Indo-European languages

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Indo-European
Geographic distribution:	Before the 15th century, Europe, and South, Central and Southwest Asia; today worldwide.
Genetic classification:	One of the world's major language families; although some have proposed links with other families, none of these has received mainstream acceptance.
Subdivisions:	Albanian Anatolian Armenian Balto-Slavic Celtic Germanic Greek Indo-Iranian Italic Tocharian
ISO 639-2:	ine
Countries with a majority of speakers of IE languages      Countries with an IE minority language with official status

The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects,^[1] including most of the major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), much of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent (South Asia). The Indo-European (Indo refers to the Indian subcontinent, since geographically the language group extends from Europe in the west to India in the east) group has the largest numbers of speakers of the recognised families of languages in the world today, with its languages spoken by approximately three billion native speakers.^[2]

[edit] History of the Indo-European theory

Main article: Indo-European studies

Suggestions of similarities between Indian and European languages began to be made by European visitors to India in the 16th century. In 1583 Thomas Stephens, an English Jesuit missionary in Goa, noted similarities between Indian languages, specifically Konkani, and Greek and Latin. These observations were included in a letter to his brother which was not published until the twentieth century.^[3]

The first account to mention Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti (born in Florence, Italy in 1540 AD), a Florentine merchant who traveled to the Indian subcontinent and was among the first European observers to study the ancient Indian language, Sanskrit. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (e.g. devaḥ/dio 'God', sarpaḥ/serpe 'snake', sapta/sette 'seven', aṣṭa/otto 'eight', nava/nove 'nine').^[3] However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.^[3]

In 1647 Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted 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. However, the suggestions of Van Boxhorn did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.

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. It was Thomas Young who first used the term Indo-European in 1813^[4], which became the standard scientific term (except in Germany^[5]) through the work of Franz Bopp, whose systematic comparison of these and other old languages supported the theory. Bopp's Comparative Grammar, appearing between 1833 and 1852, counts as the starting-point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.

[edit] Classification

Further information: List of languages by first written accounts

Indo-European language family.

The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches (in historical order of their first attestation):

1. Anatolian languages, earliest attested branch. Isolated terms in Old Assyrian sources from the 19th century BC, Hittite texts from about the 16th century BC; extinct by Late Antiquity.
2. Greek language, fragmentary records in Mycenaean from the late 15th - early 14th century BC; Homeric traditions date to the 8th century BC. (See Proto-Greek language, History of the Greek language.)
3. Indo-Iranian languages, descending from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian
   • Indo-Aryan languages, including Sanskrit, attested (via oral tradition) from about the mid 2nd millennium BC (Rigveda). Epigraphically from the 3rd century BC.
   • Iranian languages, attested from roughly 1000 BC in the form of Avestan. Epigraphically from 520 BC in the form of Old Persian (Behistun inscription)
   • Dardic languages
   • Nuristani languages
4. Italic languages, including Latin and its descendants (the Romance languages), attested from the 7th century BC.
5. Celtic languages, descended from Proto-Celtic. Gaulish inscriptions date as early as the 6th century BC; Old Irish manuscript tradition from about the 8th century AD.
6. Germanic languages (from Proto-Germanic), earliest testimonies in runic inscriptions from around the 2nd century, earliest coherent texts in Gothic, 4th century AD. Old English manuscript tradition from about the 8th century.
7. Armenian language, attested from the 5th century AD.
8. Tocharian languages, extant in two dialects, attested from roughly the 6th to the 9th century AD. Marginalized by the Old Turkic Uyghur Khaganate and likely extinct by the 10th century.
9. Balto-Slavic languages, believed by most Indo-Europeanists^[6] to form from a phylogenetic unit, while a minority ascribes similarities to prolongued language contact.
   • Slavic languages (from Proto-Slavic), 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 (PIE).
10. Albanian language, attested from the 15th century; Proto-Albanian likely emerged from "Paleo-Balkanic" predecessors.^{[citation needed]}

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; relation to Albanian also proposed.
• 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 including Dacian.
• Dacian language — possibly close to Thracian or to Proto-Albanian – or both.
• Ancient Macedonian language — related to Greek; some propose relationships to Illyrian, Thracian or Phrygian.
• Ligurian language — possibly not Indo-European; possibly close to or part of Celtic.
• Lusitanian language — possibly related to (or part of) Celtic, or Ligurian, or Italic.

[edit] Grouping

Further information: Language families

Of the top 20 contemporary languages in terms of native speakers according to SIL Ethnologue, 12 are Indo-European: Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, Marathi, French, Italian, Punjabi and Urdu, accounting for over 1.6 billion native speakers.^[7]

Membership of these languages in the Indo-European language family and branches, groups and subgroups thereof, is determined by a genetic relationship, defined by shared innovations which are presumed to have taken place in a common ancestor. For example, what makes Germanic languages "Germanic" is that large parts of the structures of all the languages so designated can be stated just once for all of them. In other words, they can be treated as an innovation that took place in Proto-Germanic, the source of all the Germanic languages.

Exempted from this concept are shared innovations acquired by borrowing (or other means of convergence), that can not be considered genetic. It has been asserted, for example, that many of the more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be "areal features". More certainly, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, since 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 to be areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a high 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. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence that comprise very different branches.

To the evolutionary history of a language family, a genetic "tree model" is considered appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. Otherwise, a "wave model" applies, featuring borrowings and no clear underlying genetic tree. Using an extension to the Ringe-Warnow model of language evolution early IE was confirmed to have featured limited contact between distinct lineages, while only the Germanic subfamily exhibited a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution rather than from its direct ancestors. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic is cited to have been radically non-treelike.^[8]

The Indo-Iranian languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European in terms of the number of native speakers as well as in terms of the number of individual languages.

[edit] Proposed subgroupings

Specialists have postulated the existence of such subfamilies (subgroups) as Italo-Celtic, Graeco-Armenian, Graeco-Aryan, and Germanic with Balto-Slavic. The vogue for such subgroups waxes and wanes; Italo-Celtic for example used to be a standard subgroup of Indo-European, but it is now little honored, in part because much of the evidence on which it was based has turned out to have been misinterpreted.^{[citation needed]}

Subgroupings of the Indo European languages are commonly held to reflect genetic relationships and linguistic change. The generic differentiation of Proto-Indo-European into dialects and languages happened hand in hand with language contact and the spread of innovations over different territories.

Rather than being entirely genetic, the grouping of satem languages is commonly inferred as an innovative change that occurred just once, and subsequently spread over a large cohesive territory or PIE continuum that affected all but the peripheral areas.^[9] For instance, Kortlandt proposes this satemization process involved interaction between a western and central Indo-European sphere of influence to the ancestors of Balts and Slavs.^[10]

Shared features of Phrygian and Greek ^[11] and of Thracian and Armenian ^[12] group the southeastern branches of Indo-European together. Some fundamental shared features, like the verbal aorist category (this is 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^[13] and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts.^[14]

The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes the Indo European language family to consist 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^[15] and the preservation of laryngeals.^[16] 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 early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship.^[17] Holm (2008)^[18] based on lexical calculations arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.

[edit] Satem and centum languages

Main article: Centum-Satem isogloss

This article contains too much jargon and may need simplification or further explanation. Please discuss this issue on the talk page, and/or remove or explain jargon terms used in the article. Editing help is available. (October 2007)

Diachronic map showing the Centum (blue) and Satem (red) areas. The supposed area of origin of satemization is shown in darker red (Sintashta/Abashevo/Srubna cultures).

The terms Centum and Satem are used to describe the evolution of the three origin/Sin id=1:0entum-Satem isogloss