Questions tagged [proto-indo-european]
Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the reconstructed proto-language for the Indo-European language family
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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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1answer
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How different were proto Italic and proto Celtic?
The idea of mutual intelligibility is interesting, yet due to how the Urnfield culture that spoke proto Celtic just north of the Italian peninsula (and inside modern Bologna, Venice, and Milan) how ...
6
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1answer
416 views
Noun inflection in which IE language is close to PIE noun inflection?
Which modern IE language is most conservative in noun inflection and in this aspect is most similar language to PIE?
2
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1answer
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Are the English word “charm” and Russian word “чары” etymologically related?
Do "charm" and "чары" share a common etymological root?
(NB: "чары" is a Russian plural noun meaning "magic" or "charm." Also note that the English noun "charms" has historically meant magic or ...
4
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2answers
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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,...
4
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2answers
330 views
PIE *kom 'with, side by side' or PIE *ḱóm?
wiktionary:
Proto-Indo-European/ḱóm -
Etymology
Perhaps from *ḱe.
Adverb
*ḱóm
beside, near, by, with
AHD-IER:
kom Beside, near, by, with
Is the initial consonant a plain k or not?
4
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2answers
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How did Gk. ταινία “band, ribbon” come from PIE *tn̥-yā- < *ten- “to stretch”?
AHD-IER (Watkin, 2011) P93 gives PIE *tn̥-yā- for Gk. ταινία:
Suffixed zero-grade form *tn̥-yā‑. taenia; polytene, from Greek tainiā, band, ribbon.
while EDG (Robert Beekes, 2010) P1444:
...
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Gold in French, light in Hebrew
I am fascinated by questions of linguistic relation between Hebrew and the Romance Languages, but I feel here I may have stumbled on a false connection and would like to be properly put in my place.
...
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2answers
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What is the oldest language that we know enough about to construct a plausible sentence in it?
One exciting way to track the evolution of our understanding of Proto-Indo-European is to look at the different versions of Schleicher's fable from different years. The more time we spend studying the ...
6
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2answers
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Did modern Farsi lose its casual word for yes?
Hobby linguistic learner here.
Farsi naturally shares a lot of simple words with other Indo-European languages:
German for [daughter]: "Tochter" / "doxtar" (دختر)
English for [bad]: "bad"/"bad" (بد)
...
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1answer
227 views
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 ...
3
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3answers
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Where do personal pronouns come from?
Studying some languages I noticed that many European languages have a first, second and third person.
In a philosophical sense, I was wondering how it shapes reality, but that's off topic here. What ...
2
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1answer
168 views
The origins of PIE *-nt- and *-to-
I have learned that English present participle suffix -ing and past participle suffix -ed came from PIE *-nt- and *-to- respectively. I have two questions about them.
(1)Were these also used to form ...
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4answers
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Why are the reconstructed forms of PIE root in Etymonline and Wiktionary different?
I found PIE roots described in Etymonline (or American Heritage Dictionary) and Wiktionary are quite different. For examples:
agō: *ag- (Etymonline),
*h₂eǵ- (Wiktionary)
laxō: *sleg- (...
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3answers
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What is the meaning of the number 2 in Proto-Indo European reconstructions? e.g. As in *tewtéh₂, meaning “people” or “tribe”
I am a writer doing some research into ancient languages for a story I am creating. Despite having done some formal and informal study on linguistics (I am familiar with a phonetic chart) and informal ...
3
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1answer
246 views
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 ...
0
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1answer
95 views
Why was the English 'so' imputed to the PIE *se-?
Etymonline states 'so' to originate:
from PIE reflexive pronominal stem *swo- "so" [...], derivative of *s(w)e-, pronoun of the third person and reflexive (see idiom).
What semantic ...
4
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2answers
356 views
Etymology of the words ''Wave''
Do the words Wave(English) Welle(German) Vague(French) have the same Etymology as Val(Serbo-Croatian,Slovenian),Vlna(Czech,Slovakian),BолнаVolna.
All these words mean the same thing-Wave. but I ...
6
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1answer
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What is the relation of PIE *wers (“to confuse, mix up; to beat, thresh, grind”), *wert (“to turn, to rotate”), and *werb (“to bend, to turn”)?
From *wers we get English war, worse, worst.
From *wert we get English versus, verse, version, vertex, vortex, vertical, revert, invert, divert,..., worth, -ward, weird.
From *werb/p we get ...
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0answers
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Besides Proto-Indo-European, does any language have separate words for “one alone” and “one united”?
In PIE, e̯oinos meant "one alone", "one separated", it has the same root as in the word for "goes", e̯eiti. Semantically it meant the one that went away.
At the same time, som meant "one united", "...
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2answers
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Is English “lake” Derived from Latin, or is it Indo-European?
I'm having a bit of trouble figuring this one out.
Lake, meaning "A large, landlocked stretch of water." seems to have some confusion in the Wiktionary pages. I've looked in the American Heritage ...
16
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0answers
357 views
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 ...
2
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1answer
110 views
is there “i” suffix that makes verb from noun, in latin or its ancestors? etymology of tio(n) suffix [closed]
Wiktionary says on PIE -h₃onh₂-:
Descendants
Italic:
...
Latin: -iō (from *-i-h₃onh₂-) (e.g. legiō (“group of selected people”))
Latin: -ō (e.g. Nāsō (“having a conspicuous nose”), poss. ...
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1answer
336 views
Are the inflectional endings in English known to have evolved from separate words or do they go too far back into PIE to know?
English isn't a highly inflected language, but it did evolve from one and still has at least: -s, -es; -ed, -ing; -er, -est; for nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
Do we know if these all evolved from ...
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1answer
594 views
(indo-european) *b, *d, *ǵ… vs ˀp, *ˀt, *ˀḱ
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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247 views
Is Japanese “subaru” related to Russian “soberu” and Latin “conferre”?
Is Japanese "subaru" related to Russian "soberu" ("I'll put together") and Latin "conferre" ("to bring together")?
I think both Latin and Russian words derive from Proto-Indo-European "com bheroa̯" "...
9
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2answers
743 views
Was language invented only once or several times?
We have over 5000 language on Earth as of now, some extant and others not. These all came from what we now call proto languages, but do scientists believe that all proto languages came from one "mono-...
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3answers
341 views
Do “wise” and “wissen” share the same root?
A cursory search shows that the English adjective "wise" and the German verb "wissen" descend from the same root: the PIE *weyd- ("to see, to know"). I found this by using Etymonline to search the ...
6
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1answer
421 views
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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3answers
563 views
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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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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2answers
265 views
Two languages have the same homonym for two meanings but different phonetics [closed]
If they got it from the protolanguage, then why does it have different phonetics? Is it possible that they were developed separately?
'Mañana' in Spanish – means 'morning' and 'tomorrow'
'Morgen’ in ...
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3answers
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How did *h₁l̥h₁onbʰos shift from “deer” to “lamb”?
Browsing the Wiktionary randomly, I bumped into this PIE word, *h₁l̥h₁onbʰos, meaning "deer". Interestingly enough, it evolved into words for "deer" or similar in several languages, but in PG it gave ...
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2answers
264 views
Why is there no Ancient Greek noun whose stem ends in an “i”-ending diphthong (like “-ai”)?
Ancient Greek nouns are cassified into three declensions, and we can say that this is largely based on the ending of the stem of the noun. If a noun's stem ends in -ā (or -ē in Attic when not after r, ...
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1answer
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How would Slavs call a bear if they didn't use euphemism?
Unlike Latin "ursus" or English "bear", the Slavic word "medved" is not cognate to the reconstructed PIE "*Hrtkos". It is believed that this word is a Slavic euphemism meaning "honey-eater". I am ...
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1answer
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Why does Greek “ναι” mean “yes” while it comes from a PIE root meaning “no”?
According to Wiktionary, the Greek word ναι comes from Ancient Greek ναί, which is a variation of νή, which comes from Proto-Indo-European ne, which means no.
Why can a word have the opposite ...
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1answer
376 views
changes in sounds in Indo-European languages
Forgive me if this question is too simple/repetitive/... as I'm not familiar with technical terms.
I'm looking for a good reference that's explained the changes in sounds in Indo-European daughter ...
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3answers
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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 ...
4
votes
2answers
801 views
Origin of the word/root 'del'
As I was contemplating the Norwegian word "del," which means "part" or "portion," it occurred to me that there is the same root in Russian, and that it means the same thing. I looked up "del" and "...
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1answer
102 views
identifying unknown script from artefact [closed]
A friend found these artefacts for sale in Afghanistan, was wondering what the script is? Maybe Avestan?
enter image description here
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3answers
902 views
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 ...
4
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1answer
279 views
Did proto-indo-european possess sounds that are not any longer present or rare in modern IE languages?
In the movie Prometheus, David, an Android tasked with maintaining the functions on the space ship while his human comrades are sleeping in cryostatic chambers, is learning PIE during his off-duty ...
4
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1answer
258 views
what about ophis Python==ahi Budhnya?
in short : is the equation ὄφις Πύθων == अहि बुध्न्य ahi budʰnya widely accepted by scholars ?
Python and Ahi Budhnya/Ahirbudhnya are both a famous serpent, the first one in the Greek mythology, the ...
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2answers
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How different were Proto-Italic and Proto-Germanic?
It's (generally) accepted that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) evolved into the subfamilies Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Iranian among others.
English uses a Latin Writing system which evolved ...
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2answers
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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 ...
5
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3answers
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Etymology of Ancient Greek interrogative particle ἆρα
The Ancient Greek interrogative ἆρα is strikingly similar to modern Persian āyā.
Both words exclusively signal yes/no questions, and almost always begin the sentence. There is an accent on the first ...
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1answer
254 views
Origin of gen./abl. “pitur” genitive of “pitā́” (“father”) in Sanskrit
How did the Sanskrit gen./abl. singular of pitr-/pitā́ ("father") came to be pitur (and the genitive of the entire noun class as well, of course)? The evolution of all other forms (even pitā́, which ...
3
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1answer
203 views
Are PIE *bʰewg- “flee” and PIE *bʰegʷ- “flee” cognate?
These two verbal roots *bʰewg- "flee" and *bʰegʷ- "flee" share the same meaning and very similar forms, the only difference is their ending consonant.
I wonder whether they are from a same root or ...
9
votes
2answers
434 views
Understanding the reflexes of PIE *ǵneh3- in Sanskrit, Latin and Greek
Today I was trying to reconstruct some PIE roots by myself and I came across the word for '(to) know' in different indo-european languages. Here are some examples:
Eng. (to) know
It. conoscere
Lat. (...
6
votes
2answers
305 views
(PIE) déḱm̥ vs déḱm̥t (ten)
In short : what's the final -t in déḱm̥t?
Full details :
The Proto-Indo-European root for ten is traditionally defined as déḱm̥/déḱm̥t(ᵃ). The final -t may be analyzed as a casual ending, e.g. as a "...
