Questions tagged [proto-indo-european]
Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed proto-language for the Indo-European language family
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Pronunciation of ‘hₐ’ in PIE
I have tried to find the sound hₐ-, for example "hₐeust(e)ro" engl. 'east', or hₐel, 'burn' , but also example hₐner, 'man' pronunciation, but I can't find it anywhere on the internet, ...
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What is Double Zero Grade?
The double zero grade *ǵʰi-m- is preserved in the compounds with numerals.
(de Vaan, Etymological Dictionary of Latin 2013: hiems)
E.g. *dwi-ǵʰim-os “two years old”, literally “of two winters” (en....
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proto-Indo-European root for the modern 'comma' and for 'hatchet'
I am told the proto-Indo-European root for the modern 'comma' is 'kop', and that is the root for 'hatchet' or 'axe' as well. True?
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List of PIE words for occupations
What are the known reconstructions of PIE words for occupations?
I composed some, but want a greater list:
*h₃rḗǵ-s - king
*dúk-s - military leader, commander
*u̯iḱ-pót-i-s - village leader
*pr̥h₂-wó-...
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Could it be that the pronoun *eǵh₂om ("I") in PIE is not an innovation?
I think, it is generally believed that the word for "I" in PIE was an innovation and in more ancient branches the 1st person singular pronoun was similar to the plural one, "min/men&...
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Was Old Church Slavonic more Greek/Thracian then actually Slavic and can Proto-Slavic be considered a languge from Indo-European family?
First of all, thank you for reading this question. While checking some proposed restorations of Indo-European words, I noticed that for Slavic words the Old Church Slavonic is used. I've searched some ...
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What recent (since 2014) work is there on the origin of the Indo-European 1st person singular nominative ego (etc.)?
I have an article by Hamp from 2011 and one by Blažek from 2014, but need to know if there is anything more recent, so I can cite it in an article that needs to be finished yesterday.
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Does Sanskrit निस् • (nis) "out, forth, away" come from PIE *ni- "in; down?" with meaning shift from "in" to "out"?
निस्·nis "out, forth, away" > nirvana "to blow out, extinguish; out of breath?"
नि·ni "down, back, in, into" < PIE *h₁én "in; down?"
My question is ...
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Have there been attempts in making artificial alphabets for the Indo-European languages?
As far as I know linguists came to conclusion that most of the modern alphabets initially derived from the Phoenician Alphabet, which belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family of ...
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Phonotactic Parallels to Pyysalo's Laryngeal and Schwa
Jouna Pyysalo has a rather unique reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, that he calls System PIE (documented here, amongst other places) and describes as a new form of monolaryngealism.
This ...
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In PIE, what was the function of the suffix *-(ō)l?
For example, in the word:
*H₃nóbʰ-ōl / *H₃ómbʰ-l̥ "navel" (Wiktionary: Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₃nóbʰōl)
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How might one swear in Proto-Indo-European? [closed]
Proto-Indo-European is an interesting topic. I'm fascinated by how it spread. But, I wonder how to use curse words. These words, like others, will probably be reconstructed from other languages: Latin,...
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Words for tongue in Tungusic
In Tungusic there are attested the following words for tongue:
Manchu: ilenggu
Nanai: siŋmu
Evenki: inni, čoli
Wikitionary postulates that the words ilenggu, siŋmu and inni are related and gives ...
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Does "and" come from the PIE word for "and"?
From the etymology of and:
Old English and, ond, originally meaning "thereupon, next," from Proto-Germanic *unda (cf. Old Saxon endi, Old Frisian anda, Middle Dutch ende, Old High German enti, ...
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Welcome and BienVenidos
In English and Spanish, the words for welcome have an uncanny relation: the translation is almost completely (if not completely) literal.Bien means well and venidos means come/came in the plural or ...
CommunityBot
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Apparent sound crespondences between Eurasian, Trans-New-Guinean, Pama-Nyungan and Burushaski
It seems to me that there can be regular sound correspondences between Eurasian, Trans-New-Guinean, Pama-Nyungan and Burushaski. I would call the hypthetical proto-language of these "proto-mitian&...
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How does L. "quartus" come from L. "quattuor", which has "quat" but "quart"?
quartus
From Latin quattuor ("four"), originally from Proto-Indo-European
As at July 2 2021, the Etymology at the same link for quartus Wiktionary has changed.
From Proto-Indo-European *...
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How can a language-learner determine the root, prefix, and suffix of a word in English, if they know its language of origin?
Many English vocabulary-building books (for example, Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Builder, Word Power Made Easy) break the meaning of words down into three pieces: prefix + root + suffix.
On the website ...
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Questions about clusters of two dental stops in PIE
Beekes says a sibilant was inserted between two dental stops in PIE, therefore *-tt-, *-dt- > *-tst- and *-d(h)d(h)- > *-d(h)zd(h)- and the cluster is "retained as such in Hittite." ...
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Did Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Indo-European languages have the same origin?
Did Proto-Sino-Tibetan and Proto-Indo-European languages have the same origin? Did human develop a common language before migrated from Africa, and were most if not all the modern languages ...
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Proto-Indo-European transcription: <u̯, i̯> vs. <w, j> & <k̑> vs. <ḱ>, etc
I’m working through a language book that uses an idiosyncratic (& confusing) transcription, so as I go I’m making my own copy with more standard symbols. I’ve just got to a section referencing PIE ...
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Limits of historical linguistic reconstruction
It is a well-known and widely repeated fact that the linguistic reconstruction associated with the comparative method is no longer effective for large temporal depths (informally estimated to be ...
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Are "fish" and "to swim" related words?
When learning Thai, I was amazed how modern Thai word "fish" is similar to Slavic word "to swim"
Thai: ปลา [plaː] "fish"
Lao: ປາ [pa᷅ː]"fish"
Ukrainian: ...
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Are PIE *bal and *welH- related?
Has anyone compared eg. Bhumibol - title of Thailand's monarch, derived from Sanskrit - and oblast - a Slavic noun related to rule and governance, vb. *voldati "to rule, to reign, to govern"?...
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Can these similarities between PIE and Burushaski be explained?
We have:
English PIE Burushaski
brown bʰerH-om baard-um
tongue dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s juŋus
warm gʷʰer-om gar-um
pair kʷeth₂ kaat
fire péh₂wr̥ pʰu
...
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Simplicity of the verb in Germanic languages
English and German have only two tenses (the present and the past) that are formed by inflection, all the others are formed using helping verbs, as is the conditional mood. In the Romance languages ...
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If the Armenian word for "foot", "otn", really comes from PIE *podm, why did the 'p' disappear?
If the Armenian word for "foot", "otn", really comes from PIE *podm, why did the 'p' disappear? Why didn't it change into 'h', like in "hing" (five, from *penkwe) or &...
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What's the reconstruction of the word for fire in proto-Australian?
The word for fire in some modern Australian languages:
Tiwi yikwani
Djinang junggi
Maung yungku
Walmajarri yakun
This is strikingly similar to that in PIE:
PIE h₁...
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Besides Indo-Pacific and Australian languages does anywhere "firewood" semantically develop to "fire"?
It is known that in Australian languages the word for "tree" developed into "firewood" and then to "fire". I wonder if this development typical?
Particularly, could PIE *...
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How Did the Palatovelar /*ḱ/ Consonant in PIE Become a Sibilant in Satem Languages?
In Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages (which are conveniently all Satem languages), there is a sibilant or affricate sound in places where Centum languages usually have a velar consonant. It ...
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What happened to Aham and its derivatives in Marathi?
The Sanskrit first person pronoun अहम् (Romanized: Aham) can be found in Maharashtri Prakrit as 𑀅𑀳𑀁 (ahaṃ), 𑀅𑀳𑀅𑀁 (ahaaṃ), 𑀳𑀁 (haṃ).
It is even present in some languages derivative of ...
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Is PIE weyh₁ (to hunt, persecute) somehow related to PIE weyk (to separate, to select for sacrifice)
I am amateurishly passionate about etymologies (especially of my native Romanian) but more seriously interested in the anthropological theories of René Girard and Walter Burkert, which both ...
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Why is Ural-Altaic controversial, but Indo-European isn't?
There is no direct record of Proto-Indo-European and there's barely any non-hypothetical evidence of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Why is Indo-European considered a language family while Ural-Altaic isn't, ...
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Common origin of PIE feminine and collective plural and semantic implications
It is generally believed that the neuter nominative-accusative plural and feminine singular in PIE both originate in a common *-h2 suffix which originally marked collective, although recent works tend ...
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Does an -es suffix for plurality have Proto-Indo-European roots?
I'm researching proto-Indo-European, and have seen a few remarks which imply that an -es suffix for plural was a likely component of the language (including here on L.SE; Wiktionary). Is this a ...
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Can you provide a cheat-sheet for turning Proto-Indo-European dictionaries from the older style into laryngeal notation?
Much of the resources I have for Proto-Indo-European itself (not etymological dictionaries for other languages) either use Laryngeal notation but are limited in scope (like Wiktionary) or are written ...
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Have I actually found something or is this just a 100+ coincidence cognates? indo-european, sino-tibetan, austroneisian, japanese, korean
I like comparing languages on my free time and found that Eurasian languages have a lot in common and I couldn't quite place my finger on it but the languages just seemed similar. One time I compared ...
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How did the PIE root ghabh- mean both 'to give or receive'?
ghabh-
Also ghebh-. [=]
To give or receive.
My guess is that anything given by one must be received by another, and vice versa. But my guess doesn't explain this surprising dichotomy in ...
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Why is reconstructed PIE so typologically unusual?
I'm probably not the first to notice that a large number of features of reconstruct Proto-Indo-European are typological irregularities. The most famous of these probably being the voiceless/voiced/...
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Why does Proto-Indo-Aryan *ẓ seem to have different outcomes despite sharing the same phonological context?
It is well known that Proto-Indo-Aryan *s had an allophone *z in voiced contexts. Due to some phonetic changes (i.e. RUKI law and the shift *śt > ṣṭ), they both could undergo retroflexion, thus ...
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What arguments support Alwin Kloekhorst's analysis of proto-indo-european phonemes?
in short:
Is there any discussion available online of the following reinterpretation (due to Alwin Kloekhorst) of the stops in the Indo-European phoneme inventory?
classical inventory ...
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What are the different schools of PIE reconstruction?
I have read some works on Proto-Indo-European which mention different schools that advocate for different paradigms of reconstruction, such as the Leiden and the Erlangen schools. I'd like to know if ...
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Etymology of latin suffix -idus
What is the (probably Indo-European) origin of the latin suffix -idus, as in "acidus"? Are there any known cognates?
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If Hebrew is not related to Slavic, why there are apparent sound correspondences?
We have
hebrew: šeš;
russian: šestʹ;
ukrainian: šistʹ;
latin: six;
english: six;
hebrew: yeš;
russian: yestʹ;
ukrainian: ye, isnuye;
latin: est;
english: is;
hebrew: ze;
russian: se;
ukrainian: сe [...
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Derivation of the Indo-European lemma *bʰréh₂tēr ‘brother’
According to Wiktionary, the word “brother” is traced back to the reconstructed Indo-European lemma *bʰréh₂tēr with the same meaning.
It seems to be structurally similar to other kinship terms, such ...
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In what sense are terms for "white/shining" and for "swamp/marsh" "semantically connected" in many languages?
Although a closed question, reading THIS we find a link to Wictionary with the text:
From Proto-Albanian *baltā (“marsh”), hypothetically from a
Proto-Indo-European *bʰolHto- (“white > marsh”), a ...
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The Metathesis in "scope" vs "to show"
I would like to hear some ideas that can explain Greek *σκέπτομαι, σκοπός "watcher, look-out, spy, mark, goal"
from Proto-Indo-European *skep-ye-, from a metathesis of *speḱ-.
Cognate to ...
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Were Iranian languages originally separated and more related to Slavic？
Iranian languages and Slavic languages have some similarities, such as the merger of aspirated sounds into unaspirated sounds, and the development of the consonant /z/. Historically, the settlements ...
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Any reasons for unexplained centumization in Balto-Slavic?
Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages are called satem languages, because in them the Proto-Indo-European palatovelars *ḱ, *ǵ, and *ǵʰ developed into sibilants or affricats, usually into [s]/[z]- or ...
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Which PIE participle corresponds to PGmc past participle?
Which PIE participle (active/middle/passive voice) corresponds to PGmc past participle?
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