The Indo-European languages are a family A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term comes from the Tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree or in a subsequent modification to species in a (or phylum) of several hundred related languages and dialects The Indo-European languages include some 443 languages and dialects spoken by about three billion people, including most of the major language families of Europe and western Asia, which belong to a single superfamily. Each subfamily in this list contains many subgroups and individual languages,^[1] including most major languages of Europe Most 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, while the North and South Caucasian families are important in the southeastern extremity of geographical Europe. Basque is a language isolate directly related to ancient Aquitanian,, the Iranian plateau The Iranian plateau, also known as the Persian plateau is a geological formation in Southwest Asia. It is the part of the Eurasian Plate wedged between the Arabian and Indian plates, situated between the Zagros mountains to the west, the Caspian Sea and the Kopet Dag to the north, the Hormuz Strait and Arabian Sea to the south and Indus River to, and South Asia, and historically also predominant in Anatolia Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the western two-thirds of the Republic of Turkey. The region is bounded by the Black Sea to the north, Georgia to the northeast, the Armenian Highland to the east, Mesopotamia to the southeast, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea and Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west, China in the east, Afghanistan in the south, and Russia in the north. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent. With written attestations appearing since the Bronze Age The Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking in that culture used 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. Many, though not all, Bronze Age cultures flourished in prehistory, in the form of the 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 and Mycenaean Greek Mycenaean 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 which was often cited as the terminus post quem for the coming of the Greek language to Greece. The language is preserved in inscriptions in Linear B, a script first, the Indo-European family is significant to the field of historical linguistics Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity as possessing the longest recorded history after the Afroasiatic The 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. The most widely spoken Afroasiatic language is Arabic, with over 280 million native speakers family.

Indo-European languages are spoken by almost three billion native speakers^[2], the largest number for any recognised language family. Of the top 20 This 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 which uses the same criteria for counting in each contemporary languages in terms of native speakers according to SIL Ethnologue Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language, twelve are Indo-European: Spanish Countries where Spanish has official status. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 25% or more of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 10-20% of the population. States of the U.S. where Spanish has no official status but is spoken by 5-9.9% of the population, English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of, Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: हिन्दी or हिंदी, IAST: Hindī, IPA: [ˈɦɪndiː] ) is the name given to various Indo-Aryan languages, dialects, and language registers spoken in northern and central India, Pakistan, Fiji, Mauritius, and Suriname. Standard Hindi is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India, the official language of the, Portuguese Portuguese ( português or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated from a fusion of the dialect spoken in what is now Galicia and northern Portugal with closely related dialects spoken in territories to the south which had not yet been reconquered by the Christians to the Arabs by the time Portugal was born as a Christian kingdom, Bengali Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script. With nearly 230 million total speakers, Bengali is one of the, Russian Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of three living members of the East Slavic languages. Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th, German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) 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. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers, Marathi Marathi 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. Marathi is the oldest of the regional literatures in, French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in, Italian Italian ( italiano , or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by about 62 million people in Italy, San Marino and parts of Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia and France. It is spoken as a first language by many Italian citizens and immigrants abroad, for a total of approximately 70 million native speakers. In addition, it, Punjabi Punjabi or Panjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region (in Pakistan and north western India), and Urdu Urdu (Urdu: اردو, IPA: [ˈʊrduː] ) is a standardised register of Hindustani. It is the national language and one of the two official languages of Pakistan (the other being English), and one of 22 scheduled languages of India, as an official language of five Indian states. Its vocabulary developed under Persian, Turkic, and Pashto[citation, accounting for over 1.7 billion native speakers.^[3]

Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to 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 The Society of Jesus is a religious order of men called Jesuits, who follow the teachings of the Catholic Church. Jesuit priests and brothers — also sometimes known colloquially as "God's marines" — are engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations on six continents reflecting the Formula of the Institute (principle) missionary in Goa Goa (pronounced /ˈɡoʊ.ə/ ; Konkani: गोंय) is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located on India's west coast 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. Goa is India's, noted similarities between Indian languages, specifically Konkani Konkani is an Indo-Aryan language belonging to the Indo-European family of languages spoken in the Konkan coast of India. It has approximately 3.6 million speakers of its two individual languages, Konkani and Goan Konkani, and Greek and Latin. These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.^[4]

The first account by a western European to mention the ancient language Sanskrit Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism[note 1]. Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. Sanskrit has been declared a classical language by the Government of India came from Filippo Sassetti (born in Florence, Italy in 1540), a merchant who traveled to the Indian subcontinent. 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").^[4] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.^[4]

In 1647 Dutch Catholicism, Protestantism , Nontheism linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn was a Dutch scholar (his latinized name was Marcus Zuerius Boxhornii). 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'. He included in his hypothesis Dutch, noted the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed that they derived from a primitive common language which he called "Scythian The Scythians or Scyths were an ancient Iranian people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who throughout Classical Antiquity dominated the Pontic-Caspian steppe, known at the time as Scythia. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scythians in this area. Much of the surviving information about the Scythians comes". He included in his hypothesis Dutch Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language and over 5 million people as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, with smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other, 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 ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of, Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. With the Roman conquest, Latin was spread to countries around the Mediterranean, including a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Aragonese, Corsican, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, Spanish and others, are descended from Latin, while, Persian Persian 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, Bahrain, and Oman. New Persian, which usually is called also by the names of Farsi, Parsi, Dari or Parsi-ye-Dari (Dari Persian), can be classified linguistically, and German German (Deutsch, [ˈdɔʏtʃ] ) 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. Globally, German is spoken by approximately 120 million native speakers and also by about 80 million non-native speakers, later adding Slavic 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, Celtic 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 central Gaul. During the 1st 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. The language group is sometimes divided into two sub-groups: Western Baltic, containing only extinct languages, and Eastern Baltic, containing both. 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. Similarly, Mikhail Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (Russian: Михаи́л Васи́льевич Ломоно́сов; November 19 [O.S. November 8] 1711– April 15 [O.S. April 4] 1765) was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus. His spheres compared different languages groups of the world including Slavic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Iranian ("Medic"), Finnish, Chinese, "Hottentot", and others. He emphatically expressed the antiquity of the linguistic stages accessible to comparative method in the drafts for his Russian Grammar (published 1755):^[5]

The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones Sir 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. He was also the founder of the Asiatic Society first lectured on the striking similarities between three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many, 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 ancient Greek literature and the New Testament of, and Sanskrit Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism and Buddhism[note 1]. Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. Sanskrit has been declared a classical language by the Government of India, to which he tentatively added Gothic Gothic 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. All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic, are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in, Celtic 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 central Gaul. During the 1st, and Old Persian The Old Persian language is one of the two attested Old Iranian languages . Old Persian appears primarily in the inscriptions, clay tablets, seals of the Achaemenid era (c. 600 BCE to 300 BCE). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt the most important attestation by far being the contents of,^[6] though also committing some inaccuracies and omissions in his classification.^[7]

It was Thomas Young Thomas Young was an English genius and polymath, admired by among others Herschel and Einstein. He is famous with the public for having partly deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs before Champollion did who first used the term Indo-European in 1813,^[8] which became the standard scientific term (except in Germany^[9]) through the work of Franz Bopp, 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 studies as an academic discipline.

The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from Franz Bopp's Comparative Grammar (1833) to August Schleicher's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann's Grundriss published from the 1880s. Brugmann's junggrammatische reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure's development of the laryngeal theory 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 Watkins, Jochem Schindler and Helmut Rix) developed a better understanding of morphology and, in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie, understanding of the ablaut.

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:

1. Anatolian languages, earliest attested branch. Isolated terms in Old Assyrian sources from the 19th century BC, Hittite texts from about the 16th century BC; extinct by Late Antiquity.
2. Hellenic languages, fragmentary records in Mycenaean Greek from the late 15th - early 14th century BC; Homeric traditions date to the 8th century BC. (See Proto-Greek language, History of the Greek language.)
3. Indo-Iranian languages, born from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian (dated to the late 3rd millenium BC)
   • Iranian languages, attested from roughly 1000 BC in the form of Avestan. Epigraphically from 520 BC in the form of Old Persian (Behistun inscription).
   • Indo-Aryan languages, attested from the late 15th - early 14th century BC in Mitanni texts showing traces of Indo-Aryan. Epigraphically from the 3rd century BC in the form of Prakrit (Edicts of Ashoka). The Rigveda is assumed to preserve intact records via oral tradition dating from about the mid-2nd millennium BC in the form of Vedic Sanskrit.
   • Dardic languages
   • Nuristani languages
4. Italic languages, including Latin and its descendants (the Romance languages), attested from the 7th century BC.
5. Celtic languages, descended from Proto-Celtic. Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Celtiberian from the 2nd century BC; Old Irish manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD, and there are inscriptions in Old Welsh from the same period.
6. Germanic languages (from Proto-Germanic), earliest testimonies in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century AD, earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century AD. Old English manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD.
7. Armenian language, alphabet writings known from the beginning of the 5th century AD.
8. Tocharian languages, extant in two dialects, attested from roughly the 6th to the 9th century AD. Marginalized by the Old Turkic Uyghur Khaganate and probably extinct by the 10th century.
9. Balto-Slavic languages, believed by most Indo-Europeanists^[10] to form a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes similarities to prolonged language contact.
   • Slavic languages (from Proto-Slavic), attested from the 9th century AD (possibly earlier; see Slavic runes), earliest texts in Old Church Slavonic.
   • Baltic languages, attested from the 14th century AD, and, for languages attested that late, they retain unusually many archaic features attributed to Proto-Indo-European (PIE).
10. Albanian language, attested from the 14th century AD; Proto-Albanian likely emerged from Paleo-Balkan predecessors.^[11][12]

In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages have existed:

• Illyrian languages — related to Messapian and Albanian.
• Venetic language — close to Italic.
• Liburnian language — apparently grouped with Venetic.
• Messapian language — not conclusively deciphered.
• Phrygian language — language of ancient Phrygia, possibly close to Thracian, Greek, and Armenian^{[citation needed]}.
• Paionian language — extinct language once spoken north of Macedon.
• Thracian language — possibly including Dacian.
• Dacian language — possibly very close to Thracian.
• Ancient Macedonian language — proposed relationships to Greek, Illyrian, Thracian, and Phrygian.
• Ligurian language — possibly not Indo-European; possibly close to or part of Celtic.
• Lusitanian language — possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, or Ligurian, or Italic.

Grouping

Membership of these languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genetic relationships, meaning that all members are presumed to be descendants of a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. 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.

Tree versus wave model

To the evolutionary history of a language family, a genetic "tree model" is considered appropriate especially if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. Exempted from this concept are shared innovations acquired by borrowing (or other means of convergence), that cannot be considered genetic. In this case the so-called "wave model" applies, featuring borrowings and no clear underlying genetic tree. 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 features. 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, which is in agreement with the wave model . The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence that comprise very different branches.

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.^[13]

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 postulated the existence of such subfamilies (subgroups) as Italo-Celtic, Graeco-Armenian, 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^[14].

Subgroupings of the Indo European languages are commonly held to reflect genetic relationships and linguistic change. 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.^[15] 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.^[16]

Shared features of Phrygian and Greek ^[17] and of Thracian and Armenian ^[18] group the southeastern branches of Indo-European together. Some fundamental shared features, like the aorist (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^[19] and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts.^[20]

The Indo-Hittite 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^[21] and the preservation of laryngeals.^[22] 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.^[23] Holm (2008)^[24] 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 division of the Indo-European languages into a Satem vs. a Centum group was devised by von Bradke in the late 19th century and is said by some^[who?] to be outdated because of being based on just one phonological feature.

Suggested superfamilies

Some linguists propose that Indo-European languages form part of a hypothetical Nostratic superfamily, and attempt to relate Indo-European to other language families, such as South Caucasian languages, Uralic languages, Dravidian languages, and Afroasiatic languages. This theory, like the similar Eurasiatic theory of Joseph Greenberg, 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 signal-to-noise ratio in historical linguistics declines 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.

Evolution

Proto-Indo-European

The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. From 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 was an inflected language, in which the grammatical relationships between words were signaled 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 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 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, 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, Proto-Indo-Iranian north of the Caspian in the emerging Andronovo culture. The Bronze Age reaches Central Europe with the Beaker culture, likely composed of various Centum dialects. The Tarim mummies possibly correspond to proto-Tocharians.
• 2000 BC–1500 BC: Catacomb culture north of the Black Sea. The chariot is invented, leading to the split and rapid spread of Iranian and Indo-Aryan from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex over much of Central Asia, Northern India, Iran and Eastern Anatolia. Proto-Anatolian is split into Hittite and Luwian. The pre-Proto-Celtic Unetice culture has an active metal industry (Nebra skydisk).
• 1500 BC–1000 BC: The Nordic Bronze Age develops pre-Proto-Germanic, and the (pre)-Proto-Celtic Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures emerge in Central Europe, introducing the Iron Age. Migration of the Proto-Italic speakers into the Italian peninsula (Bagnolo stele). Redaction of the Rigveda and rise of the Vedic civilization in the Punjab. The Mycenaean civilization gives way to the Greek Dark Ages.
• 1000 BC–500 BC: The Celtic languages spread over Central and Western Europe. Baltic languages are spoken in a huge area from present-day Poland to the Ural Mountains.^[25] Proto Germanic. Homer and the beginning of Classical Antiquity. The Vedic Civilization gives way to the Mahajanapadas. Siddhartha Gautama attains enlightenment and preaches Buddhism. Zoroaster composes the Gathas, rise of the Achaemenid Empire, replacing the Elamites and Babylonia. Separation of Proto-Italic into Osco-Umbrian and Latin-Faliscan. Genesis of the Greek and Old Italic alphabets. A variety of Paleo-Balkan languages are spoken in Southern Europe.
• 500 BC–1 BC/AD: Classical Antiquity: spread of Greek and Latin throughout the Mediterranean, and during the Hellenistic period (Indo-Greeks) to Central Asia and the Hindukush. Kushan Empire, Mauryan Empire. Proto-Germanic. The Anatolian languages are extinct.
• 1 BC/AD 500: Late Antiquity, Gupta period; attestation of Armenian. Proto-Slavic. The Roman Empire and then the Migration period marginalize the Celtic languages to the British Isles.
• 500–1000: Early Middle Ages. The Viking Age forms an Old Norse koine spanning Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland. The Islamic conquest and the Turkic expansion results in the Arabization and Turkification of significant areas where Indo-European languages were spoken. Tocharian is extinct in the course of the Turkic expansion while Northeastern Iranian (Scytho-Sarmatian) is reduced to small refugia.
• 1000–1500: Late Middle Ages: Attestation of Albanian and Baltic languages.
• 1500–2000: Early Modern period to present: Colonialism 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 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.

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 law in Proto-Germanic, loss of prevocalic *p- in Proto-Celtic, loss of intervocalic *s- in Proto-Greek, Brugmann's law in Proto-Indo-Iranian, as well as satemization (discussed above). Grassmann's law and Bartholomae's law 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 thematic present indicative of the verbal root *bʰer- '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.

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 synthetic verb systems to largely periphrastic systems. The pronouns 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 conferer "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.

Comparison of cognates

See also

• Grammatical conjugation
• Indo-European copula
• Indo-European sound laws
• Indo-European studies
• Language family
• List of Indo-European languages
• Modern Indo-European (auxlang)
• Nostratic languages
• Proto-Indo-European language
• Proto-Indo-European root

Citations and notes

1. ^ It includes 449 languages and dialects, according to the 2005 Ethnologue estimate, about half (219) belonging to the Indo-Aryan subbranch.
2. ^ Ethnologue list of language families
3. ^ Ethnologue list of languages by number of speakers
4. ^ ^{a b c} Auroux, Sylvain (2000). History of the Language Sciences. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. p. 1156. ISBN 3110167352. http://books.google.com/?id=yasNy365EywC&pg=PA1156&vq=stephens+sassetti&dq=3110167352.
5. ^ M. V. Lomonosov. In: Complete Edition, Moscow, 1952, vol. 7, pp 652-659: Представимъ долготу времени, которою сіи языки раздѣлились. ... Польской и россійской языкъ коль давно раздѣлились! Подумай же, когда курляндской! Подумай же, когда латинской, греч., нѣм., росс. О глубокая древность! [Imagine the depth of time when these languages separated! ... Polish and Russian separated so long ago! Now think how long ago [this happened to] Kurlandic! Think when [this happened to] Latin, Greek, German, and Russian! Oh, great antiquity!]
6. ^ http://www.billposer.org/Papers/iephm.pdf, cited on page 14-15.
7. ^ Roger Blench Archaeology and Language: methods and issues. In: A Companion To Archaeology. J. Bintliff ed. 52-74. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2004. (He erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi.)
8. ^ In London Quarterly Review X/2 1813.; cf. Szemerényi 1999:12, footnote 6
9. ^ In German it is indogermanisch 'Indo-Germanic' which indicates the east-west extension. That term was first recorded in use in French original as indo-germanique, in 1810 by Conrad Malte-Brun, a French geographer of Danish descent.
10. ^ such as Schleicher 1861, Szemerényi 1957, Collinge 1985, and Beekes 1995
11. ^ Of the Albanian Language - William Martin Leake, London, 1814.
12. ^ "The Thracian language". The Linguist List. http://linguistlist.org/forms/langs/LLDescription.cfm?code=txh. Retrieved 2008-01-27. "An ancient language of Southern Balkans, belonging to the Satem group of Indo-European. This language is the most likely ancestor of modern Albanian (which is also a Satem language), though the evidence is scanty. 1st Millennium BC - 500 AD."
13. ^ Nakhleh, Luay; Ringe, Don & Warnow, Tandy (2005), "Perfect Phylogenetic Networks: A New Methodology for Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of Natural Languages", Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America 81 (2): 382–420, doi:10.1353/lan.2005.0078, http://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/Papers/NRWlanguage.pdf .
14. ^ Mallory J.P., D. Q. Adams (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, London, 1997
15. ^ Britannica 15th edition, vol.22, 1981, p.588, 594
16. ^ Frederik Kortlandt-The spread of the Indo-Europeans, 1989
17. ^ Lubotsky - The Old Phrygian Areyastis-inscription, Kadmos 27, 9-26, 1988
18. ^ Kortlandt - The Thraco-Armenian consonant shift, Linguistique Balkanique 31, 71-74, 1988
19. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol.22, Helen Hemingway Benton Publisher, Chicago, (15th ed.) 1981, p.593
20. ^ George S. Lane, Douglas Q. Adams, Britannica 15th edition 22:667, "The Tocharian problem"
21. ^ The supposed autochthony of Hittites, the Indo-Hittite hypothesis and migration of agricultural "Indo-European" societies became intrinsically linked together by C. Renfrew. (Renfrew, C 2001a The Anatolian origins of Proto-Indo-European and the autochthony of the Hittites. In R. Drews ed., Greater Anatolia and the Indo-Hittite language. family: 36-63. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man).
22. ^ Britannica 15th edition, 22 p. 586 "Indo-European languages, The parent language, Laryngeal theory" - W.C.; p. 589, 593 "Anatolian languages" - Philo H.J. Houwink ten Cate, H. Craig Melchert and Theo P.J. van den Hout
23. ^ Britannica 15th edition, 22 p. 594, "Indo-Hittite hypothesis"
24. ^ [1] Holm, Hans J.: The Distribution of Data in Word Lists and its Impact on the Subgrouping of Languages. In: Christine Preisach, Hans Burkhardt, Lars Schmidt-Thieme, Reinhold Decker (eds.): Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications. Proc. of the 31st Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl), University of Freiburg, March 7–9, 2007. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg-Berlin (2008)
25. ^ http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie-lg/Balto-Slavic.html

References

• Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691058873. http://books.google.com/books?id=rOG5VcYxhiEC&dq.
• Auroux, Sylvain (2000), History of the Language Sciences, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ISBN 3110167352 .

• Fortson, Benjamin W. (2004). Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell. ISBN 1405103159.

• Houwink ten Cate, H. J.; Melchert, H. Craig & van den Hout, Theo P. J. (1981), "Indo-European languages, The parent language, Laryngeal theory", Encyclopædia Britannica, 22 (15th ed.), Chicago: Helen Hemingway Benton .
• Holm, Hans J. (2008), "The Distribution of Data in Word Lists and its Impact on the Subgrouping of Languages", in Preisach, Christine; Burkhardt, Hans; Schmidt-Thieme, Lars et al., Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications, Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl), University of Freiburg, March 7–9, 2007, Heidelberg-Berlin: Springer-Verlag, ISBN 9783540782391 .
• Kortlandt, Frederik (1990), "The Spread of the Indo-Europeans", Journal of Indo-European Studies 18 (1–2): 131–140 .
• Lubotsky, A. (1988), "The Old Phrygian Areyastis-inscription", Kadmos 27: 9–26 .
• Kortlandt, Frederik (1988), "The Thraco-Armenian consonant shift", Linguistique Balkanique 31: 71–74 .
• Lane, George S.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1981), "The Tocharian problem", Encyclopædia Britannica, 22 (15th ed.), Chicago: Helen Hemingway Benton .
• Renfrew, C. (2001), "The Anatolian origins of Proto-Indo-European and the autochthony of the Hittites", in Drews, R., Greater Anatolia and the Indo-Hittite language family, Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man, ISBN 0941694771 .
• Szemerényi, Oswald; Jones, David; Jones, Irene (1999), Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198238703

Further reading

• Beekes, Robert S. P. (1995). Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Chakrabarti, Byomkes (1994). A comparative study of Santali and Bengali. Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi & Co.. ISBN 8170741289.
• Collinge, N. E. (1985). The Laws of Indo-European. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• 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. Esquisse d’une grammaire comparée de l’arménien classique,1903.
• Schleicher, August, A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages (1861/62).
• Strazny, Philip (Ed). (2000). Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (1 ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1579582180.
• Szemerényi, Oswald (1957). "The problem of Balto-Slav unity". Kratylos 2: 97–123.
• Watkins, Calvert (2000). The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-08250-6.
• Remys, Edmund, General distinguishing features of various Indo-European languages and their relationship to Lithuanian. Berlin, New York: Indogermanische Forschungen, Vol. 112, 2007.
• Babaev, Kirill (2008). Origins of Indo-European Person Markers. Eidos. ISBN 978-5-902948-30-8.

External links

Databases

• Dyen, Isidore; Kruskal, Joseph; Black, Paul (1997). "Comparative Indo-European". wordgumbo. http://www.wordgumbo.com/ie/cmp/. Retrieved 13 December 2009.
• "Indo-European". LLOW Languages of the World. http://languageserver.uni-graz.at/ls/group?id=4. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
• "Indo-European Documentation Center". Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. 2009. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/iedocctr/ie.html. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
• Lewis, M. Paul, ed (2009). "Language Family Trees: Indo-European". Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Online version (Sixteenth ed.). Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=2-16 .
• "The Linguist List Multitree Portal for Indo-European". Eastern Michigan University. 1989-2007. http://multitree.linguistlist.org/codes/ieur. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
• "Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien: TITUS" (in German). TITUS, University of Frankfurt. 2003. http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/indexe.htm. Retrieved 13 December 2009.

Lexica

• "Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (IEED)". Leiden, Netherlands: Department of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, Leiden University. http://www.indoeuropean.nl. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
• "Indo-European Roots Index". The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language (Fourth ed.). Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. August 22, 2008 [2000]. http://web.archive.org/web/20080726143746/www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
• Köbler, Gerhard (2000). "Indogermanisches Wörterbuch" (in German). Gerhard Köbler. http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html. Retrieved 14 December 2009.
• Schalin, Johan (2009). "Lexicon of Early Indo-European Loanwords Preserved in Finnish". Johan Schalin. http://www.iki.fi/jschalin/?cat=10. Retrieved 9 December 2009.

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