Home > Proto-Indo-European language
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: *wódr̥ "water", *ḱwón "dog", *tréyes "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).
All Indo-European languages are inflected languages (although Modern English is much less inflected), and by comparative reconstruction it is highly assurred that at least the latest stage of the common PIE mother languages (i.e. Late PIE) was an inflectional (and more suffixing than prefixing) language. However, by means of internal reconstruction and morphological (re-)analysis of the reconstructed, seemingly most archaic PIE word forms it has recently been shown to be very probable that at a more distant stage (then: Early) PIE may have been a root-inflectional language like e.g. Proto-Semitic . As a consequence, it seems to be highly probable that PIE once was of the root-and-pattern morphological type (literature: Pooth (2004): "Ablaut und autosegmentale Morphologie: Theorie der uridg. Wurzelflexion", in: Arbeitstagung "Indogermanistik, Germanistik, Linguistik" in Jena, Sept. 2002).
Other works have tried to show 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 the linguist John Colarusso 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 hypothesized PIE. Also, the Northwest Caucasian languages preserve a large number of guttural phonemes which may be the modern equivalents of PIE "laryngeals".
1 Phonology
Proto-Indo-European is conjectured to have used the following phonemes:
1.1 Consonants
Proto-Indo-European consonants
| CONSONANTS |
labials |
coronals |
palatovelars |
velars |
labiovelars |
| voicelessPhoneticians define phonation as "use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. sound, which can then be modified by the articulatory actions of the rest of the vocal apparatus. A voiced sound is produced when the vocal stopsA stop or plosive is a consonant sound produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract by the lips or tongue. In the case of oral stops, the airflow is blocked completely, causing pressure to build up. The obstruction in the mouth is then suddenly open |
p |
t |
ḱ |
k |
kw |
| voicedPhoneticians define phonation as "use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. sound, which can then be modified by the articulatory actions of the rest of the vocal apparatus. A voiced sound is produced when the vocal stopsA stop or plosive is a consonant sound produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract by the lips or tongue. In the case of oral stops, the airflow is blocked completely, causing pressure to build up. The obstruction in the mouth is then suddenly open |
b |
d |
ǵ |
g |
gw |
| aspiratedIn phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies the release of some stop consonants. To hear and feel the difference between the aspirated and the unaspirated sound, put your hand in front of your mouth and say key and then ski''. stopsA stop or plosive is a consonant sound produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract by the lips or tongue. In the case of oral stops, the airflow is blocked completely, causing pressure to build up. The obstruction in the mouth is then suddenly open |
bh |
dh |
ǵh |
gh |
gwh |
| nasalsA nasal is a sound produced when the air is allowed to escape through the nose, while its oral passage may be blocked by the lips or tongue (a nasal stop) or opened (a nasal vowel). Nasal stops are often called simply "nasals". Here are some nasal consona |
m |
n |
|
|
|
| fricativesFricative consonants are produced by air flowing through a narrow channel made by placing two articulating organs close together (e. the tip of the tongue and the upper teeth, as in the pronunciation of English initial "th" in thick or the back of the ton |
|
s |
h1, h2, h3 |
| liquidsLiquid consonants or liquids are speech sounds; more specific, they are approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels (glides) because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels (in the way that, for example, the initial [j] in, glides |
w |
r, l |
y |
|
|
The table gives the most common notation in modern publications. Variant transcriptions are given below. Raised h stands for aspiration. The existence of voiceless aspirate stops in the proto-language is (ph, th, ḱh, kh, kwh) is disputed. According to the glottalic theory , the "voiced unaspirated stops" of the system as described above were phonetically ejectives, and the "voiced aspirated stops" were phonetically unaspirated.
