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Revision as of 17:47, 17 April 2004
The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.
As PIE is not directly attested, all PIE sounds and words are reconstructed using the comparative method. The standard convention is to mark unattested forms with an asterisk: *wodr 'water', *kwo:n 'dog', *treyes 'three (masculine)', etc. Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages are derived from such "protowords" via regular sound change (e.g., Grimm's law).
The original homeland (very often called "Urheimat" among linguists) of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European is not known for certain, but probably lies somewhere around the Black Sea. Most of the subgroups diverged and spread out over much of Europe and the Middle East during the fourth and third millennia BC. Discussion of PIE culture has been stalled by its association with the racist doctrines of National socialism (German and German-influenced scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries ominously preferred the terms "Indo-Germanic", or "Aryan"), but enormous amounts of work have been done on its structure and vocabulary. All Indo-European languages are inflected languages, and by reconstruction scholars were able to see that PIE was probably mildly inflected (less than Latin but more than modern English).
Recent theories have been proposed by the linguist John Colarusso that the Caucasian languages, particularly the Northwest Caucasian family, spoken in Georgia and Turkey, may be the closest relatives to the Indo-European stock. While these are not widely held theories, substantial evidence investigated by this linguist seems to support their theory. In particular, the one-vowel hypothesis which has been put forward for Indo-European would be borne out by the usage of substantial secondary articulation like that found in the Northwest Caucasian languages and, indeed, in the hypothesised PIE. Also, the Northwest Caucasian languages preserve a large number of guttural phonemes which may be the modern equivalents of PIE "laryngeals".
Phonemes
Proto-Indo-European is conjectured to have used the following phonemes:
| CONSONANTS | labials | coronals | palatovelars | velars | labiovelars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| voiceless stops | p | t | k | k | k |
| voiced stops | b | d | g | g | g |
| breathy stops | b | d | g | g | g |
| nasals | m | n | |||
| fricatives | s | h1, h2, h3 | |||
| liquids, glides | w | r, l | y | ||
- Short vowels a, e, o, i, u
- Long vowels a:, e:, o:
- Diphthongs ei, eu, e:i, e:u, oi, ou, ...
Notes:
- The symbol indicates - or -like sounds which underwent a characteristic change in the Satem languages; they were possibly palatalised velars (, ) in Proto-Indo-European.
- Raised stands for labialization, or lip-rounding accompanying the articulation of velar sounds ( is a sound similar to English qu in queen).
- Raised stands for aspiration.
- The symbols h1, h2 and h3 stand for three hypothetical "laryngeal" phonemes.
- A colon (:) is employed to indicate vowel length.