Proto-Indo-European language

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The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common language that was spoken before the Indo-European languages developed.

Discovery and reconstruction

There are several competing hypotheses about when and where PIE was spoken.

The idea that there was such a language was supported by the fact, that in 1927 Jerzy Kuryłowicz discovered some of the phonemes, one supposed to be Proto-Indo-European in Anatolian.

Method

There is no direct evidence of PIE, because it was never written. All PIE sounds and words are reconstructed from later Indo-European languages using the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. The asterisk is used to mark reconstructed PIE words, such as *wódr̥ 'water', *ḱwṓn 'dog', or *tréyes 'three (masculine)'. Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages seem to have derived from such "protowords" via regular sound changes (e.g., Grimm's law).

Phonology

Proto-Indo-European consonants (traditional transcription)

CONSONANTS	Labials	Coronals	Palatovelars	Velars	Labiovelars	Laryngeals
Voiceless stops	p	t	ḱ	k	kʷ
Voiced stops	b	d	ǵ	g	gʷ
Aspirated stops	bʰ	dʰ	ǵʰ	gʰ	gʷʰ
Nasals	m	n
Fricatives		s				h₁, h₂, h₃
Liquids, Glides	w	r, l	j

• 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.

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 and E. P. Hamp (1994)

Other pages

• List of Indo-European languages

Further reading

• Vyacheslav V. Ivanov and Thomas Gamkrelidze, The early history of Indo-­European Languages. Scientific American, 262, March, 1990
• A. Kammenhuber. 1968. Aryans in the Near East. Heidelberg.
• 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). 

Other websites

• Indo-European Dictionary by Gerhard Köbler (contains Indo-European Grammar in Vorwort section)
• 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
• On the internal classification of Indo-European languages: survey by Václav Blažek. Linguistica ONLINE. ISSN 1801-5336 (Brno, Czech Republic)