The family of languages which developed in Europe and S Asia, and which gave the modern languages of W Europe (eg the Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages) as well as many in the Baltic states, Russia, and N India. The parent language of the family has been labelled Proto-Indo-European (PIE); there is no documentary evidence for it, but it is thought to have been spoken before 3000 BC. The forms of PIE have been reconstructed on the basis of correspondences of sound between the forms of the related languages. The key relationships were discovered in the 19th-c, when it was shown that the main European languages and Sanskrit (the oldest language of the Indian subcontinent) were derived from the same parent language.
For other uses, see Indo-European.The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects , including most of the major languages of Europe, as well as many spoken in the Indian subcontinent (South Asia), the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), and Central Asia. Contemporary languages in this family with more than 100 million native speakers each include Hindi, Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, French, German and Punjabi. Numerous national or minority languages with fewer than 100 million native speakers also exist. Indo-European has the largest numbers of speakers of the recognised families of languages in the world today, with its languages spoken by approximately 3 billion native speakers. The Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European.
Classification
| Indo-European Indo-Germanic (rare) | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Geographic distribution: |
Before the 15th century, Europe, and South, Central and Southwest Asia; | |
|
Genetic classification: |
One of the world's major language families; | |
| Subdivisions: | Albanian Anatolian Armenian Balto-Slavic Celtic Germanic Greek Indo-Iranian Italic (including Romance) Tocharian | |
|
Orange: countries with a majority of speakers of IE languages Yellow: countries with an IE minority language with official status |
||
The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include (in historical order of their first attestation):
Anatolian languages, earliest attested branch, from the 18th century BC; extinct, most notably including the language of the Hittites. Indo-Iranian languages, descending from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan languages, including Sanskrit, attested from the mid 2nd millennium BC. (See Vedic Sanskrit.) Iranian languages, attested from roughly 1000 BC in the form of Avestan, and from 520 BC in the form of Old Persian Dardic languages Nuristani languages Greek language, fragmentary records in Mycenaean from the 14th century BC; (See Proto-Greek language, History of the Greek language.) Italic languages, including Latin and its descendants (the Romance languages), attested from the 7th century BC. Celtic languages, Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Old Irish texts from the 6th century AD, see Proto-Celtic language. Germanic languages (including Old English and English), earliest testimonies in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century, earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century, see Proto-Germanic language. Armenian language, attested from the 5th century. Tocharian languages, extinct tongues of the Tocharians, extant in two dialects, attested from roughly the 6th century. Balto-Slavic languages, believed by many Indo-Europeanists to derive from a common proto-language later than Proto-Indo-European, while skeptical Indo-Europeanists regard Baltic and Slavic as no more closely related than any other two branches of Indo-European. Slavic languages, attested from the 9th century, earliest texts in Old Church Slavonic. Baltic languages, attested from the 14th century, and, for languages attested that late, they retain unusually many archaic features attributed to Proto-Indo-European. Albanian language, attested from the 15th century;In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages have existed:
Illyrian languages — possibly related to Messapian or Venetic; Venetic language — close to Italic. Liburnian language — apparently grouped with Venetic. Messapian language — not conclusively deciphered. Phrygian language — language of ancient Phrygia, possibly close to Greek, Thracian, or Armenian. Paionian language — extinct language once spoken north of Macedon. Thracian language — possibly close to Dacian. Dacian language — possibly close to Thracian and Albanian. Ancient Macedonian language — probably related to Greek; Ligurian language — possibly not Indo-European; Lusitanian language — possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, or Ligurian, or Italic.No doubt other Indo-European languages once existed which have now vanished without leaving a trace.
Satem and Centum languages
Many scholars classify the Indo-European sub-branches into a Satem group and a Centum group. Satem languages lost the distinction between labiovelar and pure velar sounds, and at the same time assibilated the palatal velars. The centum languages, on the other hand, lost the distinction between palatal velars and pure velars. Geographically, the "eastern" languages belong in the Satem group: Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic (but not including Tocharian and Anatolian); and the "western" languages represent the Centum group: Germanic, Italic, and Celtic. The Satem-Centum isogloss runs right between the Greek (Centum) and Armenian (Satem) languages (which a number of scholars regard as closely related), with Greek exhibiting some marginal Satem features. Some scholars think that some languages classify neither as Satem nor as Centum (Anatolian, Tocharian, and possibly Albanian). Areal contact among already distinct post-PIE languages (say, during the 3rd millennium BC) may have spread the sound changes involved.
Suggested superfamilies
Some linguists propose that Indo-European languages form part of a hypothetical Nostratic language superfamily, and attempt to relate Indo-European to other language families, such as South Caucasian languages, Altaic languages, Uralic languages, Dravidian languages, and Afro-Asiatic languages.
History
See also: Proto-Indo-European, Historical linguistics, Glottochronology.
History of the idea of Indo-European
The first proposal of the possibility of common origin for some of these languages came from the Dutch linguist and scolar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn in 1647. He discovered the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called "Scythian". He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. He excluded languages such as Hebrew from his hypothesis.
The hypothesis re-appeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by Franz Bopp supported this theory, and Bopp's Comparative Grammar, appearing between 1833 and 1852 counts as the starting-point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.
Reconstructions and hypotheses
Scholars have dubbed the common ancestral (reconstructed) language Proto-Indo-European (PIE). 4000 BC, while proponents of Anatolian origin usually date it several millennia earlier, associating the spread of Indo-European languages with the Neolithic spread of farming (see Indo-Hittite). Contact of the Yamna culture with late Neolithic Europe cultures results in the "kurganized" Globular Amphora and Baden cultures. The Corded Ware culture extends from the Rhine to the Volga, corresponding to the latest phase of Indo-European unity, the vast "kurganized" area disintegrating into various independent languages and cultures, but still in loose contact and thus enabling the spread of technology and early loans between the groups (except for the Anatolian and Tocharian branches, already isolated from these processes). 1000 BC - 500 BC: The Celtic languages spread over Central and Western Europe. A variety of Paleo-Balkan languages have speakers in Southern Europe. The Anatolian languages suffer extinction.
A strength of the Kurgan hypothesis lies in the fact that part of its proposed mode of spread (military conquest by horsemen) agrees with historical reports about the spread of early Greek and early Indo-Aryan peoples.
The Anatolian hypothesis
Colin Renfrew in 1987 suggested an association between the spread of Indo-European and the Neolithic revolution, spreading peacefully into Europe from Asia Minor (Anatolia) from around 7000 BC with the advance of farming (wave of advance). Accordingly, all the inhabitants of Neolithic Europe would have spoken Indo-European tongues, and the Kurgan migrations would at best have replaced Indo-European dialects with other Indo-European dialects.
According to Renfrew , the spread of Indo-European proceeded from "Pre-Proto-Indo-European" in 6500 to Archaic PIE in 5000 BC, with the historical Indo-European families developing from 3000 BC from "Balkan PIE".
The main strength of the farming hypothesis lies in its linking of the spread of Indo-European languages with an archeologically known event that likely involved major population shifts: the spread of farming (though the validity of basing a linguistics theory on archeological evidence remains disputed). They suggested that Armenian stayed in the Indo-European cradle while other Indo-European languages left the homeland and migrated on a route that led them along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the steppe north of the Black Sea. This migration route allegedly explains the existence of Tocharic, and the assumed early contacts between Indo-European and Uralic languages. For a modern version of the hypothesis of European origin of PIE see the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (proposed by Italian theorists) that derives Indo-European from the European Paleolithic cultures.
Sound changes
As the Proto-Indo-European language broke up, its sound system diverged as well, changing according to various sound laws evidenced in the daughter-languages. ^ see List of languages by number of native speakers. ^ in terms of geography (stretching from the Caucasus to South India), as well as of variety (308 languages according to SIL) and of speakers (more than one billion). ^ Ryan and Pitman 1998:208-213
User Comments Add a comment…