Questions tagged [proto-indo-european]
Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed proto-language for the Indo-European language family
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Could Proto-Indo-Uralic be reconstructed?
I am interested in linguistics and how words spread from place to place. I have seen that there are two language families, and that there are signs that they might be related. Proto-Indo-Uralic is the ...
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What is the relationship between the PIE roots *dekṃ and *kṃtóm?
It seems that there is a consensus that the PIE roots for ten and hundred are, respectively, *deḱṃ and *ḱṃtóm. There also seems to be a consensus that *ḱṃtóm is a shortened version of *deḱṃtóm. These ...
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Which Indo European language best preserves the features of Proto Indo-European?
Among all attested Indo European languages, which one best preserves the features of Proto Indo-European? Which is most useful in the reconstruction of PIE?
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What evidence supports labialized velars in PIE?
Traditional reconstruction gives the following velars in PIE:
*/ḱ/, */ǵ/, */ǵʰ/
*/k/, */g/, */gʰ/
*/kʷ/, */gʷ/, */gʷʰ/
I wonder what evidence is there to consider velars */kʷ/, */gʷ/, */gʷʰ/ ...
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What's weird about Proto-Indo-European Stops?
I was reading Wikipedia, and it maintains that it's unusual for a language to have a voiceless-voiced-breathy distinction (without a voiceless aspirated), but that the Sanskrit 4-way distinction is ...
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Why can verbal roots in PIE only contain the vowel e?
Verbal roots of PIE are generally reconstructed as (C5) (C3) C1 e C2 (C4) (C6); with certain phonetical restrictions, especially on the outmost consonants.
I wonder why only "e" should be allowed as ...
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Do Linguists pronounce PIE roots
I'm assuming the original pronunciation of words in Proto-Indo-European is unknown. How do linguists talk about the reconstructed roots, do they just assume sounds close enough to english or do they ...
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What is the contribution of Tocharian to the reconstruction of Proto-Indogermanic?
Inspired by this question Which Indo European language best preserves the features of Proto Indo-European?, I want to ask the follow-up question:
What did we learn for the reconstruction of Proto-...
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Why does Sankr. नक्ति (nákti) not show Satemization
Did Sanskrit नक्ति (nákti) "night", PIE *nókʷts, not participate in the kentum-satem split? Why? Is it a loan? There are at least two synonyms, if that makes any difference.
I have no actual reason ...
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What if Proto-Indo-European documents written in a cuneiform like script were found? [closed]
Proto indo european (aka PIE) is an unrecorded (as far as we know) language that was possibly spoken in southern Russia or Ukraine. Let’s suppose that there was a building underground sealed with ...
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Why do neuter nominative and accusative always agree in IE languages?
The question that I have is a simple one.
Of every neuter noun, pronoun, or adjective, in any IE language (as far as I know), the nominative and accusative cases agree in all numbers. Why is this?
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Spelling of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European
Who introduced the notation e̯ a̯ o̯ (vowels with inverted breve below) for Proto-Indo-European laryngeals and when?
Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed with so-called "laryngeal" consonants, ...
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What are known PIE stock phrases?
In the wikipedia page for Proto-Indo-European, it said that Proto-Indo-Europeans had "oral heroic poetry or song lyrics that used stock phrases such as imperishable fame and wine-dark sea". What are ...
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Difference between "Leiden school" and "mainstream" Indo-Europeanists?
Recently, I've been asked what the difference between the "Leiden school" and "mainstream" Indo-Europeanists is. The asker is planning to study in Leiden and has been concerned with the many vague ...
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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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Phonemic similarities between "mother" and "father" in different language families
The words for "mother" and "father" in at least a few language families have a phonetic similarity which I find interesting. Compare the Latin and Greek words (μήτηρ/πατήρ mater/pater) with the (...
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Grimm's law: what motivates stop -> fricative sound change?
I am trying to understand the sound change that brought PIE *dent- to P.Gmc. *tanth-. Grimm's law seems to be the culprit for the consonant changes:
Initial voiced stop /d/ devoiced to /t/
Terminal ...
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Is there a known rule of correspondence between Latin and Greek *p and *kʷ - in other languages?
It seems to me that some words that have -p- in stem in Latin have clearly reconstructible -ku̯- based on other Indo-European languages. Some examples include
*u̯lpes - *u̯lku̯os ("wolf")
*u̯esper - *...
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Is there evidence that "proto-" languages actually existed?
I never heard about those (pre-)historical languages before hearing about them in the internet. For instance, proto-slavic would be the ancestor of all slavic languages, and proto-indo-european the ...
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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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What is the origin of 't-' and 's-' words for second and third person possesive adjectives?
Many languages associate the t sound with the second person and the s with the third. For example Spanish (tu/tuyo, su/suyo), French (tu,ton/ta/tes,son/sa/ses), Italian (tu,tuo/tua/tuoi,suo/sua/suoi) ...
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Germanic Philology: "translate" a word from indoeuropean language to the germanic language
I'm having a philology test next week. One of the questions will be to "translate" an indoeuropean word into a germanic word, like: i.e. Agros -> germanic Akraz (i.e. "g" --> germ. "k" for Grimm's Law,...
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How many vowels and how many consonants did the Proto-Indo-European Language have?
I am interested in development paths of Russian and English sound systems.
At present the situation is as follows: according to WALS, the consonant inventory of modern Russian is classed as "...
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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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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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Proto-Indo-European (PIE) words with IPA
Are there any resources that can show IPA pronounciation for each PIE word? Either with laryngeals or without laryngeals?
Wikitionary gives me only small list Category:Proto-Indo-European terms with ...
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Can these new etymological pairs of PIE roots be true?
I find a paper containing new lists of cognates on PIE root level, and don't know such phenomena or rules are convincing or not, the list follows below:
1. The voiceless stop vs. voiced aspirated ...
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Proto-Indo-European phonetic and pronunciation [duplicate]
They say nobody exactly knows how Indo-European words were actually pronounced since obviously there was no Sony sound recorder back then.
So, what are these phonetic symbols that they use to ...
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Given that so many Indo-European peoples called themselves "Veneti" or the like, can we conclude that it was the endonym of PIE people as well?
For instance:
Veneti (Gaul) - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneti_(Gaul))
Vistula Veneti - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vistula_Veneti)
Adriatic Veneti - Wikipedia (https://...
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Can the PIE roots with similar meaning and difference in gʷ/w and gʷʰ/w in fact be related?
For instance, I wonder whether roots *gʷʰér- "burn, heat" and *wer- "burn, heat" are related, as well as *gʷer- "mountain, height" and *wers- "mountain, height"....
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Why did Proto-Indo-European (probably) have such little vocab?
When I looked at words in Proto-Indo-European and how the words evolved, I found that there aren't a lot of words in that proto-language and that the words appear to be somewhat shorter than those in ...
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Pre-Greek θάλασσα "thalassa" and Turkish talaz
Talaz is a word that means "wave, tornado" in Turkish dialects. dalga means "wave" in Turkish. You can use the following two links to look up the word's attestations throughout history:
https://www....
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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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Besides Proto-Indoeuropean, what would be the list of the 10 most acurately reconstructed Proto-languages?
Proto-Indoeuropean language (p-IE) has been the subject of study for more than 200 years, and a great deal of work has been published has been written about p-IE reconstruction. In addition, there are ...
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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 did the PIE root 'dek-' evolve into the Greek 'dokein' to appear, seem, think' ?
dek-
To take, accept.
...
[2.] b. dogma, dogmatic; chionodoxa, Docetism, doxology, heterodox, orthodox, paradox,
from Greek dokein, to appear, seem, think (< "to cause to accept or be ...
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Parallels between h₂ and t in PIE and Nostratic, what is the explanation?
In Afro-Asiatic we have the feminine ending -a which has the following evolution history:
-a < -aha < -at < et
where ha is a glottal fricative.
In IE (for instance, in Russian, Greek, Latin) ...
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Can we make a case for Eurasiatic numerals for one and two?
There is a widespread Eurasiatic theory that puts all these families (except PIE) into one group, the case for common numerals for one and two seems more plausible. I also add Chukchi-Kamchadal family ...
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What would the linguistic ramifications be of Proto-Indo-European texts being found? [closed]
The oldest known Indo-European texts are (in time order) the Sanskrit, Hittite, and possibly Linear A (and other) languages. Linguists have reconstructed Proto-Indo-European. However, let's say that a ...
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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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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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