Questions tagged [indo-european]
The language family covering the majority of the languages of Europe and the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent.
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What kind of features support the claim that Slavic languages are closer to Germanic languages than to Indo-Iranian languages?
Inspired by this answer to a different question, I ask what kind of features justify a claim that Balto-Slavic languages are closer to Germanic languages than to Indo-Iranian languages.
The features ...
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Has the development of double consonants in Latin been studied?
When one studies both Latin and Greek, one of the most prominent differences between the two is the much greater number of double consonants in Latin. While Greek does have some instances of them, ...
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Cellar door and Indo-European languages
Where I grew up (UK) there was a pub called The Drysalters. I always liked this name without having any idea what a drysalter was, or having any association or emotional connection to the pub itself.
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What is the origin of decade-unit inversion?
Some Indo-European languages (e.g. English, Spanish, French, most Slavic languages) have a big-endian pronunciation of numbers: 153 is hundred-and-fifty-and-three. Others (e.g. German, Sanskrit, ...
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Etymology of Persian city suffix +jand
City names in Iran and Central Asia, such as "Birjand" in Iran and "Khujand" in Tajikistan end with "jand" suffix.
The first idea that comes to my mind is that it might ...
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The Indogermanic r-mediopassive and the Latin ending -mini from a broader perspective
This question is a follow-up to this question Latin passive endings: Why is -mini sticking out. The Latin 2nd person plural passive ending mini has attracted the attention of scholars for centuries, ...
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How did West Germanic languages evolve?
I'm trying to make a comprehensive phylogenetic tree of Germanic languages, with dates of divergence, and I have been unable to find details on West Germanic languages and how they diverged. I have ...
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What argument did Paul Kretschmer use for Illyrian being a satem language?
Kretschmer identified both Illyrian and Messapic as satem languages due to the change from IE o to a.
Illyrian language - Wikipedia
That sounds like complete nonsense to me. How does the argument go?
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Are there dictionaries translating roots from one Indo-European language to another?
Are there dictionaries translating roots from one Indo-European language (family) to another?
Such dictionaries would be helpful for translating calques like выставка, Ausstellung, and exhibition.
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Etymology of Ancient Greek deictic -ī
In Ancient Greek, a deictic particle -ī can be attached to demonstratives to strengthen the "this here" meaning: e.g. houtos "this one", houtosī "this one right here". What is the origin of this -ī?
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Usage of the implicit object-subordinate clause in Italian (i.e. Usage of the implicit objective subordinate clause in English - part II)
In a sense, the following question is a sequel of this one: Usage of the implicit objective subordinate clause in English.
In that question I asked some information about the usage of the implicit ...
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Feminine and neuter plural
The Indo-European feminine declension looks like the neuter plural. The usual explanation seems to be that feminine evolved out of an earlier inanimate collective but the semantics doesn't seem to be ...
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Are these Kazakh words considered borrowings (from Russian?) or onomatopoieias?
These three words are very similar in English, Russian and Kazakh. At least the Russian set is considered inherited from PIE.
English - Russian - Kazakh
crush - крушить (krushitь) - қырш (qyrsh)
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Literature on the reconstruction of proto-Greek
I usually find scattered proto-Greek word reconstructions, but I never came across literature that focus on the reconstruction of that language. Do you know of any?
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What is the origin and meaning of the word/name "Idora"? (Shortened)
I have been researching the word "Idora" for a couple years now in hopes of discovering the meaning as it applies to the defunct trolley park "Idora Park" formerly in Youngstown, Ohio.
"Idora Park" ...
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What happened with the centum words in Bangani?
IE K^ > K has been proposed for Bangani ( http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pehook/bangani.html ) for *g()lak^t > lOktO ‘milk’, etc. Claus Peter Zoller claimed that Bangani was related to Kashmiri,...
