Today, the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian,Hindustani,Bengali, French, andGerman; many others spoken by smaller groups are in danger of extinction. Over 3.4 billion people (42% of the global population) speak an Indo-European language as afirst language—by far the most of any language family. There are about 446 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate byEthnologue, of which 313 belong to the Indo-Iranian branch.[1]
The Indo-European language family is not considered by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics to have anygenetic relationships with other language families, although severaldisputed hypotheses propose such relations.
During the 16th century, European visitors to theIndian subcontinent began to notice similarities amongIndo-Aryan,Iranian, andEuropean languages. In 1583, EnglishJesuit missionary andKonkani scholarThomas Stephens wrote a letter fromGoa to his brother (not published until the 20th century)[4] in which he noted similarities between Indian languages andGreek andLatin.
Another account was made byFilippo Sassetti, a merchant born inFlorence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities betweenSanskrit and Italian (these includeddevaḥ/dio 'God',sarpaḥ/serpe 'serpent',sapta/sette 'seven',aṣṭa/otto 'eight', andnava/nove 'nine').[4] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.[4]
In 1647,Dutch linguist and scholarMarcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted the similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian.[5] He included in his hypothesisDutch,Albanian,Greek,Latin,Persian, andGerman, later addingSlavic,Celtic, andBaltic languages. However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
Ottoman Turkish travellerEvliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian.Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greekconjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile,Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Iranian ("Medic"),Finnish,Chinese, "Hottentot" (Khoekhoe), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German, and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors.[6]
The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 whenSir William Jones first lectured on the striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time:Latin,Greek, andSanskrit, to which he tentatively addedGothic,Celtic, andPersian,[7] though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions.[8] In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to theAsiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing the existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name:
The Sanscrit [sic] language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that nophilologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.[note 1]
— Sir William Jones, Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786, ELIOHS[9]
Thomas Young first used the termIndo-European in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: fromWestern Europe toNorth India.[10][11] A synonym isIndo-Germanic (Idg. orIdG.), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in French (indo-germanique) in 1810 in the work ofConrad Malte-Brun; in most languages this term is now dated or less common thanIndo-European, although in Germanindogermanisch remains the standard scientific term. Anumber of other synonymous terms have also been used.
Franz Bopp was a pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies.
Franz Bopp wrote in 1816On the conjugational system of the Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic[12] and between 1833 and 1852 he wroteComparative Grammar. This marks the beginning ofIndo-European studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-Europeancomparative linguistics leads from this work toAugust Schleicher's 1861Compendium and up toKarl Brugmann'sGrundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmann'sneogrammarian reevaluation of the field andFerdinand de Saussure's development of thelaryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such asCalvert Watkins,Jochem Schindler, andHelmut Rix) developed a better understanding of morphology and ofablaut in the wake ofKuryłowicz's 1956Apophony in Indo-European, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of theHittite consonant ḫ.[13] Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence ofcoefficients sonantiques, elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European languages. This led to the so-calledlaryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and a confirmation of de Saussure's theory.[citation needed]
Balto-Slavic, believed by most Indo-Europeanists[22] to form a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes similarities to prolonged language-contact.
Baltic, attested from the 14th century; although attested relatively recently, they retain many archaic features attributed toProto-Indo-European (PIE). Living examples areLithuanian andLatvian.
Tocharian, with proposed links to theAfanasevo culture of Southern Siberia.[26] Extant in two dialects (Turfanian and Kuchean, or Tocharian A and B), attested during roughly the 6th–9th centuries AD. Marginalized by the Old TurkicUyghur Khaganate and probably extinct by the 10th century.
In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages and language-groups have existed or are proposed to have existed:
Ancient Belgian: hypothetical language associated with the proposedNordwestblock cultural area. Speculated to be connected to Italic or Venetic, and to have certain phonological features in common with Lusitanian.[27][28]
Elymian: Poorly-attested language spoken by theElymians, one of the three indigenous (i.e. pre-Greek and pre-Punic) tribes of Sicily. Indo-European affiliation widely accepted, possibly related to Italic or Anatolian.[29][30]
Illyrian: possibly related to Albanian, Messapian, or both
Liburnian: evidence too scant and uncertain to determine anything with certainty
Ligurian: possibly close to or part of Celtic.[31]
Lusitanian: possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, Ligurian, or Italic
Messapic: not conclusively deciphered, often considered to be related to Albanian as the available fragmentary linguistic evidence shows common characteristic innovations and a number of significant lexical correspondences between the two languages[32][33][34]
Paionian: extinct language once spoken north of Macedon
Phrygian: language of the ancientPhrygians. Very likely, but not certainly, a sister group to Hellenic.
Sicel: an ancient language spoken by the Sicels (Greek Sikeloi, Latin Siculi), one of the three indigenous (i.e. pre-Greek and pre-Punic) tribes of Sicily. Proposed relationship to Latin or Proto-Illyrian (Pre-Indo-European) at an earlier stage.[35]
Sorothaptic: proposed, pre-Celtic, Iberian language
Venetic: shares several similarities with Latin and the Italic languages, but also has some affinities with other IE languages, especially Germanic and Celtic.[36][37]
Indo-European family tree in order of first attestationIndo-European language family tree based on "Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis of Indo-European languages" by Chang et al.[38]
Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined bygenealogical relationships, meaning that all members are presumed descendants of a common ancestor,Proto-Indo-European. Membership in the various branches, groups, and subgroups of Indo-European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors areshared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed innovations that took place inProto-Germanic, the source of all the Germanic languages.
In the 21st century, several attempts have been made to model the phylogeny of Indo-European languages using Bayesian methodologies similar to those applied to problems in biological phylogeny.[39][40][38] Although there are differences in absolute timing between the various analyses, there is much commonality between them, including the result that the first known language groups to diverge were the Anatolian and Tocharian language families, in that order.
The "tree model" is considered an appropriate representation of the genealogical history of a language family if communities do not remain in contact after their languages have started to diverge. In this case, subgroups defined by shared innovations form a nested pattern. The tree model is not appropriate in cases where languages remain in contact as they diversify; in such cases subgroups may overlap, and the "wave model" is a more accurate representation.[41] Most approaches to Indo-European subgrouping to date have assumed that the tree model is by-and-large valid for Indo-European;[42] however, there is also a long tradition of wave-model approaches.[43][44][45]
In addition to genealogical changes, many of the early changes in Indo-European languages can be attributed tolanguage contact. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well beareal features. More certainly, very similar-looking alterations in the systems oflong vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of aproto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, because English and continental West Germanic were not a linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of ahigh vowel (*u in the case of Germanic, *i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants *ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ, unique to these two groups among IE languages, which is in agreement with the wave model. TheBalkan sprachbund even features areal convergence among members of very different branches.
An extension to theRinge-Warnow model of language evolution suggests that early IE had featured limited contact between distinct lineages, with only the Germanic subfamily exhibiting a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic is cited to have been radically non-treelike.[46]
Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such asItalo-Celtic,Graeco-Armenian,Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic. However, unlike the ten traditional branches, these are all controversial to a greater or lesser degree.[47]
The Italo-Celtic subgroup was at one point uncontroversial, considered byAntoine Meillet to be even better established than Balto-Slavic.[48] The main lines of evidence included the genitive suffix-ī; the superlative suffix-m̥mo; the change of /p/ to /kʷ/ before another /kʷ/ in the same word (as inpenkʷe >*kʷenkʷe > Latinquīnque, Old Irishcóic); and the subjunctive morpheme-ā-.[49] This evidence was prominently challenged byCalvert Watkins,[50] while Michael Weiss has argued for the subgroup.[51]
Evidence for a relationship between Greek and Armenian includes the regular change of thesecond laryngeal toa at the beginnings of words, as well as terms for "woman" and "sheep".[52] Greek and Indo-Iranian share innovations mainly in verbal morphology and patterns of nominal derivation.[53] Relations have also been proposed between Phrygian and Greek,[54] and between Thracian and Armenian.[55][56] Some fundamental shared features, like theaorist (a verb form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having the perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian languages[57] and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts.[58]
TheIndo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as the gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia[59] and the preservation of laryngeals.[60] However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view, the Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non-satem languages in general—including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in the Indo-European language-area and to early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship.[61] Hans J. Holm, based on lexical calculations, arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.[62]
Pink: languages with instrumental, dative and ablative plural endings (and some others) in *-m- rather than *-bh-
The division of the Indo-European languages into satem and centum groups was put forward by Peter von Bradke in 1890, althoughKarl Brugmann did propose a similar type of division in 1886. In the satem languages, which include the Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian branches, as well as (in most respects) Albanian and Armenian, the reconstructedProto-Indo-European palatovelars remained distinct and were fricativized, while the labiovelars merged with the 'plain velars'. In the centum languages, the palatovelars merged with the plain velars, while the labiovelars remained distinct. The results of these alternative developments are exemplified by the words for "hundred" in Avestan (satem) and Latin (centum)—the initial palatovelar developed into a fricative[s] in the former, but became an ordinary velar[k] in the latter.
Rather than being a genealogical separation, the centum–satem division is commonly seen as resulting from innovative changes that spread across PIE dialect-branches over a particular geographical area; the centum–satemisogloss intersects a number of other isoglosses that mark distinctions between features in the early IE branches. It may be that the centum branches in fact reflect the original state of affairs in PIE, and only the satem branches shared a set of innovations, which affected all but the peripheral areas of the PIE dialect continuum.[63] Kortlandt proposes that the ancestors of Balts and Slavs took part in satemization before being drawn later into the western Indo-European sphere.[64]
From the very beginning of Indo-European studies, there have been attempts to link the Indo-European languages genealogically to other languages and language families. However, these theories remain highly controversial, and most specialists in Indo-European linguistics are sceptical or agnostic about such proposals.[65]
Proposals linking the Indo-European languages with a single language family include:[65]
Scheme of Indo-European language dispersals from c. 4000 to 1000 BC, according to the widely heldKurgan hypothesis. – Center: Steppe cultures 1 (black): Anatolian languages (archaic PIE) 2 (black): Afanasievo culture (early PIE) 3 (black) Yamnaya culture expansion (Pontic-Caspian steppe, Danube Valley) (late PIE) 4A (black): Western Corded Ware 4B-C (blue & dark blue): Bell Beaker; adopted by Indo-European speakers 5A-B (red): Eastern Corded ware 5C (red): Sintashta (Proto-Indo-Iranian) 6 (magenta): Andronovo 7A (purple): Indo-Aryans (Mittani) 7B (purple): Indo-Aryans (India) [NN] (dark yellow): Proto-Balto-Slavic 8 (grey): Greek 9 (yellow):Iranians – [not drawn]: Armenian, expanding from western steppe
The proposed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is thereconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by theProto-Indo-Europeans. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became certain enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Using the method ofinternal reconstruction, an earlier stage, called Pre-Proto-Indo-European, has been proposed.
PIE is aninflected language, in which the grammatical relationships between words were signalled through inflectional morphemes (usually endings). Theroots of PIE are basicmorphemes carrying alexical meaning. By addition ofsuffixes, they formstems, and by addition ofendings, these form grammatically inflected words (nouns orverbs). The reconstructedIndo-European verb system is complex and, like the noun, exhibits a system ofablaut.
The diversification of the parent language into the attested branches of daughter languages is historically unattested. The timeline of the evolution of the various daughter languages, on the other hand, is mostly undisputed, quite regardless of the question ofIndo-European origins.
Using a mathematical analysis borrowed from evolutionary biology,Donald Ringe andTandy Warnow propose the following evolutionary tree of Indo-European branches:[66]
500–1000:Early Middle Ages. TheViking Age forms an Old Norsekoine spanning Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland. Phrygian becomes extinct. TheIslamic conquests and theTurkic expansion result in theArabization andTurkification of significant areas where Indo-European languages were spoken, butPersian still develops under Islamic rule and extends intoAfghanistan andTajikistan. Due to furtherTurkic migrations,Tocharian becomes fully extinct while Scythian languages are overwhelmingly replaced. Slavic languages spread over wide areas in central, eastern and southeastern Europe, largely replacing Romance in the Balkans (with the exception of Romanian) and whatever was left of thePaleo-Balkan languages with the exception of Albanian. Pannonian Basin is taken by theMagyars from the westernSlavs.
1000–1500:Late Middle Ages: Attestation ofAlbanian andBaltic. Modern dialects of Indo-European languages start emerging.
1500–2000:early modern period to present: Colonialism results in the spread of Indo-European languages to every habitable continent, most notablyRomance (North, Central and South America, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia),West Germanic (English in North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and Australia; to a lesser extent Dutch and German), andRussian to Central Asia and North Asia.
In reconstructing the history of the Indo-European languages and the form of theProto-Indo-European language, some languages have been of particular importance. These generally include the ancient Indo-European languages that are both well-attested and documented at an early date, although some languages from later periods are important if they are particularlylinguistically conservative (most notably,Lithuanian). Early poetry is of special significance because of the rigidpoetic meter normally employed, which makes it possible to reconstruct a number of features (e.g.vowel length) that were either unwritten or corrupted in the process of transmission down to the earliest extant writtenmanuscripts.
Vedic Sanskrit (c. 1500–500 BC). This language is unique in that its source documents were all composed orally, and were passed down throughoral tradition (shakha schools) for c. 2,000 years before ever being written down. The oldest documents are all in poetic form; oldest and most important of all is theRigveda (c. 1500 BC)).
Ancient Greek (c. 750–400 BC).Mycenaean Greek (c. 1450 BC) is the oldest recorded form, but its value is lessened by the limited material, restricted subject matter, and highly ambiguous writing system. More important is Ancient Greek, documented extensively beginning with the twoHomeric poems (theIliad and theOdyssey,c. 750 BC).
Hittite (c. 1700–1200 BC). This is the earliest-recorded of all Indo-European languages, and highly divergent from the others due to the early separation of theAnatolian languages from the remainder. It possesses some highly archaic features found only fragmentarily, if at all, in other languages. At the same time, however, it appears to have undergone many early phonological and grammatical changes which, combined with the ambiguities of its writing system, hinder its usefulness somewhat.
Other primary sources:
Latin, attested in a huge amount of poetic and prose material in theClassical period (c. 200 BC – AD 100) and limitedOld Latin material from as early asc. 600 BC.
Gothic (the most archaic well-documentedGermanic language,c. AD 350), along with the combined witness of the other old Germanic languages: most importantly,Old English (c. 800–1000),Old High German (c. 750–1000) andOld Norse (c. 1100–1300, with limited earlier sources dating toc. AD 200).
Old Avestan (c. 1700–1200 BC) andYounger Avestan (c. 900 BC)). Documentation is sparse, but nonetheless quite important due to its highly archaic nature.
As speakers of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) dispersed, the language's sound system diverged as well, changing according to varioussound laws evidenced in thedaughter languages.
PIE is normally reconstructed with a complex system of 15stop consonants, including an unusual three-wayphonation (voicing) distinction betweenvoiceless,voiced and "voiced aspirated" (i.e.breathy voiced) stops, and a three-way distinction amongvelar consonants (k-type sounds) between "palatal"ḱ ǵ ǵh, "plain velar"k g gh andlabiovelarkʷ gʷ gʷh. (The correctness of the termspalatal andplain velar is disputed; seeProto-Indo-European phonology.) All daughter languages have reduced the number of distinctions among these sounds, often in divergent ways.
As an example, inEnglish, one of theGermanic languages, the following are some of the major changes that happened:
As in othercentum languages, the "plain velar" and "palatal" stops merged, reducing the number of stops from 15 to 12.
As in the other Germanic languages, theGermanic sound shift changed the realization of all stop consonants, with each consonant shifting to a different one:
bʰ →b →p →f
dʰ →d →t →θ
gʰ →g →k →x (Later initialx →h)
gʷʰ →gʷ →kʷ →xʷ (Later initialxʷ →hʷ)
Each original consonant shifted one position to the right. For example, originaldʰ becamed, while originald becamet and originalt becameθ (writtenth in English). This is the original source of the English sounds writtenf,th,h andwh. Examples, comparing English with Latin, where the sounds largely remain unshifted:
For PIEp:piscis vs.fish;pēs, pēdis vs.foot;pluvium "rain" vs.flow;pater vs.father
For PIEt:trēs vs.three;māter vs.mother
For PIEd:decem vs.ten;pēdis vs.foot;quid vs.what
For PIEk:centum vs.hund(red);capere "to take" vs.have
For PIEkʷ:quid vs.what;quandō vs.when
Various further changes affected consonants in the middle or end of a word:
The voiced stops resulting from the sound shift were softened to voicedfricatives (or perhaps the sound shift directly generated fricatives in these positions).
Verner's law also turned some of the voiceless fricatives resulting from the sound shift into voiced fricatives or stops. This is why thet in Latincentum ends up asd inhund(red) rather than the expectedth.
Most remainingh sounds disappeared, while remainingf andth became voiced. For example, Latindecem ends up asten with noh in the middle (but notetaíhun "ten" inGothic, an archaic Germanic language). Similarly, the wordsseven andhave have a voicedv (compare Latinseptem,capere), whilefather andmother have a voicedth, although not spelled differently (compare Latinpater,māter).
None of the daughter-language families (except possiblyAnatolian, particularlyLuvian) reflect the plain velar stops differently from the other two series, and there is even a certain amount of dispute whether this series existed at all in PIE. The major distinction betweencentum andsatem languages corresponds to the outcome of the PIE plain velars:
The "central"satem languages (Indo-Iranian,Balto-Slavic,Albanian, andArmenian) reflect both "plain velar" and labiovelar stops as plain velars, often with secondarypalatalization before afront vowel (e i ē ī). The "palatal" stops are palatalized and often appear assibilants (usually but not always distinct from the secondarily palatalized stops).
The three-way PIE distinction between voiceless, voiced and voiced aspirated stops is considered extremely unusual from the perspective oflinguistic typology—particularly in the existence of voiced aspirated stops without a corresponding series of voiceless aspirated stops. None of the various daughter-language families continue it unchanged, with numerous "solutions" to the apparently unstable PIE situation:
TheIndo-Aryan languages preserve the three series unchanged but have evolved a fourth series of voiceless aspirated consonants.
TheIranian languages probably passed through the same stage, subsequently changing the aspirated stops into fricatives.
Greek converted the voiced aspirates into voiceless aspirates.
Italic probably passed through the same stage, but reflects the voiced aspirates as voiceless fricatives, especiallyf (or sometimes plain voiced stops inLatin).
Grassmann's law (dissimilation of aspirates) independently in Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian.
The following table shows the basic outcomes of PIE consonants in some of the most important daughter languages for the purposes of reconstruction. For a fuller table, seeIndo-European sound laws.
Proto-Indo-European consonants and theirreflexes in selected Indo-European daughter languages
The following table presents a comparison of conjugations of thethematicpresent indicative of the verbal root *bʰer- of the English verbto bear and its reflexes in various early attested IE languages and their modern descendants or relatives, showing that all languages had in the early stage an inflectional verb system.
While similarities are still visible between the modern descendants and relatives of these ancient languages, the differences have increased over time. Some IE languages have moved fromsynthetic verb systems to largelyperiphrastic systems. In addition, thepronouns of periphrastic forms are in parentheses when they appear. Some of these verbs have undergone a change in meaning as well.
InModern Irishbeir usually only carries the meaningto bear in the sense of bearing a child; its common meanings areto catch, grab. Apart from the first person, the forms given in the table above are dialectical or obsolete. The second and third person forms are typically instead conjugatedperiphrastically by adding a pronoun after the verb:beireann tú, beireann sé/sí, beireann sibh, beireann siad.
TheHindustani (Hindi andUrdu) verbbʰarnā, the continuation of the Sanskrit verb, can have a variety of meanings, but the most common is "to fill". The forms given in the table, although etymologically derived from thepresent indicative, now have the meaning offuture subjunctive.[72] The loss of thepresent indicative in Hindustani is roughly compensated by the periphrastichabitual indicative construction, using thehabitual participle (etymologically from the Sanskrit present participlebʰarant-) and an auxiliary:ma͠i bʰartā hū̃, tū bʰartā hai, vah bʰartā hai, ham bʰarte ha͠i, tum bʰarte ho, ve bʰarte ha͠i (masculine forms).
The Latin verbferre is irregular, and not a good representative of a normal thematic verb. In most Romance languages such as Portuguese, other verbs now mean "to carry" (e.g. Pt.portar < Lat.portare) andferre was borrowed and nativized only in compounds such assofrer "to suffer" (from Latinsub- andferre) andconferir "to confer" (from Latin "con-" and "ferre").
In ModernGreek,phero φέρω (modern transliterationfero) "to bear" is still used but only in specific contexts and is most common in such compounds as αναφέρω, διαφέρω, εισφέρω, εκφέρω, καταφέρω, προφέρω, προαναφέρω, προσφέρω etc. The form that is (very) common today ispherno φέρνω (modern transliterationferno) meaning "to bring". Additionally, the perfective form ofpherno (used for the subjunctive voice and also for the future tense) is alsophero.
The dual forms are archaic in standard Lithuanian, and are only presently used in some dialects (e.g.Samogitian).
Among modern Slavic languages, only Slovene continues to have a dual number in the standard variety.
Today, Indo-European languages are spoken by billions ofnative speakers across all inhabited continents,[73] the largest number by far for any recognized language family. Of the20 languages with the largest numbers of speakers according toEthnologue, 10 are Indo-European:English,Hindustani,Spanish,Bengali,French,Russian,Portuguese,German,Persian andPunjabi, each with 100 million speakers or more.[74] Additionally, hundreds of millions of persons worldwide study Indo-European languages as secondary or tertiary languages, including in cultures which have completely different language families and historical backgrounds—there are around 600 million[75] learners of English alone.
Despite being unaware of their common linguistic origin, diverse groups of Indo-European speakers continued to culturally dominate and often replace the indigenous languages of the western two-thirds of Eurasia. By the beginning of theCommon Era, Indo-European peoples controlled almost the entirety of this area: the Celts western and central Europe, the Romans southern Europe, the Germanic peoples northern Europe, the Slavs eastern Europe, the Iranian peoples most of western and central Asia and parts of eastern Europe, and the Indo-Aryan peoples in theIndian subcontinent, with theTocharians inhabiting the Indo-European frontier in western China. By the medieval period, only theSemitic,Dravidian,Caucasian, andUralic languages, and the language isolateBasque remained of the (relatively)indigenous languages of Europe and the western half of Asia.
Despite medieval invasions byEurasian nomads, a group to which the Proto-Indo-Europeans had once belonged, Indo-European expansion reached another peak in theearly modern period with the dramatic increase in the population of theIndian subcontinent and European expansionism throughout the globe during theAge of Discovery, as well as the continued replacement and assimilation of surrounding non-Indo-European languages and peoples due to increased state centralization andnationalism. These trends compounded throughout the modern period due to the general globalpopulation growth and the results ofEuropean colonization of theWestern Hemisphere andOceania, leading to an explosion in the number of Indo-European speakers as well as the territories inhabited by them.
Due to colonization and the modern dominance of Indo-European languages in the fields of politics, global science, technology, education, finance, and sports, even many modern countries whose populations largely speak non-Indo-European languages have Indo-European languages as official languages, and the majority of the global population speaks at least one Indo-European language. The overwhelming majority oflanguages used on the Internet are Indo-European, withEnglish continuing to lead the group; English in general has in many respectsbecome thelingua franca of global communication.
^The sentence goes on to say, equally correctly as it turned out: "...here is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."
^Bryce, Trevor (2005).Kingdom of the Hittites (New ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 37.ISBN978-0-19-928132-9.
^Mallory, J. P. (2006).The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford University Press. p. 442.ISBN978-0-19-928791-8.
^M. V. Lomonosov (drafts forRussian Grammar, published 1755). In: Complete Edition, Moscow, 1952, vol. 7, pp. 652–659Archived 1 August 2020 at theWayback Machine:Представимъ долготу времени, которою сіи языки раздѣлились. ... Польской и россійской языкъ коль давно раздѣлились! Подумай же, когда курляндской! Подумай же, когда латинской, греч., нѣм., росс. О глубокая древность! [Imagine the depth of time when these languages separated! ... Polish and Russian separated so long ago! Now think how long ago [this happened to] Kurlandic! Think when [this happened to] Latin, Greek, German, and Russian! Oh, great antiquity!]
^Jones, William (2 February 1786)."The Third Anniversary Discourse".Electronic Library of Historiography. Universita degli Studi Firenze, taken from:Shore, John (1807).The Works of Sir William Jones. With a Life of the Author. Vol. III. John Stockdale and John Walker. pp. 24–46.OCLC899731310.
^Bopp, Franz (2010) [1816].Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache: in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache. Documenta Semiotica: Serie 1, Linguistik (in German) (2nd ed.). Hildesheim: Olms.
^Kurylowicz, Jerzy (1927). "ə indo-européen et ḫ hittite". In Taszycki, W.; Doroszewski, W. (eds.).Symbolae grammaticae in honorem Ioannis Rozwadowski. Vol. 1. pp. 95–104.
^Elsie, Robert (2005). "Theodor of Shkodra (1210) and Other Early Texts".Albanian Literature: A Short History. New York:I. B. Tauris. p. 5.
^In his latest book,Eric Hamp supports the thesis that the Illyrian language belongs to the Northwestern group, that the Albanian language is descended from Illyrian, and that Albanian is related to Messapic which is an earlier Illyrian dialect (Hamp 2007).
^Curtis, Matthew Cowan (30 November 2011).Slavic–Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence. p. 18.ISBN978-1-267-58033-7. Retrieved31 March 2017.So while linguists may debate about the ties between Albanian and older languages of the Balkans, and while most Albanians may take the genealogical connection to Illyrian as incontrovertible, the fact remains that there is simply insufficient evidence to connect Illyrian, Thracian, or Dacian with any language, including Albanian
^Gamkrelidze, Tamaz V.;Ivanov, Vyacheslav (1995).Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and Proto-Culture. Part I: The Text. Part II: Bibliography, Indexes. Walter de Gruyter.ISBN978-3-11-081503-0.
^Haber, Marc; Mezzavilla, Massimo; Xue, Yali; Comas, David; Gasparini, Paolo; Zalloua, Pierre; Tyler-Smith, Chris (2015). "Genetic evidence for an origin of the Armenians from Bronze Age mixing of multiple populations".European Journal of Human Genetics.24 (6): 931–936.bioRxiv 10.1101/015396.doi:10.1038/ejhg.2015.206.PMC 4820045.PMID 26486470.
^F. Ribezzo,Revue Internationale d'Onomastique, II, 1948 p. 43 sq. et III 1949, p. 45 sq., M.Almagro dansRSLig, XVI, 1950, p. 42 sq, P.Laviosa Zambotti, l.c.
^Bernard, Sergent (1995).Les Indo-Européens: Histoire, langues, mythes (in French). Paris: Bibliothèques scientifiques Payot. pp. 84–85.
^Fine, John (1985).The ancient Greeks: a critical history.Harvard University Press. p. 72.ISBN978-0-674-03314-6.Most scholars now believe that the Sicans and Sicels, as well as the inhabitants of southern Italy, were basically of Illyrian stock superimposed on an aboriginal 'Mediterranean' population.
^Lejeune, Michel (1974).Manuel de la langue vénète. Heidelberg: C. Winter. p. 341.
^Pokorny, Julius (1959).Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch [Indogermanic Etymological Dictionary] (in German). Bern: Francke. pp. 708–709,882–884.
^Blažek, Václav (2007). "From August Schleicher to Sergei Starostin: on the development of the tree-diagram models of the Indo-European languages".Journal of Indo-European Studies.35 (1–2):82–109.
^Meillet, Antoine (1908).Les dialectes indo-européens [The Indo-European dialects] (in French). Paris: Honoré Champion.
^Watkins, Calvert (1966). "Italo-Celtic revisited". In Birnbaum, Henrik; Puhvel, Jaan (eds.).Ancient Indo-European dialects. Berkeley:University of California Press. pp. 29–50.
^Greppin, James (1996). "Review ofThe linguistic relationship between Armenian and Greek by James Clackson".Language.72 (4):804–807.doi:10.2307/416105.JSTOR416105.
^Euler, Wolfram (1979).Indoiranisch-griechische Gemeinsamkeiten der Nominalbildung und deren indogermanische Grundlagen [Indo-Iranian-Greek similarities in nominal formation and their Indo-European foundations] (in German). Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
^The supposed autochthony of Hittites, the Indo-Hittite hypothesis and migration of agricultural "Indo-European" societies became intrinsically linked together by Colin Renfrew (Renfrew 2001, pp. 36–73).
^Encyclopædia Britannica 1981, Houwink ten Cate, H. J.; Melchert, H. Craig & van den Hout, Theo P. J. p. 586The parent language, Laryngeal theory; pp. 589, 593Anatolian languages.
^Holm 2008, pp. 629–636. The result is a partly new chain of separation for the main Indo-European branches, which fits well to the grammatical facts, as well as to the geographical distribution of these branches. In particular it clearly demonstrates that the Anatolian languages did not part as first ones and thereby refutes the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.
^abcKallio, Petri; Koivulehto, Jorma (2018). "More remote relationships of Proto-Indo-European". In Jared Klein; Brian Joseph; Matthias Fritz (eds.).Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics. pp. 2280–2291.
Anthony, David W. (2007).The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press.ISBN978-0-691-05887-0.
Beekes, Robert S. P. (1995).Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. Translated by Vertalers, Uva; Gabriner, Paul (1st ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.ISBN9027221510.
Fortson, Benjamin W. (2004).Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell.ISBN978-1-4051-0315-2.
Hamp, Eric (2007). Rexhep Ismajli (ed.).Studime krahasuese për shqipen [Comparative studies on Albanian] (in Albanian). Akademia e Shkencave dhe e Arteve e Kosovës, Prishtinë.
Porzig, Walter (1954).Die Gliederung des indogermanischen Sprachgebiets. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag.
Renfrew, C. (2001). "The Anatolian origins of Proto-Indo-European and the autochthony of the Hittites". InDrews, R. (ed.).Greater Anatolia and the Indo-Hittite language family. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man.ISBN978-0-941694-77-3.
Schleicher, August (1861).Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (in German). Weimar: Böhlau (reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag).ISBN978-3-8102-1071-5.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
Szemerényi, Oswald John Louis (1957). "The Problem of Balto-Slav Unity: A Critical Survey".Kratylos.2. O. Harrassowitz:97–123.
Reprinted inSzemerényi, Oswald John Louis (1991). Considine, P.; Hooker, James T. (eds.).Scripta Minora: Selected Essays in Indo-European, Greek, and Latin. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. Vol. IV: Indo-European Languages other than Latin and Greek. Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. pp. 2145–2171.ISBN978-3-85124-611-7.ISSN1816-3920.
von Bradke, Peter (1890).Über Methode und Ergebnisse der arischen (indogermanischen) Alterthumswissenshaft (in German). Giessen: J. Ricker'che Buchhandlung.
Asadpour, Hiwa, and Thomas Jügel, eds. Word Order Variation: Semitic, Turkic and Indo-European Languages in Contact. Vol. 31. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2022.
"Indo-European Roots Index".The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). Internet Archive: Wayback Machine. 22 August 2008 [2000]. Archived fromthe original on 17 February 2009. Retrieved9 December 2009.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Köbler, Gerhard (2014).Indogermanisches Wörterbuch (in German) (5th ed.). Gerhard Köbler. Retrieved29 March 2015.
.svg)
-2.png)
