merchant who traveled to the Indian subcontinent and was among the first Europeans to study the ancient Indian language
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ/dio "God", sarpaḥ/serpe "serpent", sapta/sette "seven", aṣṭa/otto "eight", nava/nove "nine"). However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.
In 1647
DutchThe Dutch people are the dominant ethnic group of the Netherlands.Dutch people, or descendants of Dutch people, are also found in migrant communities world wide, notably in Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States....
linguist and scholar
Marcus Zuerius van BoxhornMarcus Zuerius van Boxhorn was a Dutch scholar . Born in Bergen op Zoom, he was professor at the University of Leiden. He discovered the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called 'Scythian'...
noted the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed that they derived from a primitive common language which he called "
Scythian". He included in his hypothesis
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language.
"1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language...
,
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
, Latin,
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
, and
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
, later adding
SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
,
CelticThe Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in...
and
Baltic languagesThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
. However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
Gaston Coeurdoux and others had made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship between them, about 20 years before William Jones.
The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when
Sir William JonesSir William Jones was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages...
first lectured on similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time:
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
,
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
,
PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
, and
SanskritSanskrit is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It is also declared as a classical language by the government of India....
. It was
Thomas YoungThomas Young was an English polymath who made notable contributions to the fields of vision, light, solid mechanics, energy, physiology, language, musical harmony and Egyptology.-Biography:...
who first used the term
Indo-European in 1813, which became the standard scientific term (except in Germany) through the work of
Franz BoppFranz Bopp was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages.-Biography:...
, whose systematic comparison of these and other old languages supported the theory. Bopp's
Comparative Grammar, appearing between 1833 and 1852, counts as the starting point of
Indo-European studiesIndo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...
as an academic discipline.
Classification
The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, given in the chronological order of their earliest surviving written attestations:
- Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages are a group of extinct Indo-European languages, which were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
, earliest attested branch. Isolated terms in Old AssyrianAssyrian language may refer to:*The Assyrian language, an extinct Semitic language spoken in ancient Assyria*the modern Assyrian Neo-Aramaic language...
sources from the 19th century BC, Hittite textsThe corpus of texts written in the Hittite language is indexed by the Catalogue des Textes Hittites...
from about the 16th century BC; extinct by Late AntiquityLate Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the transitional centuries from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown...
.
- Hellenic languages
Hellenic, as a technical term in historical linguistics, is the branch of the Indo-European language family that includes Greek...
, fragmentary records in MycenaeanAchaean Greek redirects here. For the dialect later used in Achaea and the Peloponnese, see Achaean Doric GreekMycenaean is the most ancient attested form of the Greek language, spoken on the Greek mainland and on Crete in the 16th to 12th centuries BC, before the hypothesised Dorian invasion...
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
from the late 15thThe 15th century BC is a century which lasted from 1500 BC to 1401 BC.- Events :* 1504 BC – 1492 BC: Egypt conquers Nubia and the Levant.* 1500 BC – 1400 BC: The Rigveda was composed around this time....
- early 14th century BC; HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
ic traditions date to the 8th century BC. (See Proto-Greek languageThe Proto-Greek language is the assumed last common ancestor of all known varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean, the classical Greek dialects , and ultimately Koine, Byzantine and modern Greek...
, History of the Greek language.)
- Indo-Iranian languages
The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages...
, born from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-IranianProto-Indo-Iranian is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are usually connected with the early Andronovo archaeological...
(dated to the late 3rd millenium BC)
- Iranian languages
The Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
, attested from roughly 1000 BC in the form of AvestanAvestan is an Eastern Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name. The language must also at some time have been a natural language, but how long ago that was is unknown...
. Epigraphically from 520 BC in the form of Old Persian (Behistun inscriptionThe Behistun Inscription is a multi-lingual inscription located on Mount Behistun in the Kermanshah Province of Iran, near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran.The inscription includes three versions of the same text, written in three different cuneiform...
).
- Indo-Aryan languages
The Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family.SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , Marathi ,...
, attested from the late 15th - early 14th century BC in MitanniMitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria from ca. 1500 BC-1300 BC...
texts showing traces of Indo-AryanSome theonyms, proper names and other terminology of the Mitanni exhibit an Indo-Aryan superstrate, suggesting that an Indo-Aryan elite imposed itself over the Hurrian population in the course of the Indo-Aryan expansion....
. Epigraphically from the 3rd century BC in the form of PrakritPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Classical Sanskrit and other Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the...
(Edicts of AshokaThe Edicts of Ashoka are a collection of 33 inscriptions on the Pillars of Ashoka, as well as boulders and cave walls, made by the Emperor Ashoka of the Mauryan dynasty during his reign from 272 to 231 BC. These inscriptions are dispersed throughout the areas of modern-day Pakistan, Nepal and...
). The RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
is assumed to preserve intact records via oral tradition dating from about the mid-2nd millennium BCThe 2nd millennium BC marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.Its first half is dominated by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Babylonia. The alphabet develops. Indo-Iranian migration onto the Iranian plateau and onto the Indian subcontinent propagates the use of the chariot...
in the form of Vedic SanskritVedic Sanskrit is an Old Indic language. It is the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism, compiled over the period of the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BC. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the...
.
- Dardic languages
The Dardic languages is a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and in the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir.-Position in Indo-Iranian languages:...
- Nuristani languages
The Nuristani languages are a third separate group of the Indo-Iranian language family, and they are spoken primarily in eastern Afghanistan.-History:The Nuristani languages were not described in the literature until the 19th century...
- Italic languages
The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin itself.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
, including LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
and its descendants (the Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
), attested from the 7th century BC.
- Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in...
, descended from Proto-CelticThe Proto-Celtic language, also called Common Celtic, is the putative ancestor of all the known Celtic languages. Its lexis can be confidently reconstructed on the basis of the comparative method of historical linguistics...
. Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Old IrishOld Irish is the name given to the oldest form of the Goidelic languages for which extensive written texts are possessed. It was used from the 6th to the 10th centuries, when it gave way to Middle Irish....
manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD.
- Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
(from Proto-Germanic), earliest testimonies in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century AD, earliest coherent texts in GothicGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable corpus...
, 4th century AD. Old English manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD.
- Armenian language
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
, alphabet writings known from the beginning of the 5th century AD.
- Tocharian languages
Tocharian or Tokharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family. The name is taken from people known to the Greeks as the Tocharians . These are sometimes identified with the Yuezhi and the Kushans, while the term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria...
, extant in two dialects, attested from roughly the 6th to the 9th century AD. Marginalized by the Old Turkic Uyghur Khaganate and likely extinct by the 10th century.
- Balto-Slavic languages
The Balto-Slavic language group consists of the Baltic and Slavic languages, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. Having experienced a period of common development, Baltic and Slavic languages share several linguistic traits not found in any other Indo-European branch, which points...
, believed by most Indo-Europeanists to form a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes similarities to prolonged language contact.
- Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
(from Proto-Slavic), attested from the 9th century AD (possibly earlier; see Slavic runes), earliest texts in Old Church SlavonicOld Church Slavonic, also known as Old Bulgarian, or Old Macedonian, was the first literary Slavic language, based on the old Slavic dialect of the Thessalonica region, employed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who used it for translation of the Bible and...
.
- Baltic languages
The Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
, attested from the 14th century AD, and, for languages attested that late, they retain unusually many archaic features attributed to Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
(PIE).
- Albanian language
Albanian is a unique Indo-European language spoken by nearly 6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, Montenegro, and southern Serbia. Albanian is also spoken by native enclaves...
, attested from the 15th century AD; Proto-Albanian likely emerged from "Paleo-BalkanicThe Paleo-Balkan languages is a geo-linguistic concept referring to the Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans in ancient times...
" predecessors.
In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages have existed:
- Illyrian languages
The Illyrian languages are a group of Indo-European languages that were spoken in the western part of the Balkans in former times by groups identified as Illyrians: Ardiaei, Delmatae, Pannonii, Autariates, Taulanti...
— related to Messapian and Albanian.
- Venetic language
Venetic is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in ancient times in the North-Italian Veneto and modern Slovenia, between the Po River delta and the southern fringe of the Alps....
— close to Italic.
- Liburnian language
The Liburnian language is an extinct language which was spoken by the ancient Liburnians, who occupied Liburnia in classical times. The Liburnian language is reckoned as an Indo-European language, in the Centum group. It appears to have been on the same Indo-European branch as the Venetic...
— apparently grouped with Venetic.
- Messapian language
Messapian is an extinct Indo-European language of South-eastern Italy, once spoken in the region of Apulia. It was spoken by the three Iapygian tribes of the region: the Messapians, the Dauni and the Peucetii....
— not conclusively deciphered.
- Phrygian language
The Phrygian language was the Indo-European language of the Phrygians, a people from Thrace who later migrated to Asia Minor.-Inscriptions:Phrygian is attested by two corpora, one from around 800 BC and later , and then after a period of several centuries from around the beginning of the Common Era...
— language of ancient PhrygiaIn antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges , changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the...
, possibly close to Greek, Thracian and Armenian.
- Paionian language
The Paionian language is the poorly attested language of the ancient Paionians, whose kingdom once stretched north of Macedon into Dardania and in earlier times into southwestern Thrace.Several Paionian words are known from classical sources:...
— extinct language once spoken north of Macedon.
- Thracian language
The Thracian language was the Indo-European language spoken in ancient times by the Thracians in South-Eastern Europe.-Geographic distribution:...
— possibly including Dacian.
- Dacian language
The Dacian language was spoken by the ancient inhabitants of Dacia. It belongs to the Indo-European language family.Dacian is often considered to be a dialect of the same language as Thracian or to be a separate language from Thracian but closely related to it. -Characteristics and sources:Many...
— possibly close to Thracian.
- Ancient Macedonian language
Ancient Macedonian was the Indo-European language of the ancient Macedonians. It was spoken in Macedonia during the 1st millennium BC. From the 4th century BC, it was gradually replaced by the Attic-Koine Greek dialect....
— proposed relationships to Greek, Illyrian, Thracian, and Phrygian.
- Ligurian language — possibly not Indo-European; possibly close to or part of Celtic.
- Lusitanian language
Lusitanian was a paleohispanic language that clearly belongs to the Indo-European family like the Celtiberian language. It is known by only five inscriptions, dated from the year 1 A.D., and numerous names of places and of gods...
— possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, or Ligurian, or Italic.
Grouping
Of the
top 20This list gives the most spoken languages in the world according to the Ethnologue, a widely cited reference for languages around the world. The Ethnologue is sometimes criticised for using out-of-date data, but there is no available fully authoritative source for numbers of first language speakers...
contemporary languages in terms of native speakers according to SIL Ethnologue, 12 are Indo-European:
SpanishSpanish or Castilian is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that originated in northern Spain and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile, evolving into the principal language of government and trade in the Iberian peninsula...
,
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
,
HindiStandard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
,
PortuguesePortuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal. It is derived from the Latin spoken by the romanized Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago...
,
BengaliBengali or Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages....
,
RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
,
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
,
MarathiMarathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are 90 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi is the 4th most spoken language in India and the 15th most spoken language in the world...
,
FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
,
ItalianItalian is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by a total of around 70 million in the world. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four official languages. It is also the official language of San Marino, as well as the primary language of Vatican City...
,
PunjabiPunjabi or Panjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region ....
and
UrduUrdu is a Central Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of the two official languages of Pakistan. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of five Indian states...
, accounting for over 1.6 billion native speakers.
Membership of these languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by
geneticGenetic, in linguistics, means due to descent from a common ancestor language, rather than borrowing at some time in the past between languages that were not necessarily descended from a common ancestor. Languages that possess genetic ties with one another belong to the same linguistic grouping,...
relationships, meaning that all members are presumed to be descendants of a common ancestor,
Proto-Indo-EuropeanProto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
. Membership in the various branches, groups and subgroups or Indo-European is also genetic, but here the defining factors are
shared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and phonology can so be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, the source of all the Germanic languages.
Exempted from this concept are shared innovations acquired by
borrowingA loanword is a word borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.-General:By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept, whereby it is the meaning or idiom that is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself.The word loanword is itself a calque of the German...
(or other means of
convergenceLanguage convergence is a type of contact-induced change whereby languages with many bilingual speakers mutually borrow morphological and syntactic features, making their typology more similar....
), that cannot be considered genetic. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be "
areal featuresIn linguistics, an areal feature is any typological feature shared by languages within the same geographical area.Resemblances between two or more languages can be due to genetic relation , or due to borrowing at some time in the past between languages that were not necessarily genetically related...
". More certainly, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since English and continental West Germanic were not a linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a
high vowel (*
u in the case of Germanic, *
i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants *
ṛ,* ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ, unique to these two groups among IE languages. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence that comprise very different branches.
To the evolutionary history of a language family, a genetic "
tree modelIn historical linguistics, the Tree Model is a model of language change in which daughter languages are genetically descended from a proto-language through a regular process of gradual change and is due in its most strict formulation to the Neogrammarians...
" is considered appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. Otherwise, a "
wave modelIn historical linguistics, the wave model or wave theory is a model of language change in which new features of a language spread from a central point in continuously weakening concentric circles, similar to the waves created when a stone is thrown into a body of water. This should lead to...
" applies, featuring borrowings and no clear underlying genetic tree. Using an extension to the
Ringe-Warnow model of language evolution early IE was confirmed to have featured limited contact between distinct lineages, while only the Germanic subfamily exhibited a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution rather than from its direct ancestors. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic is cited to have been radically non-treelike.
The
Indo-Iranian languagesThe Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages...
form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European in terms of the number of native speakers as well as in terms of the number of individual languages.
Proposed subgroupings
Specialists have
postulatedIn traditional logic, an axiom or postulate is a proposition that is not proved or demonstrated but considered to be either self-evident, or subject to necessary decision...
the existence of such subfamilies (subgroups) as
Italo-CelticIn historical linguistics, Italo-Celtic refers to the observation that the Italic languages and the Celtic languages share a number of common features unique to these two groups...
,
Graeco-ArmenianGraeco-Armenian refers to the hypothesis that the Greek language and the Armenian language share a common ancestor postdating the Proto-Indo-European language . Its notability may be comparable to that of Italo-Celtic grouping...
, Graeco-Aryan, and Germanic with Balto-Slavic. The vogue for such subgroups waxes and wanes; Italo-Celtic for example used to be a standard subgroup of Indo-European, but it is now little honored, in part because much of the evidence on which it was based has turned out to have been misinterpreted.
Subgroupings of the Indo European languages are commonly held to reflect genetic relationships and
linguistic changeHistorical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;...
. The generic differentiation of Proto-Indo-European into dialects and languages happened hand in hand with language contact and the spread of innovations over different territories.
Rather than being entirely genetic, the grouping of satem languages is commonly inferred as an innovative change that occurred just once, and subsequently spread over a large cohesive territory or PIE continuum that affected all but the peripheral areas. For instance, Kortlandt proposes this satemization process involved interaction between a western and central Indo-European sphere of influence to the ancestors of Balts and Slavs.
Shared features of Phrygian and Greek and of Thracian and Armenian group the southeastern branches of Indo-European together. Some fundamental shared features, like the verbal aorist category (this is a verb form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having the perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian languages and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts.
The
Indo-HittiteIn Indo-European linguistics, the term Indo-Hittite refers to Sturtevant's 1926 hypothesis that the Anatolian languages may have split off the Proto-Indo-European language considerably earlier than the separation of the remaining Indo-European languages...
hypothesis proposes the Indo European language family to consist of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as the gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia and the preservation of laryngeals. However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view the Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non-satem languages in general - including Anatolian - might be due to their peripheral location in the Indo-European language area and early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship.
Holm (2008) based on lexical calculations arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.
Satem and centum languages
The terms Centum and Satem are used to describe the evolution of the three original sets of
velar consonantVelars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
s that have been reconstructed for
Proto-Indo-EuropeanThe Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
,
* (labiovelars),
* (velars), and
*; (palatovelars). Satem languages (Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic) lost the distinction between labiovelar and pure velar sounds, and at the same time assibilated the palatal velars. The Centum languages (Germanic, Italic, and Celtic), on the other hand, changed the palatal velars to be the same as pure velars.
Note that the terms "Centum" or "Satem" do not imply that Centum languages descend from a "proto-Centum" or that languages exhibiting Satem features descend from a "proto-Satem". Most modern scholars see the Satem sound change as an areal feature radiating outward from the central Indo-European language communities, but largely failing to reach the western and eastern peripheries.
The
Satem-Centum isoglossThe Centum-Satem division is an isogloss of the Indo-European language family, related to the evolution of the three dorsal consonant rows reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, * , * , and *;...
runs right between the Greek (Centum) and Armenian (Satem) languages (which a number of scholars regard as closely related), with Greek exhibiting some marginal Satem features. Some scholars think that some languages classify neither as Satem nor as Centum (Anatolian, Tocharian, and possibly Albanian).
Areal contact among already distinct post-PIE languages (say, during the 3rd millennium BC) may have spread the sound changes involved. In any case, present-day specialists are rather less galvanized by the division than 19th century scholars were, partly because of the recognition that it is, after all, just one
isoglossAn isogloss refers to a specific type of language border. It is the geographical boundary or delineation of a certain linguistic feature , the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. Major dialects are typically demarcated by whole bundles of isoglosses, e.g...
among the multitudes that criss-cross Indo-European linguistic geography.
Suggested superfamilies
Some linguists propose that Indo-European languages form part of a hypothetical Nostratic language superfamily, and attempt to relate Indo-European to other language families, such as
South Caucasian languagesThe South Caucasian languages are spoken primarily in Georgia, with smaller groups of speakers in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia and Israel. There are approximately 5.2 million speakers of this language family group worldwide.It is not known to be related to any other language group in the world...
,
Uralic languagesThe Uralic languages constitute a language family of 39 languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
,
Dravidian languagesThe Dravidian family of languages includes approximately 73 languages, spoken by around 200 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and overseas in other...
, and
Afroasiatic languagesThe Afroasiatic languages constitute a language family with about 375 living languages and more than 350 million speakers spread throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia, as well as parts of the Sahel, West Africa and East Africa. Arabic is the most widespread Afroasiatic...
. This theory, like the similar
EurasiaticEurasiatic is a hypothetical language family proposed by Joseph Greenberg that groups all of the language families historically spoken in northern Eurasia into a single higher-order family, with the sole exception of the Yeniseian languages, spoken in part of Siberia, but including the Eskimo-Aleut...
theory of
Joseph GreenbergJoseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
, and the Proto-Pontic postulation of John Colarusso, remains highly controversial, however, and is not accepted by most linguists in the field. Objections to such groupings are not based on any theoretical claim about the likely historical existence or non-existence of such super-families; it is entirely reasonable to suppose that they might have existed. The serious difficulty lies in identifying the details of actual relationships between language families; it is very hard to find concrete evidence that transcends chance resemblance. Since the noise-to-signal ratio in historical linguistics increases steadily over time, at great enough time-depths it becomes open to reasonable doubt that it can even be possible to distinguish between signal and noise. For further discussion of these methodological questions, see these resources.
Proto-Indo-European
The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the
Proto-Indo-EuropeansThe Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , an unattested but now reconstructed prehistoric language....
. The classical phase of Indo-European
comparative linguisticsComparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
leads from
Franz BoppFranz Bopp was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages.-Biography:...
's
Comparative Grammar (1833) to
August SchleicherAugust Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language...
's 1861
Compendium and up to
Karl BrugmannKarl Brugmann was a German linguist. He is a towering figure in Indo-European linguistics.During most of his professional life , Brugmann was professor of Sanskrit and comparative linguistics at the University of Leipzig....
's
Grundriss published from the 1880s. Brugmann's
junggrammatische reevaluation of the field and
Ferdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century...
's development of the
laryngeal theoryThe laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of a set of three consonant sounds known as "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
may be considered the beginning of "contemporary" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as
Calvert WatkinsCalvert Watkins is a professor Emeritus of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA.His doctoral dissertation, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I...
,
Jochem SchindlerJochem Schindler was an Austrian Indo-Europeanist. In spite of his comparatively thin bibliography, he made important contributions, in particular to the theory of PIE nominal inflection and ablaut.-References:*Eichner Compositiones Indogermanicae in memoriam Jochem Schindler, Praha .*Wolfgang...
and
Helmut RixHelmut Rix was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany....
) developed a better understanding of morphology and, in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956
Apophonie, understanding of the
ablautIn linguistics, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel gradation in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages...
. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became certain enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Using the method of
internal reconstructionInternal reconstruction is a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date...
an earlier stage, called Pre-Proto-Indo-European, has been proposed.
PIE was an inflected language, in which the grammatical relationships between words were signaled through inflectional morphemes (usually endings). The
rootsThe root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. Content words in nearly all languages contain, and may consist only of, root morphemes. However, sometimes the term "root" is also used to...
of PIE are basic
morphemeIn morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...
s carrying a lexical meaning. By addition of
suffixIn grammar, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es, they form stems, and by addition of desinences (usually endings), these form grammatically inflected words (nouns or verbs). The hypothetical Indo-European verb system is complex and, like the noun, exhibits a system of
ablautIn linguistics, the term ablaut designates a system of vowel gradation in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages...
.
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, on the other hand, is mostly undisputed, quite regardless of the question of Indo-European origins.
- 2500 BC–2000 BC: The breakup into the proto-languages of the attested dialects is complete. Proto-Greek is spoken in the Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
, Proto-Indo-IranianThe Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani. The term Aryan languages is occasionally still used to refer to the Indo-Iranian languages...
north of the Caspian in the emerging Andronovo cultureThe Andronovo culture, or Sintashta-Petrovka culture is a collection of similar local Bronze Age cultures that flourished ca. 2300–1000 BCE in western Siberia and the west Asiatic steppe. It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon...
. The Bronze Age reaches Central EuropeCentral Europe is the region lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. The term and widespread interest in the region itself came back into fashion after the end of the Cold War, which, along with the Iron Curtain, had divided Europe politically into East and West,...
with the Beaker cultureThe Bell-Beaker culture , ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age...
, likely composed of various Centum dialects. The Tarim mummiesThe Tarim mummies are a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, China, which date from 1800 BCE to 200 CE. Some of the mummies are frequently associated with the presence of the Indo-European Tocharian languages in the Tarim Basin although the evidence is not...
possibly correspond to proto-TochariansThe Tocharians were the Tocharian-speaking inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, making them the easternmost speakers of Indo-European languages in antiquity.-Name:...
.
- 2000 BC–1500 BC: Catacomb culture
The Catacomb culture, ca. 2800-2200 BC, refers to an early Bronze Age culture occupying essentially what is present-day Ukraine. It was related to the Yamna culture, and would seem more of an areal term to cover several smaller related archaeological cultures....
north of the black sea. The chariotThe chariot is the earliest and simplest type of carriage, used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Chariots were built in Mesopotamia by the Mesopotamians as early as 3000 BC and in China during the 2nd millennium BC. The original chariot was a fast, light, open,...
is invented, leading to the split and rapid spread of IranianThe Iranian languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family and its subfamily, Indo-Iranian. They are spoken by the Iranian peoples. Avestan is the oldest recorded Iranian language....
and Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family.SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , Marathi ,...
from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological ComplexThe Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex is the modern archaeological designation for a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia, dated to ca. 2200–1700 BC, located in present day Turkmenistan, northern Afghanistan, southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan, centered on the upper Amu Darya...
over much of Central AsiaAsia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.Various definitions of its...
, Northern IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
, IranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanid period and came into international use from 1935, before which the country was known internationally as Persia...
and Eastern AnatoliaAnatolia is a geographic region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Iranian plateau to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the west...
. Proto-Anatolian is split into HittiteHittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
and Luwian. The pre-Proto-Celtic Unetice cultureUnetice – or more properly Únětice culture – is the name given to an early Bronze Age culture, preceded by the Beaker culture and followed by the Tumulus culture. The eponymous site is located at Únětice, northwest of Prague...
has an active metal industry (Nebra skydiskThe Nebra Sky Disk is a bronze disk of around 30 cm diameter, with a blue-green patina and inlaid with gold symbols. These are interpreted generally as a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars . Two golden arcs along the sides, marking the angle between the solstices, were added later...
).
- 1500 BC–1000 BC: The Nordic Bronze Age
The Nordic Bronze Age is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian pre-history, c. 1700-500 BC, with sites that reached as far east as Estonia. Succeeding the Late Neolithic culture, its ethnic and linguistic affinities are unknown in the absence of...
develops pre-Proto-Germanic, and the (pre)-Proto-Celtic Urnfield and HallstattThe Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture from the 8th to 6th centuries BC , developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century BC and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.By the 6th century BC, the Halstatt culture extended for some 1000 km,...
cultures emerge in Central Europe, introducing the Iron AgeIn archaeology, the Iron Age is the prehistoric period in any area during which cutting tools and weapons were mainly made of iron or steel. The adoption of this material coincided with other changes in society, including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs and artistic styles.The...
. Migration of the Proto-ItalicThe Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin itself.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
speakers into the Italian peninsula (Bagnolo steleThe Bagnolo steles are two stone boulders found in Ceresolo-Bagnolo, Malegno commune, Brescia province, Lombardia, Northern Italy, at the base of Monte Mignone, at an altitude of ca. 700 m. Bagnolo 1 was discovered in 1963, bearing depictions of 14 items, engraved by hammering...
). Redaction of the RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns. It is counted among the four canonical sacred texts of Hinduism known as the Vedas...
and rise of the Vedic civilization in the PunjabThe Punjab The Punjab The Punjab (pronounced or ; Punjabi: ਪੰਜਾਬ, The Punjab (pronounced or ; [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]]: [[Gurmukhī script|ਪੰਜਾਬ]], The Punjab (pronounced or ; [[Punjabi language|Punjabi]]: [[Gurmukhī script|ਪੰਜਾਬ]], [[Shahmukhi script|, ), also spelled Panjab ' onMouseout='HidePop("29385")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Greek_Dark_Ages">Greek Dark Ages
The Greek Dark Ages and Greek Dark Age are terms which have regularly been used to refer to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean Palatial civilization around 1200 BC, to the first signs of the Greek city-states in the 9th century BC...
.
- 1000 BC–500 BC: The Celtic languages
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in...
spread over Central and Western Europe. Baltic languagesThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
are spoken in a huge area from present-day Poland to the Ural Mountains. Proto Germanic. HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
and the beginning of Classical AntiquityClassical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
. The Vedic Civilization gives way to the MahajanapadasMahajanapadas , literally "Great realms," were Ancient Indian kingdoms or countries...
. Siddhartha Gautama attains enlightenment and preaches BuddhismBuddhism, as traditionally conceived, is a path of salvation attained through insight into the ultimate nature of reality. It encompasses a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha...
. ZoroasterZoroaster or Zarathushtra , also referred to as Zartosht , was an ancient Iranian prophet and religious poet. The hymns attributed to him, the Gathas, are at the liturgical core of Zoroastrianism...
composes the GathaGatha is a type of metered and often rhythmic poetic verse or a phrase in the ancient Indian languages of Prakrit and Sanskrit. The word is originally derived from the Sanskrit/Prakrit root gai , which means, to speak, sing, recite or extol. Hence gatha can mean either speech, verse or a song...
s, rise of the Achaemenid EmpireThe Achaemenid Empire or Persian Empire was the successor state of the Median Empire, ruling over significant portions of what would become Greater Iran. The Persian and the Median Empire taken together are also known as the Medo-Persian Empire, succeeding the Neo-Assyrian Empire...
, replacing the Elamites and BabyloniaBabylonia was a civilization in Lower Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad...
. Separation of Proto-Italic into Osco-UmbrianThe Osco-Umbrian languages or Sabellic languages are a group of languages that belong to the Italic language family of the Indo-European languages. They were spoken in central and southern Italy before Latin replaced them as the power of the Romans expanded...
and Latin-Faliscan. Genesis of the GreekThe Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is the first and oldest alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and consonant with a separate symbol. It is as such in continuous use to...
and Old ItalicOld Italic refers to several now extinct alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European languages and non-Indo-European languages...
alphabets. A variety of Paleo-Balkan languagesThe Paleo-Balkan languages is a geo-linguistic concept referring to the Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Balkans in ancient times...
are spoken in Southern Europe. The Anatolian languages are extinctIn linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language idiom is decreased...
.
- 500 BC–1 BC/AD: Classical Antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
: spread of GreekAncient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
throughout the Mediterranean, and during HellenismHellenism may refer to:*Hellenistic civilization*Hellenistic period, in Greek antiquity*Hellenistic Greece*Hellenization, the spread of Greek culture over foreign peoples*Hellenistic philosophy in the Hellenistic period and late antiquity...
(Indo-Greeks) to Central Asia and the Hindukush. Kushan EmpireThe Kushan Empire of Ancient India originally formed in the territories of ancient Bactria on either side of the middle course of the Oxus River or Amu Darya in what is now northern Afghanistan, and southern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan...
, Mauryan Empire. Proto-Germanic.
- 1 BC/AD 500: Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the transitional centuries from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown...
, Gupta period; attestation of ArmenianThe Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenian people. It is the official language of the Republic of Armenia as well as in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The language is also widely spoken by Armenian communities in the Armenian diaspora...
. Proto-Slavic. The Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
and then the Great Migrations marginalize the Celtic languages to the British Isles.
- 500–1000: Early Middle Ages
The Early Middle Ages, or Dark Ages, is a period in the history of Europe following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It lasted from about AD 500 to 1000. The period featured raiding, migration, and conquest by Huns, Germanic peoples, Arabs, Vikings, Hungarians and others. There was frequent...
. The Viking AgeViking Age is the term for the period in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, spanning the eighth to eleventh centuries. Scandinavian Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. The Vikings also reached Iceland, Greenland,...
forms an Old NorseOld Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
koine spanning Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland. The Islamic conquest and the Turkic expansion results in the ArabizationArabization describes a growing cultural influence on a non-Arab area that gradually changes into one that speaks Arabic and/or incorporates Arab culture...
and TurkificationTurkification is a term used to describe a process of cultural change in which something or someone who is not a Turk becomes one, voluntarily...
of significant areas where Indo-European languages were spoken. TocharianTocharian may refer to:* Tocharians, an ancient people who inhabited the Tarim Basin in Central Asia* Tocharian languages, two Indo-European languages spoken by those people...
is extinct in the course of the Turkic expansion while Northeastern Iranian (Scytho-Sarmatian) is reduced to small refugia.
- 1000–1500: Late Middle Ages
The Late Middle Ages is a term used by historians to describe European history in the period of the 14th and 15th centuries . The Late Middle Ages were preceded by the High Middle Ages, and followed by the Early Modern era ....
: Attestation of AlbanianAlbanian is a unique Indo-European language spoken by nearly 6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, Montenegro, and southern Serbia. Albanian is also spoken by native enclaves...
and Baltic languagesThe Baltic languages are a group of related languages belonging to the Indo-European language family and spoken mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe...
.
- 1500–2000: Early Modern period
Early modern Europe is the term used by historians to refer to a period in the history of Western Europe and its first colonies which spanned the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the late 15th century to the late 18th century...
to present: ColonialismColonialism is the building and maintaining of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metropole...
results in the spread of Indo-European languages to every continent, most notably Romance (North, Central and South America, French Canada, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia), West GermanicThe West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three traditional branches of the Germanic family of languages and include languages such as English, Dutch and Afrikaans, German, the Frisian languages, and Yiddish...
(EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
in North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Australia; to a lesser extent Dutch and German), and RussianRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
to Central Asia and North Asia.
Sound changes
As the Proto-Indo-European language broke up, its sound system diverged as well, changing according to various sound laws evidenced in the daughter-languages. Notable cases of such sound laws include
Grimm's lawGrimm's law named for Jacob Grimm, is a set of statements describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European stops as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC...
in Proto-Germanic, loss of prevocalic
*p- in Proto-Celtic, loss of intervocalic
*s- in Proto-Greek,
Brugmann's lawBrugmann's law, named for Karl Brugmann, states that Proto-Indo-European in non-final syllables became *ā in open syllables in Indo-Iranian. Everywhere else the outcome was *ǎ, the same as the reflexes of PIE *e and *a...
in Proto-Indo-Iranian, as well as satemization (discussed above).
Grassmann's lawGrassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration...
and
Bartholomae's lawBartholomae's law is an early Indo-European sound law affecting the Indo-Iranian family, though thanks to the falling together of plain voiced and voiced aspirated stops in Iranian, its impact on the phonological history of that subgroup is unclear....
may or may not have operated at the common Indo-European stage.
Comparison of conjugations
The following table presents a comparison of conjugations of the
thematicIn Indo-European linguistics, a thematic stem or vowel stem is a noun or verb stem that ends in a vowel that appears in or otherwise influences the noun or verb's inflectional paradigm. The vowel is called the thematic vowel...
present indicativeThe present tense is the tense that may be used to express:* action at the present* a state of being;* an occurrence in the near future; or* an action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present....
of the verbal root * 'to carry' (whence English verb
to bear) and its reflexes in various early attested IE languages and their modern descendants or relatives, showing that all languages had in the early stage an inflectional verb system.
| Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European may refer to:*Proto-Indo-European language, the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.*Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language....
(* 'to carry') |
| I (1st. Sg.) |
* |
| You (2nd. Sg.) |
* |
| He/She/It (3rd. Sg.) |
* |
| We (1st. Du.) |
* |
| You (2nd. Du.) |
* |
| They (3rd. Du.) |
* |
| We (1st. Pl.) |
* |
| You (2nd. Pl.) |
* |
| They (3rd. Pl.) |
* |
| Language Family |
Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family.SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , Marathi ,...
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Greek Greek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
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ItalicThe Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin itself.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed...
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GermanicThe Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
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CelticThe Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in...
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SlavicThe Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
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Armenian |
| Vedic Sanskrit Vedic Sanskrit is an Old Indic language. It is the language of the Vedas, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism, compiled over the period of the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BC. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the...
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Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
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LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
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GothicGothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th century copy of a 4th century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable corpus...
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Old Irish |
OCS |
Cl. Arm. |
| I (1st. Sg.) |
bhárāmi |
phérō |
ferō |
baíra /bɛra/ |
biru |
berǫ |
berem |
| You (2nd. Sg.) |
bhárasi |
phéreis |
fers |
baíris |
biri |
bereši |
beres |
| He/She/It (3rd. Sg.) |
bhárati |
phérei |
fert |
baíriþ |
berid |
beretъ |
berē |
| We (1st. Du.) |
bhárāvas |
--- |
--- |
baíros |
--- |
berevě |
--- |
| You (2nd. Du.) |
bhárathas |
phéreton |
--- |
baírats |
--- |
bereta |
--- |
| They (3rd. Du.) |
bháratas |
phéreton |
--- |
--- |
--- |
berete |
--- |
| We (1st. Pl.) |
bhárāmas |
phéromen |
ferimus |
baíram |
bermai |
beremъ |
berenk` |
| You (2nd. Pl.) |
bháratha |
phérete |
fertis |
baíriþ |
beirthe |
berete |
berēk` |
| They (3rd. Pl.) |
bháranti |
phérousi |
ferunt |
baírand |
berait |
berǫtъ |
beren |
| Language Family |
Hindi Standard Hindi, also known as High Hindi, Nagari Hindi or Literary Hindi is a standardised register of Hindi. It is one of the 22 languages with official status in India, and is used, along with English, for administration of the central government.Standard Hindi is a sanskritised register derived...
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Modern GreekModern Greek refers to the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features...
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FrenchFrench is a Romance language globally spoken by about 65 million people as a first language , by 50 million as a second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired foreign language, with significant speakers in 57 countries. Most native speakers of the language live in France,...
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German German is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
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Irish Irish is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now only spoken natively by a small minority of the Irish population but also plays an important symbolic role in the life of the Irish state, and is used...
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CzechCzech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian. - Official status :Czech is widely...
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PersianPersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is widely spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and to some extent in Iraq and Bahrain, and has a status of official language in the first three countries under different names...
|
| I (1st. Sg.) |
(maiṃ) bharūṃ |
férno |
(je) {con}fère |
(ich) {ge}bäre |
beirim |
beru |
bordam |
| You (2nd. Sg.) |
(tū) bhare |
férnis |
(tu) {con}fères |
(du) {ge}bärst |
beireann (tú) |
bereš |
bordi |
| He/She/It (3rd. Sg.) |
(vah) bhare |
férni |
(il) {con}fère |
(er) {ge}bärt |
beireann (sé/sí) |
bere |
bord |
| We (1st. Pl.) |
(ham) bhareṃ |
férnoume |
(nous) {con}ferons |
(wir) {ge}bären |
beirimid |
berem(e) |
bordim |
| You (2nd. Pl.) |
(tum) bharo |
férnete |
(vous) {con}ferez |
(ihr) {ge}bärt |
beireann (sibh) |
berete |
bordid |
| They (3rd. Pl.) |
(ve) bhareṃ |
férnoun |
(ils) {con}fèrent |
(sie) {ge}bären |
beireann (siad) |
berou |
bordand |
While similarities are still visible between the modern descendants and relatives of these ancient languages, the differences have increased over time. Some IE languages have moved from
syntheticA synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications , although there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to exhibit synthetic properties.-Synthetic and...
verb systems to largely
periphrasticIn linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...
systems. The
pronounIn linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English...
s of periphrastic forms are in brackets when they appear. 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.
- The Hindi verb bharnā, the continuation of the Sanskrit verb, can have a variety of meanings, but the most common is "to fill". The forms given in the table, although etymologically derived from the present indicative, now have the meaning of subjunctive. The present indicative is conjugated periphrastically, using a participle (etymologically the Sanskrit present participle bharant-) and an auxiliary: maiṃ bhartā hūṃ, tū bhartā hai, vah bhartā hai, ham bharte haiṃ, tum bharte ho, ve bharte haiṃ (masculine forms).
- German is not directly descended from Gothic, but the Gothic forms are a close approximation of what the early West Germanic forms of c. 400 AD would have looked like. The cognate of Germanic beranan (English bear) survives in German only in the compound gebären, meaning "bear (a child)".
- The Latin verb ferre is irregular, and not a good representative of a normal thematic verb. In French, the irregular Latin verb ferre "to carry" has been supplanted by other verbs and ferre only survives in compounds such as souffrir "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 used but only in specific contexts not in everyday language. 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.
- In Modern Russian брать (brat) carries the meaning to take. Бремя (bremia) means burden, as something heavy to bear, and derivative беременность (beremennost) means pregnancy.
See also
- Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
- Indo-European copula
A feature common to all Indo-European languages is the presence of a verb corresponding to the English verb to be. In some languages the verb, though vestigial, is present nonetheless, in atrophied forms or derivatives.-General features:...
- Indo-European sound laws
As the Proto-Indo-European language broke up, its sound system diverged as well, according to various sound laws in the daughter languages....
- Indo-European studies
Indo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...
- Language family
A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics...
- List of Indo-European languages
- Modern Indo-European
Modern Indo-European is an international auxiliary language based on the late Proto-Indo-European language, presented by two students at Extremadura University, Carlos Quiles and María Teresa Batalla, in 2006.-Purpose:...
- Nostratic languages
Nostratic is a proposed language family that includes many of the indigenous language families of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. The term "Nostratic" roughly translated means "our language"...
- Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction...
- Proto-Indo-European root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic morphemes carrying a lexical meaning. By addition of suffixes, they form stems, and by addition of endings, these form grammatically inflected words ....
Further reading
- Chakrabarti, Byomkes
Dr. Byomkes Chakrabarti was a Bengali research worker on ethnic languages. He was also a renowned educationist and a poet. His major contribution to linguistics was in finding out some basic relationship between Santali and the Bengali language...
(1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co. ISBN 8170741289
- Mallory, J.P., (1989). In Search of the Indo-Europeans London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-27616-1
- Renfrew, Colin (1987). Archaeology & Language. The Puzzle of the Indo-European Origins. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-02495-7
- Meillet, Antoine
Antoine Meillet , was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. Meillet began his studies at the Sorbonne, where he was influenced by Michel Bréal, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the members of the Année Sociologique...
. Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique,1903.
- Schleicher, August
August Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language...
, A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages (1861/62).
- Remys, Edmund, General distinguishing features of various Indo-European languages and their relationship to Lithuanian. Berlin, New York: Indogermanische Forschungen, Vol. 112, 2007.
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