These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support the Neogrammarian rule: the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception. Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. Since there is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants ( p and f) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language. For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot, padre and father, pesce and fish. No direct evidence of PIE exists scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed.Īsterisks are used as a conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as * wódr̥, * ḱwn̥tós, or * tréyes these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water, hound, and three, respectively. PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension, and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation. PIE is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song) and accent. Today, the descendant languages of PIE with the most native speakers are Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu), Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, Persian, French, Marathi, Italian, and Gujarati. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. Īs speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. įar more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Proto-Indo-European ( PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode combining characters and Latin characters. This article contains characters used to write reconstructed Proto-Indo-European words (for an explanation of the notation, see Proto-Indo-European phonology).
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