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The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. Although the existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for a long time, there has been debate about many specific details.

Phonology

• Short vowels a, e, i, o, u
• Long vowels ā, ē, ō; sometimes a colon (:) is employed to indicate vowel length instead of the macron sign (a:, e:, o:).
• Diphthongs ai, au, āi, āu, ei, eu, ēi, ēu, oi, ou, ōi, ōu
• vocalic allophones of consonantal phonemes: u, i, r̥, l̥, m̥, n̥.

Other long vowels may have appeared already in the proto-language by compensatory lengthening: ī, ū, r̥̄, l̥̄, m̥̄, n̥̄.

Morphology

Root

The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic morphemes carrying a lexical meaning. By addition of suffixes, they form stems, and by addition of desinences, these form grammatically inflected words (nouns or verbs).

Ablaut

One of the unique aspects of PIE was its ablaut sequence that contrasted the vowel phonemes o/e/Ø through the same root. The ablaut is a form of vowel variation which changed between these three forms depending on the adjacent sounds and placement of stress in the word. These changes are echoed in modern Indo-European languages.

Noun

Proto-Indo-European nouns were declined for eight cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, ablative, locative, vocative). There were three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

There are two major types of declension, thematic and athematic. Thematic nominal stems are formed with a suffix -o- (in vocative -e) and the stem does not undergo ablaut. The athematic stems are more archaic, and they are classified further by their ablaut behaviour (acro-dynamic, protero-dynamic, hystero-dynamic and holo-dynamic, after the positioning of the early PIE accent (dynamis) in the paradigm).

Pronoun

PIE pronouns are difficult to reconstruct due to their variety in later languages. This is especially the case for demonstrative pronouns.

PIE had personal pronouns in the first and second person, but not the third person, where demonstratives were used instead. The personal pronouns had their own unique forms and endings, and some had two distinct stems; this is most obvious in the first person singular, where the two stems are still preserved in English I and me. According to Beekes (1995), there were also two varieties for the accusative, genitive and dative cases, a stressed and an enclitic form.

As for demonstratives, Beekes (1995) tentatively reconstructs a system with only two pronouns: so/seh₂/tod "this, that" and h₁e/ (h₁)ih₂/(h₁)id "the (just named)" (anaphoric). He also postulates three adverbial particles ḱi "here", h₂en "there" and h₂eu "away, again", from which demonstratives were constructed in various later languages.

Verb

The Indo-European verb system is complex and, as the noun, exhibits a system of ablaut.

Verbs have at least four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative, as well as possibly the injunctive, reconstructible from Vedic Sanskrit), two voices (active and mediopassive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs are conjugated in at least three "tenses" (present, aorist, and perfect), which actually have primarily aspectual value. Indicative forms of the imperfect and (less likely) the pluperfect may have existed. Verbs were also marked by a highly developed system of participles, one for each combination of tense and mood, and an assorted array of verbal nouns and adjectival formations.

Numbers

The Proto-Indo-European numerals are generally reconstructed as follows:

Lehmann (1993, 252-255) believes that the numbers greater than ten were constructed separately in the dialects groups and that *ḱm̥tóm originally meant "a large number" rather than specifically "one hundred."

Sample texts

As PIE was spoken by a prehistoric society, no genuine sample texts are available, but since the 19th century modern scholars have made various attempts to compose example texts for purposes of illustration. These texts are educated guesses at best; Calvert Watkins in 1969 observes that in spite of its 150 years' history, comparative linguistics is not in the position to reconstruct a single well-formed sentence in PIE. Nevertheless, such texts do have the merit of giving an impression of what a coherent utterance in PIE might have sounded like.

Published PIE sample texts:

• Schleicher's fable (Avis akvasas ka) by August Schleicher (1868), modernized by Hermann Hirt (1939) and Winfred Lehmann and Ladislav Zgusta (1979)
• The king and the god (rēḱs deiwos-kʷe) by S. K. Sen, E. P. Hamp et al. (1994)

Notes

References

• Vyacheslav V. Ivanov and Thomas Gamkrelidze, The Early History of Indo-­European Languages, Scientific American, vol. 262, N3, 110­116, March, 1990
• A. Kammenhuber, "Aryans in the Near East," Haidelberg, 1968
• Beekes, Robert S. P. (1995). Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN 90-272-2150-2 (Europe), ISBN 1-55619-504-4 (U.S.).
• Buck, Carl Darling (1933). Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-07931-7.
• Lehmann, W., and L. Zgusta. 1979. Schleicher's tale after a century. In Festschrift for Oswald Szemerényi on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. B. Brogyanyi, 455–66. Amsterdam.
• Mayrhofer, Manfred (1986). Indogermanische Grammatik, i/2: Lautlehre. Heidelberg: Winter.
• Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-508345-8.
• Szemerényi, Oswald (1996). Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics. Oxford.
• Whitney, William Dwight (1924). Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited (reprint). ISBN 81-208-0621-2 (India), ISBN 0-486-43136-3 (Dover, US).

See also

• Proto-Indo-Europeans
• Indo-European studies
• Proto-Indo-European religion
• Proto-Indo-Balto-Slavic language
• Proto-Indo-Iranian language
• Proto-Balto-Slavic language
• Proto-Slavic language
• Proto-Baltic language
• Indo-Aryan languages
• Proto-World language
• Indo-European s-mobile

External links

• Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo-European (by Vyacheslav V. Ivanov)
• American Heritage Dictionary:
  • Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans, essay on the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European
  • Indo-European Roots, index
• PIE grammar
• Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (Leiden University)
• Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (University of Texas)
• Indo-European Documentation Center at the University of Texas
• "The Indo-Uralic Verb" by Frederik Kortlandt
• Say something in Proto-Indo-European (by Geoffrey Sampson)
• An Overview of the Proto-Indo-European Verb System (by Piotr Gąsiorowski)
• Many PIE example texts
• PIE root etymology database, compiled from Walde-Pokorny by L. Nikolayev and from Friedrich, Tischler (Hittite) and Adams (Tocharian) by Sergei Starostin.
• On the internal classification of Indo-European languages: survey by Václav Blažek. Linguistica ONLINE. ISSN 1801-5336 (Brno, Czech Republic)

• Bronze Age
• Indo-European
• Proto-languages