Talk:Proto-Indo-European language/Archive 1

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To the tune of Yankee Doodle:

Proto-Indo-European
Was the mother tongue,
But everyone who used to speak it
Is now dead and gone.

An original composition by Kbh3rd

Ha! --MerovingianThe above file's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion. See files for discussion to help reach a consensus on what to do.Talk 23:04, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

http://math.uchicago.edu/~wald/lit/anything_goes.txt

And though I'm just a steppe parparian,
In two weeks I'll pe Tocharian,
And it shows.
Anything Koes.

Like lightning (Dye:us forgive the simile),
The Teutons are switching, Grimmily,
All three rows.
Anything Goes.

dab 12:58, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm planning to eventually give an overview over the reconstructed grammar. But it will take some time. dab 12:58, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, this is useful, because it is difficult to find both on and outside the internet. But for neadability purposes, could you use paradigms rather than just endings? --Caesarion 17:20, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What's that star thingy?

I came to the PIE page hoping to find some explanation of the ubiquitous asterisk symbol at the beginning of many PIE-reconstructed words. But, sadly, I didn't.

Wouldn't this be a good page to mention it on?

Steverapaport 18:45, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The meaning of the asterisk is exactly "This is a reconstructed word [i.e., not a word that was ever actually recorded anywhere in this form]." AJD 19:08, 5 Feb 2005

well, you would have found iit, had you taken it upon yourself to read as far as line 3 where we say "The standard convention is to mark unattested forms with an asterisk" ... dab (ᛏ) 22:13, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

baltic or caucasian?

I have come across conflicting information on wikipedia on whether modern baltic (esp lithuanian) or modern caucasian (esp georgian) languages most resemble PIE. What if anything is the consensus?

Baltic languages are Indo-European. Caucasian languages, including Georgian, aren't. AJD 23:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See the following excerpt from the main PIE article: "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"."

The article makes no reference to the more common idea that the baltic languages, Lithuanian in particular, most closely resemble PIE. I never claimed Caucasian languages were Indo-European.

Isn't that idea nowadays considered obsolete?

By the way, I read somewhere about similarities between IE and Caucasian. For instance, In IE, n was used for negation, in Proto-caucasian the similar nasal m, etc. There were a few similarities, like that.

Velars

The existence of the plain velars as phonemes separate from the palatovelars and labiovelars is disputed. In most circumstances they appear to be allophones of one of the other two series, and none of the daughter languages (with the possible exception of Albanian ) has reflexes of them that differ from the other two series.

This isn't still true, is it? I didn't think there was still any disagreement about this among scholars of Indo-European, and didn't Craig Melchert remove all doubt that these must have been different phonemes in Indo-European by showing that they have three distinct reflexes in Luwian?:

*ḱeyor 'lies down' > zīyar(i)

*kes- 'comb' > kisāi-

*k^wid 'what' > kui

AJD 01:56, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

No. people will not accept a phoneme in the Proto-Language based on a single Luwian word. Also, in your example, there is nothing to stop us from saying it was *kuid rather than *k^wid. From my own (unpublished) lexicostatistical studies, I tend to believe that *k^w was *ku in early PIE, and I can cite a number of published voicings of that opinion, if you really press me :) dab (ᛏ) 05:52, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I think "mainstream" Indo-Europeanists (whom I thoroughly subjectively define as Jay Jasanoff and the people he respects) are convinced by Craig Melchert's Luwian evidence. But that doesn't mean the matter is now settled beyond all dispute. --Angr/_comhrá 10:38, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I encountered a recent article on the internet about Balto-Slavic phonetics giving a detailed reconstruction of the development of Baltic and Slavic from PIE, where the author questions the "three-tectal" theory; so I don't think this is beyond dispute.

Furthermore, even if Luwian did have three different velars, this is no proof of PIE having it. There is no reason why such a development wasn't particular to a subset of PIE dialects; in fact, the fact that Lithuanian disagrees in a number of cases with other satem languages in this respect argues in favor of this. Benwing 3 July 2005 07:03 (UTC)

Is this correct??

Let me see if I got all 10 of these correct:

oi-no
dwo
trei
kwetwer
penkwe
sweks
septm
oktou
neun
dekm

And I believe 20 is wikmti and 100 is dkm-tom. How about 11 to 19, 30 to 90, and 1000?? Georgia guy 00:17, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

"one" is tricky; some languages seem to come from *oinos; but others come from *oikos or *oiwos and others from *sem-. The others are basically okay, though people might quibble about the endings and might want some more laryngeals and more palatal marks stuck in. I don't think 11 to 19 are reconstructable because there's too much divergence among the attested languages, and too much possibility for analogy. According to R.S.P. Beekes' Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, 30-90 were probably something like:

trih₂-dḱomth₂
k^wetur-dḱomth₂
penk^we-dḱomth₂
sweks-dḱomth₂
septm-dḱomth₂
h₃eḱth₃-dḱomth₂
h₁neun-dḱomth₂

Some people have reconstructed *ǵheslo- for 'thousand' but it's pretty controversial. It looks good as the source of Sanskrit (sa)hasram (where sa is from *sm- for 'one'), and maybe Tocharian A wälts/B yaltse. Greek χίλιοι is supposed to be from *ǵhesl-yo-, which is plausible enough. Some claim Latin mīlle is supposed to be from *smī-ǵhslī- (again with *sm- for 'one') but I don't think too many people believe that. The Germanic and Balto-Slavic words (Gothic þusundi, Lithuanian tūkstantis, OCS tysǫšti') seem to be from *tuHs-ḱmti- and mean something like 'swollen hundred'. --Angr/_comhrá 10:34, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

is there any evidence that the /d/ in dḱomth₂ really belongs? The main evidence from Beekes seems to be some highly suspect claims about the "glottal stop in the /d/ causing lengthening of the previous vowel" [since he believes in the controversial glottalic theory]. Benwing 3 July 2005 07:03 (UTC)

I don't know if there's direct evidence for it. I'm willing to believe it was there in the oldest stage of the language, because it does seem likely it's the same root as *dekm, but I'm also willing to believe the d was lost without a trace before the language broke up. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 3 July 2005 08:25 (UTC)

controversial claims

the stuff in the introduction about supposed PIE-Caucasian connections sounds extremely fringy to me, and really doesn't belong there. i would bet that Greenberg's Eurasian hypothesis (i.e. that PIE, Uralic, and Altaic, perhaps also Korean, Japanese, and Eskimo-Aleut, maybe a few others, were sister stocks) is *far* more accepted, but it is not even mentioned here.

also, AFAIK the reconstruction of PIE case endings is disputed; even Beekes, for example, who is fairly opinionated, is quite tentative about suggesting dative/ablative/instrumental plural endings along the lines of what's given here.

i also think that something that would go along way towards helping clear the FUD going on here is to emphasize in this page the fact that "PIE" refers to a period of 1000-2000 years, over which there were (obviously) many different stages and changes. [it should also be explained that the "Proto" period of a language is usually assumed to be divided into two large stages: an Early stage of total uniformity and a Late stage in which dialect variations exist, but changes for the most part still happen in parallel across all dialects.] IMO, much of the confusion in PIE studies stems from these fundamental facts getting ignored by far too many PIE researchers.

Benwing 3 July 2005 06:52 (UTC)

You're right; possible external connections of PIE shouldn't be mentioned in the introduction. Maybe you could write a section on the various theories (like Nostratic, AFAIK the most popular of all the crackpot theories) and stick it at the end of the article. And I'd be happy to see more tentativeness in the reconstructions of the endings given; I had been meaning to do it myself someday but have never gotten a round tuit. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 3 July 2005 08:31 (UTC)

I also agree it has no place in the intro. Imho, Nostratic is fringy, but not "crackpot", there can well be a section about these theories, properly qualified as speculative. dab (ᛏ) 3 July 2005 09:01 (UTC)

To me, Nostratic is crackpot, but I'll concede some pots (like Proto-World language) are more cracked than others. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 3 July 2005 10:44 (UTC)

In this thread [1] you can read controversial claim why PIE can be Adamic language, as suggested by Catherine Emmerich revelations.

Table of Correspondences & Rules List

I think you should also add a table of regular sound correspondences and a list of sound laws or rules. Perhaps, every language article should contain a list of changes that would describe its developement from its ancestor tongue in detail, so, for example, Modern German would include some Old High German information, and Old High German would also contain some Proto-(West-)Germanic information, etc. What do you think?

As for fonts, I'd recommend "Arial Unicode MS". I'm using it very often, since it contains all the necessary characters, including IPA, Greek, Cyrilic, Devanagari, Arabic, and Hebrew, lots of diacritics, whatever.

your browser (or style sheet) chooses your font for you :) all we do is encode stuff in unicode. Yes, your suggestion is obviously an ultimate aim here, but well, feel free to begin. It's a tall order. dab (ᛏ) 7 July 2005 13:57 (UTC)

That's right.

As for the table, I've actually started already :). I'm ready to send the "first draft" to those who are interested. It's by no means exhaustive, a lot of information remains to be added and some information might be incorrect, but if anybody wants... :)--Pet'usek 7 July 2005 14:11 (UTC)

I'd like to see that! You know, by the way, that there is an overview table of such things in Calvert Watkins' The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European Roots, 2nd edition, Boston & New York 2000.

As for the changes, yes it would be good to have brief info in the various language articles, but I feel that sound shifts deserve to be dealt with fully in their own articles. To take that example of Germanic → Old High German, we have a new article on that at High German consonant shift, which I would modestly suggest might be a model. But yeh, why not summarise it in the German article too? --Doric Loon 7 July 2005 14:28 (UTC)

Pet'usek, take a look at Proto-Celtic; is that the sort of thing you mean? --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 7 July 2005 15:34 (UTC)

Well, yes, that's it - almost. It's a good start anyway. Since there might be various conditions and environments in which the phonemes might change in different ways, I'd use superscript numbers as links to detailed explanations, but the phonemes themselves might function as links - either to the expl. or to examples. Imagine, for instance, a general rule like this in a hypothetical language "A": VsV > VrV. As this rule took place in various languages, even in various language families, I think creating a separate referential article - a list of rules or something like that - might be useful. A question arises here what format such a list should have, but reciprocal linking to languages where these rule could be found should certainly be included. Now, if we know that in some languages certain consonantal clusters get simplified (e.g. /*str-/ > /c/ or sim.), there should be a link to this rule at all consonants affected (i.e. *s, *t, *r), otherwise I don't know how exactly we could make the information easier to access, keeping the summary or table transparent and well-arranged at the same time... For those who'd like to see my FIRST DRAFT table, [2] (In the "Notes" part, an attempt at a more detailed summary of PIE > LIE laryngeal transformation is also present; it's made in the MS Excel format, but I'm going to prepare the HTML version)

As for the High German consonant shift, I like it :), but still, there could be - just for an easy and quick reference - a little more simpler table (e.g. at the very beginning of the article). I must still think about it - the combination of transparency and exhaustive information is crucial I think... Another question has just come across my mind: perhaps, we should have three or two tables in every language description - the correspondences between the ancestor and the language described (1), between the language and its sister languages (2), and between the language and its daughter languages ;) (of course, 1 & 2 might be in a single table)? I don't know... :)

If you prepare your preliminary table in wiki formatting, you can make a subpage for it on your user page here, which will make it easier for others to view and make suggestions on. Just create a red link like User:Petusek/IE chart or something like that, then click on it to edit. So long as it's still in your user space it doesn't matter if isn't not ready yet. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 7 July 2005 19:13 (UTC)

I see. OK. I'll try. :) I'm a newcomer here, so thanks for this piece of advice. :)

The idea seems complex, but quite interesting, It would be nice to see how a root has changed through the millennia in different languages.

Example texts

it's nice to have some example texts, but the source (author) must be attributed. Also, what is the "Aquan nepot" supposed to be? Please state a source for these texts. dab (ᛏ) 15:30, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

This was a 19th-century thing, wasn't it, writing texts in PIE? I'm told Jacob Grimm wrote fairy tales in his reconstructed language. Scholars of the 20th century became highly sceptical about our ability to reconstruct the language that well. So I am in two minds about including these. They are interesting as a testimony to 19th-century academic smugness, and possibly they really do have value in giving an impression of what the language MIGHT have been like, but this is not the way the discipline operates today, and these texts are not in the modern transcription system. There needs to be a very clear caveat given here. --Doric Loon 23:28, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

no, such texts are still written, for fun, and to illustrate the author's idea of PIE. Since every scholar has his own idea of the language, it is imperative that the authors of these texts are noted. So far, we have only Schleicher, so I'll cut the other texts to talk for now, until references are brought forward. dab (ᛏ) 10:04, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey, Aquan Nepot is a prayer to Neptune, The Apostles' Creed, Heil Mary and Pater Noster are the classical Christian prayers. About authors of the tale Deivos Verunos you know from the other posting. Why do you commit vandalism? --Nixer

WP:CITE! You are not writing this article for me. The Verunos text is apparently reconstructed Proto-Indo-Aryan. For the others, we still have no reference. If they are your own, do consider wikibooks. dab (ᛏ) 13:24, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

This is NOT Proto-Indo-Aryan. This is Proto-Indo-European, written with another phonetic system, which is much more readable. Look at this:

http://www.grsampson.net/Q_PIE.html - This is the same text --Nixer

Nixer, your link doesn't work. I think what you meant to have as the link is http://www.grsampson.net/Q_PIE.html, or simply http://www.grsampson.net/Q_PIE.html. (see source code) -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 13:57, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thank you --Nixer

then why did you not provide the link from the beginning, saying "Geoffrey Sampson, S.K. Sen, E.P. Hamp"? Click on WP:CITE. Read it. No, read it, this is Wikipedia policy, and we are bound by it here. You cannot just come here and copy-paste text into the artice without comment, you need to say where it is from; and not only on the talk page, after being implored and begged to do it. I'll revert you again, and this time please do it properly, like I have done in Schleicher's example. I mean the Verunos text; you still have to provide references for the prayers. dab (ᛏ) 14:13, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

cut texts

Deivos Verunos

To regs eghest. So nepotlus eghest. So regs sunum evelt. So toso ceuterum precsquet: "Sunus moi guenhota!" So ceuter tom reguem evequet: "Ihgesuo deivom Verunom". So regs deivom Verunom uposesore nu deivom ihgeto. "Cluthi moi, pater Verune!" Deivos Verunos cata divos egveght. "Quid velsi?" "Velmi sunum." "Tod estu", vequet leucos deivos Verunos. Reguos poteni sunum geguenhe.

this appears to be a PIE-ified Proto-Indo-Aryan text, composed by one S.K. Sen, see Talk:Proto-Greek language.

Pater naseros (the Paternoster)
- (Version 1)
  Pater naseros cemeni, nomen tovos estu cventos, reguom tevem guemaght ad nas, veltos tevem cvergeto cemeni ertique, edom naserom dagheres do nasmebhos daghei tosmei letodque agosnes nasera, so lemos scelobhos naserobhos. Neque peretod nas, tou tratod nas apo peuces. Teve senti reguom, maghti deiromque bhegh entom. Estod.
- (Version 2)
  Pater naseros cemeni, nomen tovos estu iseros, reguom tevem guemaght ad nasmens, veltos tevem cvergeto cemeni ed eri, edom naserom dagheres do nasmebhos tosmei daghei ed le agosnes nasera, so lemos scelobhos naserobhos. Neque gvedhe nasmens bhi perendom, tou bhegve nasmens melguod. Teve senti reguom, maghti ed deirom eneu entom. Estod.

Aquan Nepot

Puros esiem. Deivons aisiem. Aquan Nepot dhverbhos me rues. Meg moris me gherdmi. Deivos, tebherm gheumi. Vicpoteis tebherm gheumi. Ansus tebherm guemi. Nasmei gvertins dedemi. Adbherome ci sime guerenti! Dotores vesvom, nas nasmei cerddhemes. Aquan Nepot, dhveronus sceledhi! Dheghom Mater toi gheumes! Dheghemia Mater, tebhiom gheumes! Meg moris nas gherdmi. Eguheies, nasmei sercemes.

These example texts should not be included. Even correctly cited they are unencyclopedic in the extreme. We should mention that some people from Schleicher up to the present day have attempted to write texts in reconstructed PIE, and provide links to some of them, and explain why this practice is no longer considered scientifically feasible today. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 03:58, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Nixer

why didn't you just link to [3]? I couldn't find the texts via google since they are given as jpgs. Now, you are in violation of WP:CITE, WP:NOR, AND GFDL (the last only unless you are Raphael Sawitzky yourself). You practically violate every principle of Wikipedia by your stubborn re-insertion of these texts. You still haven't given a reference for the Neptune prayer, and the Christian ones were just copied off some Christian website. This is not what we do here. I will revert your additions as vandalism from now on, unless you lighten up and start respecting policy. dab (ᛏ) 11:05, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

TEB728

TEB728, Thank you for the link. dab, I am not Raphael Sawitzky, but you asked a link - a I give. But his translation different. And, of course, he is not the author of the translations in http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-proto-indo-europ.html. it is obvious because different technics and level.

TEB728 have given us the right link to the source. --Nixer 15:02, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

ok Nixer, I realize that you did not discuss your edits because you are not fluent in English; it is, however, very important that you understand Wikipedia policy if you want to contribute. You also replaced my annotated version of Schleicher's tale with your unannotated one (why?). Your texts are linked to via external links. That should be good enough, why do you insist so much that they are inserted verbatim and without comment in the article? dab (ᛏ) 15:32, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Capitalisation of sound laws

The articles about sound laws have different capitalisation (Sievers' Law, Edgerton's Law, Bartholomae's law, Szemerényi's law, Stang's law, Siebs' law) -- cf. also Indo-European sound laws#Sound laws within PIE. Is there any policy about such cases? Are these proper names? --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 20:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

That's not the sort of thing Wikipedia has policies about, but the Chicago Manual of Style says the word "law" should be lowercased in such cases. —An gr 20:55, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Could you move Sievers' Law? I did the rest but I could't move this one because I'm not an admin. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 21:09, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Done —An gr 21:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Subscript numbers

When viewing this page in Firefox, the subscript numbers after the h's representing the laryngeals (*h₁, *h₂, *h₃ ) are invisible. They are however visible in Internet Explorer (oddly, since IE is normally held up to be the difficult one). --rossb (talk) 19:09, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox, and they look fine to me. Does it help to use the {{PIE}} template? How do *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ look? —An gr 19:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

I notice sometimes that table cell and line shaping is altered with subscripting/superscripting. It may have more to do with that than anything else. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:52, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

The {{PIE}} template doesn't seem to help, and it doesn't just happen in tables. If I use the ordinary numbers with the html "sub" element rather than the special charactes, it looks fine, like this:(*h₁, *h₂, *h₃ ). Similarly the subscript characters in Aeusoes1's signature look OK. The same problem occurs by the way in other articles dealing with the laryngeals. If it helps I'm using Firefox 3.0.6 on Windows Vista. --rossb (talk) 09:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly I've now tried it on another PC on Firefox 3.0.5 on Windows XP and it looks fine! --rossb (talk) 10:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Vocalic "allophone"???

As I understand, an "allophone" is a non-pnonological variant of a phoneme. As soon as it acquires phonemic role, it is not an allophone any longer. So, I don't understand why "i" and "u" when they are prononunced as vowels, are called "vocalic allophones" in the article; they are vowels. I would rather say that "y" and "w" are the consonantic allophones of "i" and "u", as in Spanish: i and u are vowels; but they can also be semivowels when standing with another vowel. There is no reason to call the "u" a "vocalic allophone" in the word *tuH, for example, where it is a vowel. --El Mexicano (talk) 12:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Not really, read the section further: *u and *i lack several important properties that "real" PIE vowels *e and *o exhibit. Thus they're underlyingly consonants, phonetically really just vocalic allphones of of underlying *y ([j]) and *w. That they're phonemicised as vowels in most of the direct reflexes in immediate daughters doesn't invalidate their consonantic character in the mother language. *u in *tuH is a vowel just phonetically, with respect to the syllabification rules, phonologically it's a vocalic allophone of underlying *w. Evidence for "real" PIE *i and *u is really thin and very much debatable. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:09, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, to clarify, an allophone is any variant of a phoneme. So, for example, Spanish /i/ may be [i], [j], [ei̯]. The symbol between the slashes is an abstraction. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

It's OK, but why should we call a phoneme consonant when it is really a vowel in most cases? Also a semivowel is rather a vowel than a consonant, a vowel that you pronounce very shortly. Logically, if *e and *o are vowels in *hegom, why isn't a vowel *u in *tū? Would you be able to pronounce that u as a consonant, like [tv:]??? I don't think. Moreover, if they can be also long, they must be vowels, at least for me. --El Mexicano (talk) 19:37, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

That sort of thing (calling it one thing when another thing is more frequent) happens all the time. Spanish "voiced stops" are much more often voiced approximants, English /t/ is rarely simply a "voiceless stop" since it's either aspirated, a flap, or a glottal stop more often. Most notably, we consider /r/ to be a consonant in English, though it is much more frequently part of a syllable nucleus (I am speaking of my own dialect and those like it).

The article says that "Long variants of these vocalic allophones may have appeared already in the proto-language by compensatory lengthening" meaning that it's arguable that the long variants were separate phonemes, but certainly that paved the way towards them becoming so. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

In any case, while there certainly is room for debate about the best characterisation of these sounds, they are generally treated as vocalic allophones in the field, so that's what this article should reflect. It's worth adding that consonants certainly can be long, although this isn't so obvious if you're used to them being treated as "doubled". Finally, it's far from unheard of for sonorants to form the nucleus of a syllable. Croatian, for example, has cases of syllabic [r]. garik (talk) 23:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand that calling a sound consonant or vowel, is just conventional. But I think in this special case, the article should explain clearly why *i and *u are considered (vocalic allophones of) consonants and not vowels. Let's see the basic principles: what's called a vowel? A sound that you can pronounce on its own. And a consonant is what you can pronounce only with a vowel. Sonorants like l, m, n, r can really behave like vowels (as for making a syllabe), though they are commonly called consonants; the same way, i and u can behave like consonants, e.g. in Spanish cuando ['kwando] or hielo ['jelo], nevertheless, they are vocalic phonemes. What frequency is reconstructed for PIE *i and *u as vowels in words? It would be arguable to call them vocalic allophones of consonants only if they appeared very rarely as a nucleous of syllabes, and rather as a consonantic element (semivowel). --El Mexicano (talk) 07:52, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Your definition of the distinction between a consonant and a vowel can be enlightening to readers, but is a bit oversimplistic because of sonorants like the ones you listed as well as "semivocalic" sonorants like [j ɥ ɰ w]. There are also languages with words that have no vowels. I've seen a number of phonology texts make a clear distinction between consonants and sonorants (as well as vowels) because of the different ways they behave.

I agree that the article should explain more regarding vowels. I'm not even sure how many vowel phonemes PIE had because the article just lists allophones without describint conditions. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, you have understood the problem. Talking about "allophones" has no sense without defining the phonological context they can appear and determining why they are just allophones and no phonemes. The definition should contrast phonemes vs. allophones by presenting some examples. --El Mexicano (talk) 17:07, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

PIE *y & *i and *w & *u are the same phonemes. Together with *m, *n, *l, *r they're usually called "resonants" because their syllabicity is determined by a simple rule: 1) vocalic allophones (*i, *u, *l̥, *r̥, *m̥, *n̥) are found between 2 nonsyllabics 2) consonantic allophones (*y, *w, *l, *r, *m, *n) next to a syllable peak 3) when 2+ "resonants" are next to each other, the rightmost gets syllabified first. See here (4.2.2.2, per Schindler 1977) for a formulaic description. From a phonological viewpoint, there is thus absolutely no difference between *y & *i, and *w & *i. PIE phonology article provides more detailed treatment on the difference of "real" vowels *e and *o, and *i and *u: Such syllabic sonorants therefore surface as vowels, but are distinct from the real vowels by that fact that they participate in ablaut alternations with their nonsyllabic pairs, and by the distribution; while the vowels *e and *o can be positioned only in the syllable nucleus, sonorants can also make appearance in both syllable nucleus and onset. Whether *i and *u are vocalic allophones of underlying consonants, or vice versa, is determined by more subtle factor than which of them frequents most. The section where the disputed claim is made alread links to PIE phonology article, and detailing the conditions of allophony would be an overkill for it, and there is really no need for it in such short section.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:55, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not unreasonable to provide a quick summary of information like what the actual phonemes of PIE are. I'd do it myself, but a lot of the information regarding vowels that we could transfer over to here is uncited. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:21, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

For Ivan Štambuk: In Spanish, the situation is the same. i and u can appear as a nucleous of syllabe, e.g. mundo and lindo, and also as semivowels, e.g. cuanto, deuda, aire, tiene, however, they are always considered vowels, even if the /i/ is represented by -y in words like ley, soy. --El Mexicano (talk) 20:28, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure where you're getting that information, but /i/ and /u/ are either considered semivowels in prevocalic contexts or are considered the first element of a diphthong (and therefore not part of the onset or coda). See Spanish phonology. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:11, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

See "semiconsonante" and "semivocal" in the DRAE. When they are in prevocalic position, are called "semiconsonants" and in post-vocalic position, "semivowels". Anyway, it does the same, because in both cases they are treated as vocales (vocalic phonemes) and not consonants. For instance, in the word hielo, "i" is always a vowel, though it behaves as a consonant; also depends on individual pronunciations. Some persons pronounce it as ['ɟelo], others as ['jelo]. Another example is the word recaudador, I've heard a pronunciation like [rekaβda'dor] and not [rekawda'dor]. --El Mexicano (talk) 14:31, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The terms "semivowel" and "semiconsonant" demonstrate that the vowel/consonant distinction can be limiting. By the way, many Spanish dialects demonstrate a distinction between a non-vocalic/semivocalic/semiconsonantal allophone of /i/ and /u/ and actual consonantal approximants which are not allophones of these vowels. Spanish phonology talks about this. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 15:43, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

How ‘i’ and ‘u’ are pronounced in Spanish has nothing to do with this article. According to published reliable sources: In PIE, */y/ and */w/ behaved phonologically the same as the other sonorant consonants, */m/, */n/, */l/ and */r/. And they were quite unlike the vowels, */e/, */o/ and */a/, which were subject to ablaut. Unless El Mexicano has a reliable source that says otherwise, his musings do not merit discussing here. —teb728 t c 21:25, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Dear TEB728, let me tell you that logical thinking doesn't require any source. It requires just thinking. If a vocalic sound is able to make syllabe and can be even long, then it's a vowel and not a consonant, not a vocalic allophone, not a sonorant, but a vowel. That's the point. Goodbye. --El Mexicano (talk) 08:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunatelly, OR policy doesn't require us to think, but to quote reliable sources supporting dubious claims. All the standard PIE phonology handbooks refer to *i and *u as vocalic allophones of *y ([j]) and *w. Phonetically *i and *u are indeed vowels, but phonologically they're really sonorants, not different from *m, *n, *l, *r (and their respective syllabic allophones). They couldn't be "long" - that's the post-PIE development. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:43, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Then how do you explain tū in Latin, Celtic, and other Indo-European languages? Anyway, if you need a source (unfortunately it is not in English), according to the Hungarian language language encyclopedia, A világ nyelvei [The Languages of the World] (1999), PIE have had five vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/ and all of them could be short and long. The other problem is, how could you explain the feminine gender ending -a, also present in several languages, if there was no /a/ in PIE? It can be found in Greek, Latin, Romance and also Slavic languages... --El Mexicano (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Ever heard of the laryngeal theory? Tū is from *tuH, and the feminine ending is *-eh₂. —An gr 16:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, when it comes to monosyllabic words (personal pronouns, adverbs and misc. particles) in PIE, phonetic lengthening could occur, yielding not only *ē and *ō, but also *ī and *ū of non-laryngeal origin. I.e., PIE had e.g. for "you" both *tu (> Latvian tu, Doric τὐ) and *tū (> Latin tū, OCS ty, Lithuanian tù, Old Irish tú, Albanian ti), for "now" both *nu (> Sanskrit nú, Ancient Greek νυ, Latin nu-nc, Hittite nu, Old Irish nu, no) and *nū (> Sanskrit nū́, Ancient Greek νῦν, OCS ny-ně, Lithuanian nù), for "not" both *ne (> Sanskrit ná, OCS ne, Latin ne-que, Gothic ni-h) and *nē (> Latin nē, Old Irish ní, Gothic ne, OCS ně-) etc. One cannot explain the length in cases such as this by laryngeals due to the existence of short variants. Hence there is no point in reconstructing *tuH, *neH or *nuH in cases such as these, because it is much more likely that these words originally had short vowel which could be phonetically (but not phonologically!) lengthened, which is typologically not so uncommon with monosyllabics. The "real" lengths in nouns such as *pṓds had no fluctuation with dual forms which would indicate secondary phonetic lengthening. The cases with dual reflexes in same branch, or even the same language, show that the phenomena certainly existed in the parent language. Also very interesting is Balto-Slavic accentuation evidence which shows that "real" ablaut lengths (morpho-phonologically conditioned ones, i.e. the usual lengthened grades) yield regularly Balto-Slavic circumflex, whilst these secondary lenghts always seem to yield Balto-Slavic acute tone.. For those more interested, see this paper, p. 146ff ^_^

So basically El Mexicano is prob. true about PIE *tū, but this kind of long *ū and *ī is sporadic and non-phonological for PIE: all the other instances of them can easily be reduced (or assumed without loss of generality) to *iH and *uH sequences.

El Mexicano: As for the number of vowels in PIE - it's already discussed in [[PIE phonology]] article, from various viewpoints (minimal and strict phonological to phonetic one), including on the status of marginal and disputed *a. We cannot just state "PIE had X vowels" without bringing in the full perspective. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 01:08, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

bʰ, dʰ and gʰ

Dʰ, bʰ and gʰ are sounds which are impossible to pronounce.

As far as I am concerned, PIE did not use them.

However, PIE did use dʱ and gʱ (plus variants of gʱ). Spacevezon (talk) 20:43, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

We're using the common way linguists transcribe PIE, which is very closely related to IPA, but detours in some regards. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Ergative and Active hypotheses

I'm suprised this article has nothing on what amounts to basically a century of discussion on the syntax of early PIE with respect to its typological classification as nom/acc, erg/abs, or active/stative. A recent list of references on the ergative may be found here:http://versita.metapress.com/content/r26389132nk67172/fulltext.pdf. As for the active/stative hypothesis, recent lists of references and discussion may be found in Lehmann's 1993 Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics and Bauer's 2000 Archaic Syntax in Indo-European —Preceding unsigned comment added by AD Messing (talk • contribs) 17:16, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

glossary

add a large chart of core vocabulary with cognates in all major families (might be a good idea to move the full table to a separate article and include an excerpted table in this article)

Yeah, if a single new section triples the length of an article (other than a stub), my instinct would be to make a separate article instead. And then (in this case) nominate it for deletion because WP:DICT. —Tamfang (talk) 06:01, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll happily move the table to a separate article, and take out some of items that are arguably not "core vocab", but I don't hardly think it qualifies as a dictionary. This table began as an expansion of a table in Armenian language that has 40 PIE items along with cognates in Armenian, Modern English, Old English, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Meanwhile, there is a similar but shorter table in Tocharian languages that has 20 PIE items along with cognates in Modern English, Tocharian A and B, Old Irish, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, and a similar table in Lithuanian language that had 17 Lithuanian items along with cognates in Latin and Sanskrit. There seemed an obvious need felt for tables of this sort, and it seemed like something that was more useful in a PIE article rather than duplicated in various different daughter languages -- although I realize now it would go even better in a page linked off of Indo-European languages rather than this page. At 150 or so items this chart is somewhat larger than the 40 item Armenian chart, but hardly dictionary size, and its point is not to be a dictionary but a set of examples of how cognates evolved. Benwing (talk) 07:24, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Vocabulary lists do not belong on Wikipedia, they belong on the Wiktionary sister project. See the existing content at wikt:Category:Proto-Indo-European language, wikt:Appendix:List of Proto-Indo-European roots. It is one thing to give a brief list of lexemes in a language article, it is another to embark on a major project of compiling a full-scale dictionary on-wiki. That project exists, and it is called Wiktionary.

What I can see are a greater number of examples at Indo-European sound laws, where we currently just give a table of phonemes plus a bunch of random examples.

Imho, the table at Armenian_language#Indo-European_linguistic_comparison is misguided. It should illustrate Armenian sound laws, and would perhaps be more at home at Proto-Armenian, but there is no conceivable reason why that table should be burdenend with random cognates from English, Greek, Latin or Sanskrit.

--dab (𒁳) 08:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Exceptional claims require exceptional sources.

I believe potentially that a number of sections in this article require the above rule to be applied to them, some examples are highlighted below along with a sentiment I have regarding the use of "unattested".

"The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the unattested,"

a good descriptor in one sense but I contend that the complexity "unattested" brings could be cleared with the inclusion of a more suitable adjective in its place. Use of 'Unrecorded' or extrapolation on the fact that the PIE was never physically stored would seem a better idea.

"reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and reconstruction is far advanced and quite detailed

Scholars estimate that PIE may have been spoken as a single language (before divergence began) around 4000 BCE, though estimates by different authorities can vary by more than a millennium."

I think at a minimum the assertions I have bolded require evidence of deductive reasoning through referencing, but before putting this on the watchlist, I would appreciate hearing a more informed opinion on the subject to assist Wikipedia/Myself in deciding if this page would be a good use of time to tackle. BoredextraWorkvidid (talk) 18:06, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

None of these claims are in any way "exceptional". The proper guideline to point to is WP:LEAD. The lead section should be a coherent summary of the article body, and does not itself need any references. The content it summarizes should of course be referenced, in the article body where it is expounded in greater detail. None of the things you put in boldface raise an eyebrow and can likely be found in any introduction to the topic. If you intend to "tackle" this page, I strongly recommend you read at least one introduction to Indo-European studies before you proceed. Several good such introductions are listed in the "References" section. If you find any statement in this article that is in blatant contradiction with a statement you find in one of these books, it will be early enough to call WP:REDFLAG. --dab (𒁳) 12:24, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Aorist

The article Aorist is in need of editors who can help develop it, both in general and particularly in an IE overview section. If there's anyone who watches this page who can spare some time, your input would be much appreciated. Cynwolfe (talk) 20:47, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Future tense in PIE

from Talk:Shall_and_will#Future_tense_in_PIE:

According to an unsourced statement at Proto-Germanic#Verbs Proto-Indo-European had no future tense, contradicting this article. I think I have heard this from other places too. Count Truthstein (talk) 00:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I added a reference that mentions PIE future tense based. Please refer to item 9 here. 192.102.209.29 (talk) 23:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Answered at Talk:Shall and will#Future tense in PIE. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 20:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Stang and the vowel repertoire

“

In fact, Stang's law, a phonological rule active at the Proto-Indo-European stage, produces *-ām from older *-eh₂m as the ending of the accusative singular of the stems in *-h₂ (and possibly *-ās from older *-eh₂ns in the respective accusative plural), and therefore compels the assumption that the phoneme *ā was present in the language.

”

This new paragraph could stand a bit more fleshing-out: the chain of reasoning is not as obvious as one might like. Doesn't Stang's law predict /eh₂m/ → /ēm/ ? —Tamfang (talk) 22:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

*h₂ is a-colouring, independent of Stang. For example, the acc pl of the feminine suffix is *-eh₂m > *-ām.--ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 09:32, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

If *h₂ is irrelevant to Stang, where does the lengthening come from? —Tamfang (talk) 18:33, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clearer: the lengthening comes from Stang's, while the colouring (a versus e) is an independent effect of the laryngeal. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk)

May need more research to include Dravidian languages with PIE

So many similar sounding English words in Tamil, I doubt these classification,. http://aruniyan.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/english-words-that-sounds-like-tamil-or-originated-from-tamil/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Malarmisai (talk • contribs) 13:01, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

No amount of original research would be enough because Wikipedia has a firm policy against inclusion of original research. For inclusion of a connection there would have to be significant published acceptance by respected linguists, and such acceptance does not exist. See Dravidian languages#Relationship to other language families for the current state of research. —teb728 t c 00:18, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Dravidian languages are firmly excluded from PIE. Alexandre8 (talk) 01:30, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a special class of theories that try to link different language families, usually considered highly speculative. For Indo-European, Uralic is definitely considered possibly related (however distantly). The Afro-Asian language family is second on the list. Those are the only two candidates that are taken seriously by mainstream scholars. Zyxwv99 (talk) 03:14, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Family tree of languages

Hi, is there anyone who has the PIE family tree from the home edition of American Heritage Dictionary? I think it's like the one on this page, but, uh, "rounder." OneWeirdDude (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

If you are suggesting that we use it here, it is probably copyrighted and not licensed under a free license—and hence unusable. —teb728 t c 23:45, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Yep, I got one. Why do you ask? Rwflammang (talk) 16:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic a generally accepted subfamily?

Proto-Slavic language was recently removed from the section "Generally accepted subfamilies (clades)". The reason, although not given in the edit summary, presumably was that Proto-Balto-Slavic language is already there, and lower clades are omitted elsewhere in this list (eg. no Proto-Iranian language). As the removal was subsequently reverted, I'm asking whether this link should really remain. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:14, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I would assume that was the reason. We don't list Indic, for example. — kwami (talk) 19:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Finno-Ugric

I still can not believe that the Finno-Urgic language tree does not fit in somewhere under the Proto-Indo-European hierarchy. Especially since the Corded Ware and Comb Ceramic cultures overlapped each other, and did so during concordant time horizons.

I just can't believe it.

--Atikokan (talk) 05:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_horizon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comb_Ceramic_Culture
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/IndoEuropeanTree.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urheimat

See argument from personal incredulity --Pfold (talk) 15:50, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

You could fill a whole encyclopedia with a list of things some people just can't believe, yet which are true. garik (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Also cf. Indo-Uralic languages. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 22:11, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

The Uralic languages do indeed have a very close relation to Indo-European, in three ways. First, Proto-Uralic borrowed a great number of words from North-Iranian (which was spoken in Central Asia during the Bronze Age). Secondly, the PIE system of inflections is thought to be related to the Uralic system of postpositions. This is most likely due to the Indo-Europeans being a hybrid people, a combination of Cucuteni-Tripolye A, Sredny Stog, and TRB, all three of which overlapped in west-central Ukraine circa 3700 BCE giving rise to Cucuteni-Tripolye B (the most likely candidate for PIE status). Postpositions could very well have been a common feature of Pontic-Caspian languages in pre-PIE times, in which case this feature could have been inherited by proto-Uralic. And finally, Uralic-speaking peoples have lived for thousands of years in close proximity to Indo-European-speaking peoples, in particular Baltic, Slavic and North-Iranian. Zyxwv99 (talk) 03:07, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Proto-Uralic and North Iranian are from different ages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Uralic_language СЛУЖБА (talk) 09:48, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Check Y-DNA haplogroups N1c1 and R1a1a. They are not closely related, and N1c1 is related to Samoyedic N1b. Also, both are non-native to Europe, so Corded Ware and Comb Ceramic are not Urheimat. СЛУЖБА (talk) 23:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Vast Majority of Linguistic Work

Currently the intro reads: During the 19th century, the vast majority of linguistic work was devoted to reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European or of daughter proto-languages such as Proto-Germanic, This seems a very bold claim. Ref? Ordinary Person (talk) 14:53, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Proto Indo-Europeans were Turk!

Since proto indo-europeans originated in Central Asia so they were Turk they were T U R K Humanbyrace (talk) 00:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

See Nostratic. μηδείς (talk) 00:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European didn't arise in Central Asia, but on the Ukrainian steppes. But since a certain species of wild ass also arose in Central Asia... --Taivo (talk) 01:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey, did you know Turks came from Siberia, not SW Asia? I guess that makes the Turks Mongols, right? 97.89.216.62 (talk) 15:51, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Standard forms

I believe displaying just the pronouns reconstructed by Beekes and Sihler is inadequate and rather inaccurate, since there are more regular forms displayed on Wiktionary. Can we add these or substitute them? 97.89.216.62 (talk) 15:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Update

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/full/ncomms2656.html — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.97.65 (talk) 22:34, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Article needs to be bought.

Still here are some parts of the text:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/04/mtdna-haplogroup-h-and-origin-of.html

Here is part of the text:

From around 2800 BC, the LNE Bell Beaker culture emerged from the Iberian Peninsula to form one of the first pan-European archaeological complexes. This cultural phenomenon is recognised by a distinctive package of rich grave goods including the eponymous bell-shaped ceramic beakers. The genetic affinities between Central Europe’s Bell Beakers and present-day Iberian populations (Fig. 2) is striking and throws fresh light on long-disputed archaeological models3. We suggest these data indicate a considerable genetic influx from the West during the LNE. These far-Western genetic affinities of Mittelelbe-Saale’s Bell Beaker folk may also have intriguing linguistic implications, as the archaeologically-identified eastward movement of the Bell Beaker culture has recently been linked to the initial spread of the Celtic language family across Western Europe39. This hypothesis suggests that early members of the Celtic language family (for example, Tartessian)40 initially developed from Indo-European precursors in Iberia and subsequently spread throughout the Atlantic Zone; before a period of rapid mobility, reflected by the Beaker phenomenon, carried Celtic languages across much of Western Europe. This idea not only challenges traditional views of a linguistic spread of Celtic westwards from Central Europe during the Iron Age, but also implies that Indo-European languages arrived in Western Europe substantially earlier, presumably with the arrival of farming from the Near East41.

It seems that genetic evidence supporting the Iberian hypothesis, paired with archaelogy, is ever-growing. A lot has been already published concerning the Iberian-Basque-British Isles connection. Now this seems to continue in other European areas like Germnay.

Pipon — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.203.97.65 (talk) 23:04, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic

I'm just wondering, should "proto-Slavic" be included in the "Daughter proto-languages". I know "Proto-Balto-Slavic language" is already there, but proto-Balto-Slavic and proto-slavic are different. Would proto-Slavic instead be a 'granddaughter language' or something.Hypershock (talk) 04:48, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I think it's best just to list Proto-Balto-Slavic as it's the immediate descendant. If we start adding later derivatives, the list will get out of hand, with a "Proto-X" added for every conceivable subgrouping whether plausible ("Proto–Insular Celtic") or not ("Proto–Western Germanic"). +An gr 20:17, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Given that Balto-Slavic is still a controversial hypothesis and that Slavic is a well-understood and distinct language group, it would make sense to make a separate node out of it. 78.49.239.15 (talk) 15:59, 21 June 2011 (UTC) Wojciech Żełaniec

The fact that "Balto-Slavic is still a controversial hypothesis and that Slavic is a well-understood and distinct language group" does in NO way make a need for a separate node. A separate node would imply that most scientists don't recognise Balto-Slavic, which is not the case. СЛУЖБА (talk) 09:26, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic appears to be a comparatively recent (Iron Age) hybrid an an unknown North Iranian language (something akin to Scythian) and an unknown west-central Baltic language (something between Lithuanian and Old Prussian). Zyxwv99 (talk) 18:47, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Where did You get this bullshit about North Iranian and Baltic from? СЛУЖБА (talk) 09:31, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

What a load of nonsense. The Slavic languages show some affinity to the Baltic languages, and is clearly a centum language and not a satem one like the Indo-Iranian group at all. ToadBrother 5:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Excuse me, Slavic is satem, not centum. twitter.com/YOMALSIDOROFF (talk) 06:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, something like a "granddaughter". СЛУЖБА (talk) 09:22, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Notation: use ey/ew instead of ei/eu?

It's common to see diphthongs written as ei, eu, ou etc. but many sources also use ey, ew, ow and so on. Since the second part of these diphthongs was underlyingly a consonant, and was parallel to other consonantal resonants like l, r, m, n, I think we should use y and w in this article. CodeCat (talk) 14:34, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

English as a descendant

The fact that English is a descendant of PIE does not establish the notability of PIE, since PIE would be notable even if English were not Indo-European. PIE's notability rests on the fact that it's the proto-language on which reconstruction was done first and reconstruction has been done most thoroughly. PIE's notability is basically beyond question, and tacking an utter irrelevance like the fact that English is one of its descendants does nothing to improve the lead. We might as well say "Divehi is one of the modern descendants of this language". It's equally true, and establishes PIE's notability just as well (i.e. not at all). —An gr 16:45, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I'm very sorry to read that you think refraining from edit-warring to include material that has not found consensus somehow makes you "the bigger man". Actually, it's merely doing nothing more than is expected of you. —An gr 16:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your classy reply. I hope I'm wrong, but I can't help thinking that I hurt your feelings with my decision not to edit-war with you.

Now Angr, the subject of the article is a language, and it happens to be the ancestor of the language in which the article, as the encyclopedia, is written. That's notable information. This is not, unfortunately, the Divehi Wikipedia. But if the article ever becomes detailed enough, perhaps Divehi can be mentioned in a section. And again, Divehi was not an ancestor of English, last time I checked. So English is in a rather unique position here.

Just in case that you didn't read the MOS section I linked to in an edit summary, allow me to quote some of it:

"The article should begin with a straightforward, declarative sentence that, as briefly as possible, provides the reader who knows nothing at all about the article's subject with the answer to two questions: "What (or who) is it?" and "Why is this subject notable?".

It goes on:

"If the subject of the first sentence is amenable to definition then the first sentence should give a concise definition that puts the article in context and is as clear to the nonspecialist as the subject matter allows."

And surely the notability of PIE rests on more than mere chance! It is the ancestor of some of the world's most spoken languages, and in recent centuries, the dominant languages, English among them.

Goodbye, Angr. SamEV (talk) 17:53, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

The topic is relevant enough already without an overt reference to English in the lead section and making one may be too POV. It's not the case that, if English were not an Indo-European language, the article would not be relevant enough for Wikipedia.

I notice that the lead section links to Indo-European languages, which says that three billion people speak one IE language or other. If we mention that in the lead section here, that might highlight the notability a bit more clearly. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

What "decision not to edit-war"? You started edit-warring as soon as you reverted Aeusoes. But as Aeusoes points out, and as I pointed out, your addition does not bring the article closer to meeting the MOS requirements you quote, because the fact that English is derived from PIE is not what makes PIE notable. Proto-languages that English isn't derived from, like Proto-Afro-Asiatic and Proto-Algonquian, are equally notable. Also, the fact that this is the English Wikipedia doesn't give English any special status here. No matter what language we're writing in, English is not a more significant descendant of PIE than any of its hundreds of other descendants. —An gr 21:58, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Aeusoes, and Angr, that's not how it works. A subject is notable before it gets an article. But its notableness doesn't mean that everyone is familiar with or has even heard of the subject, of course. Thus the guidelines recommend that this notability be explained to the non-specialist. It's not at all a case of trying to make the subject notable, or of "establishing" or increasing its notability. The quotes from the guidelines are clear enough, really.

Mention of the 3 billion speakers is in the same class as my edit: it helps explain the notabilibity/importance of the subject. So I'm for it.

Angr, I restored my edit twice. Not much of an edit war, now is it? SamEV (talk) 00:40, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what it is about my or Angr's comments above that imply that we think that a subject becomes notable after it gets an article. I agree that explaining notability is important and I don't think that you're trying to do anything but explain notability. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not saying notability doesn't have to be shown; I'm saying that a sentence saying "English is descended from PIE" does not actually succeed in showing the notability of PIE. I accept that your edit was a good-faith attempt to improve the lead by showing the notability of the topic, but I believe the attempt failed, because the edit does not in fact show the notability of the topic. —An gr 17:24, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so the backtracking has begun. Both of you made comments that clearly accuse me of trying to demonstrate the subject's notability as somehow derived from its being an ancestor of English. Really, they're blatant. Angr wrote: "The fact that English is a descendant of PIE does not establish the notability of PIE, since PIE would be notable even if English were not Indo-European." And "your addition does not bring the article closer to meeting the MOS requirements you quote, because the fact that English is derived from PIE is not what makes PIE notable." Both comments are on this page.

Aeusoes, in turn, wrote this on my talk page:[4] "Hey, I didn't want you to walk away feeling scorned over the edit conflict at Proto-Indo-European language. What Angr and I were trying to get across is that the topic is relevant enough already without an overt reference to English in the lead section and that making one may be too POV. Your reasoning implies that, if English were not an Indo-European language, the article would not be relevant enough for Wikipedia (which is false, of course)."

Those comments speak for themselves. I'm out. SamEV (talk) 02:38, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, you're doing a pretty bad job at conversing in a civil manner. You're either stubbornly grasping at straws, trying to sow discord, or have really poor reading comprehension. This whole "gotcha" thing isn't working for you. Neither is disengenuously claiming that you're walking away and then coming back. Let's focus on the article itself, eh?

Angr, what do you think of my suggestion above? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:34, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Sam writes, "Both of you made comments that clearly accuse me of trying to demonstrate the subject's notability as somehow derived from its being an ancestor of English." Gee, maybe that's because you explicitly said that's what you were doing with this edit summary, this edit summary, this comment, and this comment. I'm not seeing any backtracking on the part of Aeusoes or myself, though. Aeusoes, your suggestion is okay, I guess, but still PIE would be no less notable if its descendants were spoken by only three hundred people rather than three billion. —An gr 09:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

While that last point is quite correct, part of the notability of PIE within linguistics are that (a) it is a construction based on a very large number of securely attested languages (b) it acted historically as a proof of concept for the comparative method. --Pfold (talk) 11:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, those two facts establish PIE's notability much more than the identities of its daughter languages or the number of people speaking them. —An gr 11:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Don't look now, but you guys just contradicted yourselves massively; yet again.

And the projecting by you two continues. Reading comprehension? Everything you quoted me saying supports what I've said: I was endeavoring to convey/explain/contextualize the notability of the subject to those who may not know about it, just as MOS says we should do.

Aeusoes, I did walk away; where have you been? Then someone (guess who) started this thread. Why? Had I not walked away? But I replied. Each time you guys chose to reply to that. And so on. You're just as "guilty" of discussing as I am. But so long as you keep replying to me, and trying to twist things in the process, I'll reply. How's that? As for civility: Look who's talking.

Angr, it is just amazing that you actually think that this comment of mine says what you've just claimed it does. In it I clearly explain that notability precedes article creation, and that what MOS asks is that we explain it to the non-specialist reader.

You two are embarrassing yourselves. Please ask someone who doesn't pull any punches and whose advice you trust. You'll see.

Yeah, yeah. You'll predictably come back by suggesting I do the same. Maybe I will. Unlike you, I have nothing to fear from the exercise. SamEV (talk) 18:26, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Just stick to discussing the article, kid. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 10:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

With your tactics you two spoiled it for me. I lost interest for now. SamEV (talk) 19:05, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Goodbye. —teb728 t c 19:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I still disagree and believe that Angr and "Æµ§œš¹" are being unreasonable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.17.244.68 (talk) 07:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

What is this about? Was there a debate about whether PIE was sufficiently noteworthy to merit an article??Ordinary Person (talk) 05:16, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

There was some doubt that PIE merited an article on the grounds lacked mention in popular culture, and thus there wouldn't be a trivia section. However, its use in the movie "Prometheus" remedied that, and we can be sure it is important now. 24.21.130.185 (talk) 04:00, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Vowels

It is not quite honest to say "The only vowels that are generally accepted as such among linguists are the mid-vowels *e, *o, *ē and *ō." This is of course a fact since you only need a minority of a few to make a hypothesis "not generally accepted". But the community opinion would beg to differ from Beekes and company. Would someone with a bit more specialist knowledge than I do remove the parentheses and delegate the Leidener school to a footnote? All the best 85.220.22.139 (talk) 18:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Citation needed in the lead section

"The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and reconstruction is advanced and detailed."

This sentence in the lead section had a {{citation needed}} tag ([5]), which was removed ([6]) with an edit summary of "this claim follows from, and is a summary of, the content of the rest of the article, which is already sourced."

I undid that edit and reinserted the {{citation needed}} tag ([7]) with an edit summary of "Undid revision 505015034 by 91.148.130.233 per WP:SYNTH".

I don't wish to start any edit wars, so I'm opening discussion here in case the {{citation needed}} tag is removed again.

The claim should have a reference to an external source that makes the claim that PIE has been accepted by linguists for over a century and makes the claim that the reconstruction is advanced and detailed. It seems that the reason for objecting to the {{citation needed}} tag was that the claim can be inferred from other cited claims in the article. This would be original research per WP:SYNTH. I reckon that the {{citation needed}} tag is appropriate.

Kind regards, Matt (talk) 02:09, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

This sentence might have a {{vague}} problem – accepted by all linguists (probably not) or by a majority (likely yes)? "Advanced and detailed" in comparison to other non-attested languages (yes, I'd say) or in comparison to Greek (definitely not)?

We could cite, say, Meier-Brügger: he names ten universities teaching IE comparative linguistics in Germany alone, plus Harvard, Oxford, Lausanne, etc. The bibliography is 70 pages long (although not all titles are directly related to PIE). Would that be sufficient to support the claim PIE is widely accepted?

In Comrie: "During the approximately two centuries in which the interrelationships within the the IE family have been systematically studied, techniques to confirm and quantify genetic affiliations among its members have been developed with great success." I could dig up more, but we still need a more cautious/precise phrasing than "advanced and detailed" in my opinion. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 18:38, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Wiki articles generally don't cite sources in the lead unless something unusual is placed there. I don't see how this unremarkable sentence merits an exception. The body is the appropriate place for notes. Rwflammang (talk) 21:35, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah. I see now on WP:CITE this: "Citations are also often discouraged in the lead section of an article, insofar as it summarizes information for which sources are given later in the article, although such things as quotations and particularly controversial statements should be supported by citations even in the lead." I'll remove the {{citation needed}} tag now considering most people seem to be happy with it being backed up by the article itself. I'll replace it with a {{vague}} tag but anyone else can remove it if they feel it's not too vague. Kind regards, Matt (talk) 23:06, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

It is another sentence which misses the debate: something must have existed before present indo-European languages. No-one can disagree with that. Whether or not scholars have, or indeed can, accurately reconstruct what existed before present indo-european languages is another question. So:

"reconstruction is advanced, detailled... and perhaps wrong".

The fact that there are many very serious academics who believe something and work on it does not make it fact. String theory may be wrong.

And since elsewhere the fact that it has been worked on since the 19th century is highlighted as if that made a theory more likely to be true : phrenology was accepted, psychoanalysis still is accepted in some places.

IF I COULD PROPOSE ONE CHANGE, it would be to modify every sentence like this to acknowledge throughout the article that there are rival versions of proto-indo-european and rival dating that have been proposed by scholars (as the article later states). 77.98.32.90 (talk) 12:51, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

clarification question

"As there is no direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European language, all knowledge of the language is derived by reconstruction from later languages using linguistic techniques such as the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. PIE is known to have had.... "

If there's no direct evidence for it then how can we 'know' anything? We can believe, confidently believe or wildly speculate, but know? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.29.202.215 (talk) 04:42, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

How do we know that the universe is 13,500,0000,000 years old, or that the dinosaurs existed, that medicine isn't actually poison, or that you were born of a woman? If you are a skeptic, then no explanation will ever satisfy you, and only a life of hypocrisy is open to you. If you are a scientist, and want to do the work to know whether historical linguistics is valid, don't ask some stranger at wikipedia, go to the library and study the topic yourself for half a decade or so. I suggest you begin with Mario Pei. After a few years' reading you can study Saussure's theory of the coefficient sonantique, and then the conformation of his predictions with the decipherment of Hittite. Then you can judge for yourself.μηδείς (talk) 06:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The results of a reconstruction like this are far more speculative than things that you'll read in a physics textbook because here the assumptions are not independandtly verified whereas there is a proof for almost every assumption behind the big bang hypothesis.

It would be a different story if what was deduced by linguistic methods was supported by archeological evidence of migrations. Intsead, datings of Proto IE were supported by myths or highly doubtful evidence.

Even scientists may say "the universe is believed to have begun 13.8 b. years ago" reflecting that the precise figure (12 billion, 13.5 billion) has changed and that the evidence is often deduced so I don't think there is anything "extreme" about saying "know" should be "believe".

77.98.32.90 (talk) 13:25, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

In fact it is more fundamental. You can't use the same word to refer to two seperate things,

a) what scholars have reconstructed in the present day b) what was spoken in the past

in a), for each reconstruction, they know exactly what the language contains and can descripe it precisely, with certainty. But they cannot use the past tense "the language contained..." or say "it was spoken at such and such a time"; they should say, "the language contains" and "we believe it was spoken at such and such a time".

in b) you can say "it was spoken", but you can only say "it is believed to have contained the following linguistic features." 77.98.32.90 (talk) 15:18, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Gravity is just a theory too. We don't "know" that gravity exists, do we? CodeCat (talk) 16:11, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

References in popular culture

Maybe the Wikipedia article should have a section on Proto-Indo-European in pop culture and just American culture in general. There's the American Heritage Dictionary, which has had an appendix of PIE roots since the 1970s, a 1992 book "A garden of words" about flower name etymologies by Martha Barnette, that "Atlantean language" made by Mark Okrand and appearing in "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" in 2001, and does anybody know anything about the presumably made-up language spoken by the baddies in "10,000 BC" by Warner Bros 2008? That sounded similar to PIE. "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce is also another big one. I once read a commentary on that book that made reference to Joyce' usage of PIE roots and related studies to formulate his garbled masterpiece.

Mention of these works could help increase public awareness of academic thought, something Wikipedia was founded to do.

35.8.218.54 (talk) 00:16, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I kind of thought it was a nice change to have a Wikipedia article that didn't have an "In popular culture" section for a change. +An gr 10:18, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. It doesn't disturb anyone, as long as a thick line is drawn. СЛУЖБА (talk) 09:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I just made this addition to the "Popular Culture" section:

"The words and much morphology and word order of the Atlantean language created by Dr. Marc Okrand for Disney's 2001 "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" is based on PIE." - I didn't cite it, but it's cited in online interviews which I have copies of, but which are still online somewhere, I think. I think it's in the press release from Disney for the movie. It was a snipet. There's another mention in an interview with him, too.

"Actually, I kind of thought it was a nice change to have a Wikipedia article that didn't have an "In popular culture" section for a change." - What a lack of zeal for scholarship and disregard for anthropology. Hopefully not indicative of Proto-Indo-European scholars as a whole. :P

I also noticed PIE in "10,000 BC" and maybe Proto-Bantu and another. But I don't remember seeing that in print online or offline, so that one is private research.

Oliverhaart (talk) 10:04, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

WP:NOTDICTIONARY

As the editor above, the pronunciation of Proto-Indo-European is perfectly straightforward to anyone with the vocabulary to be reading this article. More to the point, anyone who can read the IPA itself has already mastered enough English to be able to read the word without it. All the more so since it's a variant pronunciation disagreeing with the OED and cited to an off-brand dictionary but has attracted an editor's overprotective < ! -- commenting -- > to maintain it. It's good to have variants accessible, but the whole thing's actively unhelpful as it stands and belongs at the Wiktionary entry instead.

If you're reading this, kindly remove it if an overzealous editor has since restored it. — $Llywelyn II$ 12:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

@LlywelynII: anyone who can read the IPA itself has already mastered enough English to be able to read the word without it. There's no such thing as being sure how to pronounce an unknown English word. English orthography is broken and inconsistent. Plus, it's just your guess. You don't know that.

it's a variant pronunciation disagreeing with the OED and cited to an off-brand dictionary Calling Longman Pronunciation Dictionary "off-brand" proves that you've done no research whatsoever. LPD is written by John C. Wells, who is a professional phonetician.

but has attracted an editor's overprotective < ! -- commenting -- > to maintain it. ...are you serious? The purpose of placing < ! -- comment -- > was not to maintain the pronunciation, but to prevent other editors from changing the stress, as it has to agree with the source. At this point, I'm quite sure that you're knowingly making up more reasons than there are to remove the IPA. You must've read that comment before removing it, right? Peter238 (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

re: the rest of the terrible introduction: You can't seperate Indo-European from Aryan

"PIE was the first proposed proto-language to be widely accepted by linguists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing it than any other proto-language and it is by far the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. During the 19th century, the vast majority of linguistic work was devoted to reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European or its daughter proto-languages such as Proto-Germanic, and most of the current techniques of linguistic reconstruction in historical linguistics (e.g. the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction) were developed as a result." (later it carries on just as bad or worse).

19th century linguists did not live in a bubble, they lived in a world in which Empire made the dominance and superiority of the British in particular and the Europeans in general self-evident. It was not a footnote, it was not a fantasy only indulged by the Nazi's, to say that this dominance by a contemporary, better organised and technologically advanced people with a will to dominate and conquer was an an echo of the dominance shown by the better organised, technologically advanced and conquest-obsessed Romans, and they were only doing what the Indo-Europeans had done, a group so dominant, that they had left their language across a whole region. - The British, dominating India and much of Africa, were just continuing in the old tradition.

It was like Darwin and evolution: contemporaries mixed the science with pseudosciences ("facial angle") and were often more interesed in the latter. Here linguistic research was mixed with racist myths. The introduction to this article shows an innapropriate level of credulity of these linguists and, by avoiding the question, implies that they were entirely neutral and objective.

It is not a footnote, it deserves a good place in any discussion of proto-indo-european. I'll quote this neat little website I've heard of, check it out, called Wikipedia (the entry is Master Race) "By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was posited that the Indo-Europeans (then generally also referred to as Aryans) made up the highest branch of humanity because their civilization was the most technologically advanced." (ie they were continuing the true indo-european tradition of imposing their language and rule over vast areas; those with vast empires (the British) or vast ambitions (the Nazi's) were the true descendants of the superior race, the Brahamans or Aryans of an earlier India). 77.98.32.90 (talk) 04:42, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

If you can source this geopolitical history as being relevant to linguistic reconstruction, then please do. Otherwise it's WP:OR. And oh, please do also notice that the vast majority of early philologists / linguists were speakers of Indo-European languages, which as far as I can see gives reason enough for them to have concentrated on these languages without bringing in racial theories. --Thnidu (talk) 15:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

This article grossly fails to give Wikipedians a coorect and accurate synthesis of the Proto-Indo-European language propblem

When De Saussure first proposed the laryngeal theory many scholastic linguists rejected his claim (they were indeed imitating the story of dogmatic papal councellors who did hang Galileo for him stating the truth about earth being spherical) but own empirical proofs from Anatolic Indo-European showed that Saussure was right!

We are here confused by this scholastic artithmetico-algoritimical approach wich kidds us with unprunucable words such as bhedh (is bh standing for beh or bhe!!?) and leads us to an imaginary aberrated frozen unrealistic unreal and never spoken Proto-Indo-European.

It's in fact a relic or let me say an ARTEFACT of the ancient germano-nazocentristo-linguistical paradigm wich saw in Sanskrit the perfect model of the Proto-Indo-European language but now we know that most of the 19 th and pre-Hitler 20 th century Indo-Europeanist field was just RUBBISH

Indeed after the recent phylogenetical Bayesian study we know that:

1/Armenia/Anatolia is the homeland of proto-indo-european

2/The Larynegal theory is right

3/The glottalic theory is right

4/Anatolic then Armeno-Greek then Aryan then Tocharian are the real model of Proto-Indo-European language

5/Indic is Aryan spoken by local non Indo-European indians

6/Iranic is older (because more diverse see Sughni, Scythian, Pashto, Yaghnobi huuuge internal diversity ...) and more archaic than Indic

7/Proto-Indo-European language's glottalics correspond to Proto-Semitic empohatics

8/Proto-Indo-European language's larynegeals correspond to Proto-Semitic larynegals

9/Proto-Indo-European language and Proto-Semitic are closely related (phonetically, lexically, structurally and morphophonologically[ablaut]) and they are forming 2 branches of the Lislakh phylum and are diachronically connected with the Hassuna-Half-Natufian-Araxes cultural (sites that saw the oldest attested Swastika motifs) complex wich is associated with the J1 and J2 hg's and the southwestern+westernasiaitic autosomal components (see Behar 2010)

10/Finally the Nominal system of Proto-Indo-European language was initially regular and similar to the proto-Semitic one

indeed according to Edward Lipinsky Proto Semitic had 7 cases (I have added to his model 2 vocative cases retrieved from modern Arabic)

Proto-Semitic cases/singular/dual/plural

1/vocative1(no ending)/-/-/-

2/nominative/-u/-aa/-uu

3/genitive/-i/-ay/-ii

4/accusative/-a/-ay/-ee

5/locative/-um/-um/-um (present in Arabic "labbayka allahUM labbayk"=(we) pray-you toward you Allah (we) pray-you

6/benefactive/-ish/-ush/-uush (akkadian "zikaram daqitu sarrISH"=I killed the man for the king)

7/comitative (by, with)/-am/-am/-am (ancient Hebrew yodAM=by hand)

8/dative(toward)/-ah/-ishum/-ishuum (ancient Hebrew BabelAH=toward Babel)

9/vocative2/-aah/-ayh/-uuh (modern Arabic "abAH"=o father)

As you can notice the case endings are regular and similarly pre proto-Indo-European (before the case erosion due to migration of proto-Indo-Europeans from their homeland in Western Asia to Europe and India) case system should be as the below

Proto-Indo-European cases/singular/dual/plural

1/vocative/-h2/-ah2/-oh2

2/nominative/-s/-aas/-oos

3/genitive/-h1/-ah1/-oh1

4/accusative/-h1m/-ah1m/-oh1m

5/locative/-h3/-ah3m/-oh3m

6/dative/-ah/-ahm/-ohm

7/ablative/-eh3/-ah3/-oh3

As for the Proto-Indo-European instrumental case it's merely the post-agglutination of Lislakh (Semitic+Indo-European common) bh1 (Ensglih by, Semitic bi) to the nouns we need to make the instrumental case of

Humanbyrace (talk) 15:54, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

It's sad that such pseudo-scientific drivel convinces the naive. --Taivo (talk) 16:37, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Ahhh communist drivel. My kinda stuff. Alexandre8 (talk) 18:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

The bit about Galileo is especially cute. —Tamfang (talk) 06:40, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, PIE is a theoretical language and the lead was a bit misleading. I have added "theoretical". It's misleading to state it as if "the genuine language" has been reconstructed. This hypothetical proto-language was generations in the building and we aren't any closer to proving it was ever actually spoken. Djathinkimacowboy 15:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

No, "theoretical" isn't completely accurate, it implies a lack of acceptance. In any case, in linguistic terms, "reconstruction" implies theoretical and unattested already. --Taivo (talk) 19:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

It is wrong to say that a reconstruction is automatically taken to mean "theoretical". Egyptian and Mayan are reconstructed to a degree though we can now read them because of some reconstruction, among other things.

I see your point, but who is it going to kill to leave that in the lead? Some people are not linguists! They need to know it is purely theoretical, which it is, whether academically accepted or not. Djathinkimacowboy 19:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

" 'Reconstruction' subsumes 'theoretical'." OK, I'm not being dragged into an edit war over this anal approach. Djathinkimacowboy 19:58, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Not wishing to be pugnacious, let me be clear: "The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and reconstruction is far advanced and quite detailed.

Scholars estimate that PIE may have been spoken as a single language (before divergence began) around 3700 BC, though estimates by different authorities can vary by more than a millennium. "

This has always been a hypothetical language, spoken by an admittedly hypothetical single group of people. You cannot leave the lead written this way. Otherwise, I recommend sources that state unequivocally that philologists agree the group was real and really spoke a language like this - because we have no way of knowing exactly what "they" spoke.

Do you follow me? Djathinkimacowboy 20:29, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Djathinkimacowboy. You make a very good and very important point. This article needs to be edited. As it is, it is grossly misleading on the nature of PIE. As far as we know PIE was never spoken as such, nor did the current indo-european languages "diverge" from it. Therefore, at present time, no country, no nation, no language, can pretend to be its natural "descendant". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fxsmeets (talk • contribs) 15:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I changed what was a terrible 1st sentence

"The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the linguistic reconstruction of a common ancestor of the Indo-European languages spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans."

What was said above still applies(see 19, comments by Djathinkimacowboy), except this version is even worse. It has the same problem as the following sentence: "I had a dream in which, following the re-counts that followed from the disputed result of the 2016 US presidential election, the first in recent times in which all campaigns were financed by public funds, I was declared President." (what is fact, what is dream/hypothesis?)

It was slightly better in oct 2011: "The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans."

My version:

"The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the name given to reconstructions of the proposed common ancestor of modern and ancient Indo-European languages, with most theories positing the existance of a people, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, whose language went on to dominate the areas now inhabited by Indo-European speakers." 77.98.32.90 (talk) 04:10, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

It's a protolanguage not "reconstructions". It's not most theories it's all theories. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:20, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

"it doesn't sound well" (your reason given for reverting my edit) -- where did you learn English? And this reason entirely ignores the points that I went to the effort of explaining in a post on the talk page.

Ivan, I don't think we have much of a future together: I don't do tug-of-war, and you apparently don't do debate. In Nov 2011, it was argued that there should be a debate, and while one side of the argument was put forward, all that occured was a tug of war. No debate. If you ignore what you don't understand and you don't understand much then I won't waste my time. But I'll leave my contributions to a debate that may or may not happen, probably without you:

" It's a protolanguage not "reconstructions" "

1) are you suggesting that only one version of proto-indo-european has been proposed and that all experts agrees to it? This is clearly false, as the article makes clear.

2) Are you suggesting that a proto-language is not a reconstruction? Are you disagreeing with, for example, the wikipedia entry for proto-language: "A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is a language – usually hypothetical or reconstructed, and unattested – from which a number of attested, or documented, known languages are believed to have descended by evolution, or slow modification of the proto-language into languages that form a language family."

3) You didn't understand my more subtle point, but do you not see just how pointless it is to say, "proto-indo-european is the languange of the proto-indo-europeans and ancestor to the indo-european languages." It contains no information - and seems to be trying to hide that fact with pointless terminology and repetition.

I'll make my earlier point again: you can't explain a theory with notions derived from that theory, or use notions derived exclusively from it to support it. The introduction hides all sorts of assumptions which is why it is so misleading.

"It's not most theories it's all theories."

This is what I had intended:

"with SOME theories positing the existance of a CONQUERING people, the Indo-Europeans, whose language and culture went on to dominate the areas now inhabited by Indo-European speakers." 77.98.32.90 (talk) 12:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)]

Isn't it still a "proposed common ancestor"? Otherwise it reads as if we know that a particular common ancestor existed, which we happened somehow to lose, and need to reconstruct. p.s. Why do we need an IP pronunciation guide for English words in English Wiki? Unless "proto" is considered to be not English, but it's fairly readable nonetheless. Richardson mcphillips (talk) 22:35, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

"Otherwise it reads as if we know that a particular common ancestor existed, which we happened somehow to lose, and need to reconstruct." This is exactly the case. PIE existed, but it wasn't written down so the only evidence we have for it are the languages that descended from it. CodeCat (talk) 00:22, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

ok. I put the weight on "proposed" in "PIE was the first proposed proto-language to be widely accepted by linguists" rather than on "widely accepted". Thanks. Richardson mcphillips (talk) 04:59, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

"It's all theories" - I beg to differ. Several theories nowadays postulate that there never has been a Proto-Indo-European people. Besides, so far, archeological evidence sustaining this hypothesis is scant and debated. Cf, among others, Jean-Paul Demoule's work on this topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fxsmeets (talk • contribs) 15:26, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Is not /y/ a fricative?

Article says: "The traditional (pre-laryngeal) reconstruction included only one fricative, *s". But /y/ is also a fricative.--2A02:2168:83F:8280:0:0:0:2 (talk) 09:39, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

How so? CodeCat (talk) 12:56, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

y is an approximant. See the article Approximant consonant for an explanation of the difference. --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 16:38, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand the use of /y/ at all. That implies they are referencing a phoneme, but phonemically /y/ is a rounded front vowel, French u, German ü and Latin/Scandinavian y. I can only guess that the authors perceived /j/ as a pure fricative and used /y/ to imply an approximant instead, but using an existing phoneme artificially like that seems confusing and weird. Or was this written referencing something using old-fashioned American transcription instead of modern IPA, or is it not using transcription at all and using /y/ for "y". In a discussion of phonology I would expect *ey and *oy to refer to /ey/ and /oy/ and not /ei/ and /oi/. And the article referenced by Anypodetos for "y is an approximant" uses /j/ as I would expect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Badatom (talk • contribs) 21:18, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Reconstruction of PIE was underway well before there was an International Phonetic Alphabet. Indo-Europeanists usually use their own system of notation, with some variations. PIE "y" is the equivalent of /j/. Of course, we can only speculate as to how these sounds were articulated by PIE speakers anyway, so /j/ is approximate. It could have been /ʝ/ or perhaps even some more fanciful possibility. – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 01:08, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Are There Any Known Link to Chinese In Any Form?

Sorry to have to ask (or imply heresy), but are there any known PIE links to any form of Chinese. The Tocharian suggests nothing in this regard, but I am struck by a few word similarities (to which occasional exceptions are of course no real disagreement, given the realworld development of languages). It would be hard for me to research any such possible links or lack thereof without gaining access to the appropriate texts and a lot of reading. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.187.9.79 (talk) 14:53, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I think William Jones proposed that Chinese was Indo-European, but this idea was quickly nixed and has almost never surfaced again. More recently, Christopher I. Beckwith has suggested that 1st millennium BCE had extensive contact with Indo-European speakers, but his theory is limited to a significant superstrate influence on an underlying non-IE language. I don’t recall the details, but I think he suggests that either the Shang or the Zhou or both were originally founded by Indo-European speakers, whose language influenced the pre-existing prehistoric Chinese language.

In addition, there’s always the possibility of loanwords or wanderworten shared not only by Indo-European and Chinese, but also other languages, suggesting a diffusion that might not have involved direct Chinese-IE contact. The classic example is 犬 quǎn (“dog”), which, as reconstructed for Old Chinese, resembles Indo-European words for dog such as Lat. canis, Gk. kúōn. – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 20:19, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Also the word "chariot" (chē) and bee, honey. Suggestions have also been made for some metallurgical words as well. Ogress 02:15, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose the term chariot might owe itself to the term for wheel, like the sanskrit "cakra" for chakra. 86.187.55.131 (talk) 18:53, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

This is not linguistics what you are doing, it is wild supposition and this is not a forum. Ogress 22:10, 30 March 2016 (UTC)

External Links

This article seems to have a lot of external links. I considered adding a "link farm" tag, and/or removing some of them, but figured it would be better to ask here first. Are all of those links essential to the article? Joefromrandb (talk) 02:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. --Cornellier (talk) 20:59, 23 July 2016 (UTC)

Lead

According to WP:LEAD, the lead should summarize the contents of the article. Its second and third sentences are:

"Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is by far the best understood of all proto-languages of its age." How much work has gone into reconstructing other proto-languages is not discussed in the article. This is as it should be since the article is neither about research into proto-languages in general, nor primarily about the history of the disclipines that are used to understand it.
"The vast majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to reconstruction of PIE or its daughter proto-languages (e.g. Proto-Germanic), and most of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction such as the comparative method were developed as a result." As above, and per WP:BALASP this is giving undue weight to the history to secondary and tertiary topics. The article is about PIE. Comparative linguistics, the comparative method, Grimm's law, and so on, all of which have articles of their own, are secondary to that. The history of those is tertiary.

If the information is considered crucial it could be moved to the body of the article if an explanation of why this is relevant were included, along with citations, and with an objective quantification of "far more" and "vast majority".

Consider replacing those two sentences with a high-level description of what IE is. The article discusses at length PIE's relationship with various modern languages. Hence it is appropriate to mention that in the lead. As it is the lead is written as if the target audience were linguistics students, rather than the general public. --Cornellier (talk) 20:02, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 04:04, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Proto-Indo-European Wikipedia

What about starting a Proto-Indo-European Wikipedia? 188.108.108.25 (talk) 11:04, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm afraid there is nobody alive who knows enough PIE to fill that Wikipedia with content... --ἀνυπόδητος (talk) 19:55, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The real problem is there is no such thing as standard PIE. Everyone has his own favorite reconstruction and notation, and there's the question of time depth, pre-PIE is very different from late common PIE. See Schleicher's fable, which, interestingly, was used in the lamentable Prometheus (film). μηδείς (talk) 20:42, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The other problem is that our knowledge of the vocab is so limited that there would be few articles that could sensibly written in PIE...Ordinary Person (talk) 14:53, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think that by now we have a generally accepted form of PIE. The forms reconstructed by Beekes and Sihler seem to be rather inaccurate and outdated. 97.89.216.62 (talk) 15:56, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I've got an idea, how about one of you guys makes his own website called PIE Wikia. With help from fellow PIE enthusiasts which includes me by the way, we can come up with our own standard PIE. Afterwards we can make a dictionary, grammar guide, and then translate Wikipedia pages. This can be done in two months. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Idielive (talk • contribs) 03:33, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Subfamily Clades: Albanian?

Why is proto-Albanian not featured among the subfamilies? 184.153.89.10 (talk) 06:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

it's in the Subfamilies section --Cornellier (talk) 17:40, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Same Quesition here, where is Albanian in the Subfamily List. @Cornellier, no its not. --2A02:AA16:5201:C380:B036:1897:F0D1:5DA0 (talk) 14:34, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

I will include Albanian in to the subfamilies, explaining that it stands on its own group. I already have done that, but my edition was reverted. I'm trying again, with different wording.FlavianusEP (talk) 14:13, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

A question (just for fun)

How would you say in PIE:

"This user is able to contribute with a basic level of PIE"?

I'd like to make a userbox in the Hungarian wiki for it. Thank you. :) --El Mexicano (talk) 07:1 , 24 March 2009 (UTC)

It's impossible to reconstruct syntax so there's no way to make any reasonable guesses about PIE word order. Because of that, the userbox would also be a lie. Sorry to be a negative Nancy. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

hi I am idielive, and I think I can help you. Though my translation probably isn't perfect, I deem it to be sufficient. Here goes. "Só óynos gʰh₁bʰeo gelnosom gʰebh PIE-yo lítreh₂ ne-kert." A rough translation of this sentence would be, "This one (nominative case) have power (accusative case) give PIE (genetive case) level (instrumental case) no-hard (meaning "simple")." Note that lítreh₂ is a Mediterranean loanword and is not indo european. Also, I got gelnos (power) from an online PIE dictionary which may or may not be accurate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Idielive (talk • contribs) 16:35, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Should those velars be palatalised velars, or are you an proponent of some theory that includes more pure velars than one often sees? – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 22:17, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

For "user" I would suggest *h₁éwHtōr, agent noun from the root *h₁ewH- "to help". It still survives as Latin adiutor, with the i- taken from the present stem by analogy. I would also just say "speaks a little PIE", which uses less complex grammatical structures. For "speaks", I'd say *bʰéh₂ti, a root present that survives in Greek and Latin. CodeCat (talk) 23:07, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions. About the velars, I am writing from an Indo European speaker's perspective, that is, they probably made no distinction between the pure velars and the palatal velars, just as the average english speaker sees no difference between the k in keen and the k in kin. On a personal level however, I believe that the palatal velars in PIE occurred much less than the pure velars in the actual language. "Só h₁éwHtōr bʰéh₂ti PIE? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Idielive (talk • contribs) 20:35, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

If you really wanted to write "PIE" as the language, it should at least get case endings, so PIEm for the accusative. Though it's also possible that such a construction would use the instrumental case instead, so PIEh₁. CodeCat (talk) 18:49, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

In the mainstream reconstruction, the plain velars and palatal velars are considered to have been different phonemes, and the palatal velars occurred much more often. There's probably something wrong with that, and it wouldn't at all surprise me if in the actual language of the proto–Indo-European people they were the same phoneme, but we have to go with the reconstructions we've got. AJD (talk) 17:45, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

Has anyone ever reconstructed what PIE would be called by PIE speakers? I'm not aware of anything. In the absence of any evidence, I would suggest just translating it as "our language". – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 15:14, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

No idea. We can't even figure out what Proto-Germanic speakers called themselves or their language, and that's much more recent. CodeCat (talk) 18:04, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

So, perhaps "nos dn̥ǵʰwā́m", then? – Greg Pandatshang (talk) 22:45, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

No, of course it never occurred in Italian, French, Spanish (cento, cent, cien). Or in Old English (cirice) Or in Swedish (skyldig). Never. --ColinFine (talk) 19:12, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Question Please

I've read that in Early PIE there was no feminine or masculine gender, and that they both came from a split in an original animate gender. But couldn't the opposite be at least possible? What if the neuter gender came from either the masculine or feminine genders? Maybe the only reason why Hittite doesn't have them is because it split off from PIE earlier than the other daughter languages. Also, Proto Anatolian might've been influenced by Summerian (which distinguishes between human/non-human), resulting in a loss of the original two gender system. I'd think that this theory would be consistent with the reconstructed PIE religion, which included the reverence of natural objects/phenomenon like oak trees, rivers, and lightning. They would've seen these objects as either having male or female characteristics, based on Celtic animism and the Vedic Sarasvati hymns. Idielive (talk) 20:38, 6 May 2017 (UTC) : You should ask such questions at the reference desk: Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language. An article talk page is only meant for discussions about the article, not about the topic in general.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 01:34, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Translation of this Article into PIE

Aʼar ṭn̥khwaʼs ṭlkés wretpertis komoini ḥenés wekʷspés ṭlkóʼom eʼes, meḳa-ṭlkóʼom spreḳ. Mējos wérḳom PIE upér ḥéntera ḥen-ṭlku wretper, kʷe phaṭ ḳneʿ ḥenóʼom ṭlkóʼom. m̥ḳaʼ ʼnéwn̥-leyp-km̥tóm ṭlkés-wérḳosjo wretpertis PIEés wē tósjo thukhtr̥-ṭlkés (e.g ḥen ḳénʼmn̥), kʷe mē néwosjo-teks-neḫ ṭlkés-wretpertis liḳ kʷiṭ-liḳ-sekʷ, to kawṭ-teḫej maḳ. Tóṭ teks-neḫs ḥel ḳneʿmn̥ PIEés kheph, kawṭ-teḫ ne wrej ṭlkés. Idielive (talk) 22:03, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I have undone your addition of the above, or some version of it, to the article. You have not indicated where it is from or how you came by it, and there seems no basis for it, so it is entirely original research, and so not appropriate for including in articles. PIE is not a language you can translate modern English or other modern texts into. There is too much uncertainty both in the pronunciation of individual words and in areas of the vocabulary that are unknown. Even words that have been reconstructed might have had very different meanings five thousand or more years ago. There is simply not enough information to reconstruct a text like that, and there likely never will be.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 17:50, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Sorry but it sounds much like Lovecraftian defilement of PIE. I'm disgusted. Moreover, English words crept inside. I mean that Y instead of J and J instead of DZ makes the two/third to Lovecraftization of it. Horrible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.192.7.171 (talk) 13:15, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

American versus British English

This page uses a mixture of American and British English. MOS:RETAIN says "When no English variety has been established and discussion does not resolve the issue, use the variety found in the first post-stub revision that introduced an identifiable variety. The established variety in a given article can be documented by placing the appropriate Varieties of English template on its talk page." The earliest version of this page made by Quincy uses British English, so may I standardise the article to British English? Jackpaulryan (talk) 02:11, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it should use one variety of English, not a mix of more than one, and if there are no strong national ties it should be the one first used in the article.--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 03:03, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Sihler

The verb section says: "The following table shows a possible reconstruction of the PIE verb endings from Sihler, which largely represents the current consensus among Indo-Europeanists." Question 1: Where is the source of this "largely represents the current consensus" claim? Question 2: Why is the Sihler chart on this page different from the Sihler chart on the Proto-Indo-European verbs page? Thank you! --Jackpaulryan (talk) 20:02, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Template Infobox language

I think the article should have a Infobox language added to it. To be consistent it is (was) a language. At some point in the future we are probably going to scrape all the language infobox data and bring it into WikiData, thus also the the Proto languages should have infoboxes added.--Alternative Transport (talk) 22:13, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

English Missing From Chart?

Maybe I missed it, but I think English should be on the chart/image "Classification of Indo-European languages". I didn't see it. Liberty5651 (talk) 22:44, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I see it. Rua (mew) 22:51, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Look near the bottom in the 7th column. —teb728 t c 23:09, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Pre-Pie

The topic pre-proto-indoeuropean is simply redirected to PIE. This needs to be a separate article as much could be said about ideas for even earlier stages of the language before any splits. For example ideas about the state before the development of feminine gender or a possibility of an animate-inanimate opposition. Could anyone help out here. Beekes Lehmann or Meier-Brügger or such to the rescue perhaps? Memory fails me. CecilWard (talk) 09:38, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

In fiction?

Is there a "Proto-Indo-European in fiction" section somewhere? SharkD Talk 01:16, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I am thinking about adding a one. The "In popular culture" section of the Schleicher's fable article mentions Proto-Indo-European's use in the film Prometheus. I have seen the movie, so I know this is true, but the sources provided do not seem up to Wikipedia's standards (it uses blogs as sources). Jackpaulryan (talk) 01:21, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

It is hardly possible for such an abstruse subject to appear in fiction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.232.113 (talk) 11:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

nevertheless it is true because I myself have seen that scene mentioned in the movie, where a character listens to a lecture on PIE and then studies Schleicher’s Fable and - the character being an artificial life-form - does a scarily good job at correct pronunciation of PIE when reading the fable aloud. CecilWard (talk) 09:49, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

There is very little entertainment in comparative linguistics generally. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.174.232.113 (talk) 11:16, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

This source claims that PIE was used for the character names in the novel Redemption of Althalus; does that count? AJD (talk) 16:07, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Saussure

I got here from a pathway starting at the article on Ferdinand de Saussure, and note that there's no direct link to that article, although of course one can get there via the article on laryngeal theory. Does he warrant a mention? I hesitate to do it myself, being so ignorant. Ishboyfay (talk) 02:12, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

How plausible is all this?

I have read one or two articles that claim that the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, as presently conceived, is pure fantasy, and most likely bears no accurate relationship to an actual common ancestor of the relevant languages. On the other hand, this article seems to present the reconstructions pretty much as a fact accepted by all. It would be useful for the article to mention the extent to which there is agreement or disagreement on the main body of the reconstruction, and to mention the dissenting voices, if only to dismiss them. Otherwise, it is hard for the non-specialist to choose between the different opinions. 2A00:23C5:4B91:AB00:ECD4:C5AB:54B3:691E (talk) 02:34, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't know a modern linguist that rejects PIE as "pure fantasy". Some reconstructions are more secured than others: the "wheel" or "sky/god" are attested in almost every branch; while the word for "wine" is a debated issue. One misconception about linguistics is that it reconstructs words based on similar sounds. This is wrong. They are based on a common grammar (a series of grammatical cases in Indo-European), which makes it nearly impossible for the similarities to be due to chance or loans. Then we use sound laws to reconstruct the most probable form in the proto-language. This method has proven predictive: we had anticipated the existence of laryngeals before we discovered the Hittite language; and we found inscriptions in Celtic or Germanic that accurately fits in the proto-Celtic and proto-Germanic forms we had reconstructed. Now, linguists do not agree on everything, as it is the case in any field: but virtually all of them accept the Indo-European languages as a family, with a common ancestor for which we can reconstruct words. On the other hand, I know other scholars (like archeologists) who may debate the very existence of PIE. From what I read, they make basic mistakes in linguistics, like comparing sounds without looking at grammar/cases. We cannot therefore give voice to critics outside of the field of linguistics on this Wikipedia page. It would be like linguists debating the theory of relativity among citations of astrophysicists. Now for the accuracy of reconstructions, I would say that PIE words have not change a lot in 200 years of historical linguistics. The modifications are only on details that don't affect the general sound-form. It would be like linguists debating if the accurate reconstruction of the English word "dwelling" is "dyelling", "duelling" or "dwelling". Azerty82 (talk) 08:26, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Which articles qualify PIE reconstructions as "pure fantasy"? Joshua Jonathan -Let's talk! 08:50, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Jean-Paul Demoule's 2014 book has caused a controversy and debate in France (1^[1], 2^[2], etc.) But he's an archeologist and his book contains numerous linguistics mistakes. That said, his arguments that we cannot necessary equal a language with a people is legitimate, although the same could be said for archeology: they cannot equal a material culture with a people. Azerty82 (talk) 10:08, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

(OP) I believe that a statement in the introduction to the effect that the present reconstruction of PIE is broadly accepted by modern linguists would be beneficial, if this is indeed the case. This may seem obvious to people who already know about the subject, or may seem to be implied by the existence of the article at all, but it is in fact non-obvious to lay people who may have read sceptical opinions and may themselves instinctively feel that such a reconstruction, in any sort of detail, is far-fetched. 2A00:23C5:4B91:AB00:ACF3:885E:2E34:5B56 (talk) 00:17, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

References

^ Garnier, Romain; Demoule, Jean-Paul. "« L'indo-européen a-t-il existé ? »". Le grand débat, published in La Recherche n°497 (mars 2015), 83-85.
^ Pellard, Thomas; Sagart, Laurent; Jacques, Guillaume (2018). "L'indo-européen n'est pas un mythe". Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. 113 (1): 79–102. doi:10.2143/BSL.113.1.3285465.

What Context is PIE surrounded by?

I would find it very helpful if there were clear links in the lead to the other major language "groups", with a quick overview of what the differences are. Hard to know what something is without knowing what it is not. Boundaries give form. Tx.. 184.66.50.117 (talk) 19:18, 23 April 2019 (UTC) §

I also would like more context, especially dates of the developmental stages of Proto-Indo-European. Of course, dates would have to be estimates, but especially when stages are documented by written examples of languages, they would give perspective to the linguistic processes under discussion. Dates and locations of various linguistic groups, as well as information about migrations/relocations of peoples would be very helpful. I am surprised that all this linguistic evolution seems to have happened since about 4500 BC. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 07:19, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Lead

KIENGIR and ExperiencedArticleFixer disagree about the wording of the lead.

Old verson: Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the linguistic reconstruction of the ancient common ancestor of the Indo-European languages
ExperiencedArticleFixer's version: Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed ancient common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.

I suggest as concise alternative:

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.

Drop "ancient" (which sounds weasel-ish), drop "linguistic" (which is redundant, per page title), PIE is reconstructed. Of course, PIE is also a reconstruction, since this word can describe both the process and its result. But "reconstructed common ancestor" sounds better and is the common wording in textbooks about historical linguistics. –Austronesier (talk) 09:09, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I think the intro should make it clearer that PIE is theoretical, and clarify the relationship of the reconstructed elements. I propose:

Proto-Indo-European is the theorized common ancestor of the the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exist. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages.

--Spasemunki (talk) 10:04, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Concur with Spasemunki.(KIENGIR (talk) 15:59, 16 July 2020 (UTC))

"No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exist. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages" is nice and terse, and pretty much the same as stated in the last phrases of the second paragraph, just less flowery. I would swap the order of the two statements, putting "no direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists" at the end. And of course trim the second para to avoid repetition. –Austronesier (talk) 17:35, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Go on, and we'll see how it looks.(KIENGIR (talk) 04:07, 17 July 2020 (UTC))

Good. My whole point was logical: the lede was conflating a language with the reconstruction of a language, which are two different things. I think it looks better now. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 08:37, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

But PIE is the language, not the reconstruction. The reconstruction is of PIE. PIE would have existed with or without our attempts to reconstruct it. Rua (mew) 09:43, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

My point, precisely. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 09:48, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

The existence of PIE is a theory proposed to explain the relationship of the IE languages. We can't describe the existence of PIE independent of the reconstructions as a fact. The reconstructions argue for the plausibility of it existing, but aren't sufficient to establish that it did. --Spasemunki (talk) 10:12, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

My point is not about whether we can talk of PIE has having existed or not. That is irrelevant. Even if it did not exist, when the article says "PIE is estimated to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC", it is talking about the language (even if it never existed), not about the reconstruction (which we know exists). My point is categorial and logical. The fact that the language, even if fictional, is conceptually different from its reconstruction should be obvious by the fact that the language is believed to have existed thousands of years ago, while everybody knows that the reconstruction is only modern. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 11:15, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, Spasemuki has right, despite what you say, no contradiction, since an unverified hyphothesis obviously may be interpolated by a modern reconstruction (though both are hyphothesis')(KIENGIR (talk) 21:24, 17 July 2020 (UTC))

Indeed, what Spasemunki said is mostly correct, but irrelevant to my point. Please explain the meaning of "an unverified hyphothesis [sic] obviously may be interpolated by a modern reconstruction". It does not make any sense to me, not to mention the misspellings. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 23:20, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I was replying to Rua referring to the existence of the language. Tried to use the indent level to make that clear, but Talk isn't great for keeping threads straight. I think everyone is in agreement on the wording of the intro sentences. --Spasemunki (talk) 23:30, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I'm happy with it. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 23:41, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the misspelling. I wanted to point out there is not anachronism, and unverified hypothesis is naturally may be simulated by a late reconstruction, but both of them are imaginary.(KIENGIR (talk) 23:27, 17 July 2020 (UTC))

I think you fail to see my point. As many logical points, it is both extremely simple and sometimes difficult to see. Think: both the PIE hypothesis and the reconstruction are modern, so none of them can be dated to 4000 BC. Ergo, the PIE referred to in the PIE hypothesis is not a reconstruction, but the actual language that is hypothesised to have existed in 4000 BC. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 23:37, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I understand you, I think just missing words may confuse us. You have right in your exact sentence now, but we should not forget hypothesised to have existed, so we may not refer anywhere that it have existed or needed to be existed, juts because a reconstruction is assumed (or assumed to be equal with the target of the hypothesis).(KIENGIR (talk) 00:19, 18 July 2020 (UTC))

What missing words are you talking about? Anyway, I agree with this now, except that I think that the mainstream scientific position is that it indeed existed. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 00:27, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Like in the beginning with estimated. Well, indeed we should be enough careful not to confuse mainstream scientific positions with facts.(KIENGIR (talk) 00:34, 18 July 2020 (UTC))

Oh, but if you understood my point, you'll see that it is irrelevant whether it existed or is only estimated to have existed. Either way, the PIE hypothesis does not refer to the modern reconstruction (although, as you said, the reconstruction could be believed to be equivalent to the hypothesis' target). --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 00:39, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

If the mainstream of linguistic sources says that PIE existed, then that is the majority position Wikipedia should take as well. It would be WP:OR or WP:UNDUE to do otherwise. Rua (mew) 09:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

The existence of PIE is not a standalone hypothesis, it's a trivial corollary of accepting that IE is a language family. It is axiomatic in historical linguistics (and not only mainstream linguists), that a language family presupposes a common ancestor. If there is no common ancestor, it is not a family, that simple. It is the essence of historical linguists that a language family is defined by shared features that derive from a common ancestral source (I am not aware of alternative defintions of "language family" outside of linguistics, and wouldn't be interested if there were). The fact that the comprative method only is able to create an approximation of how this ancestral source looked like (due to the facts of linguistic entropy), does not mean that the mere existence of such a source is in doubt. And of course, the consensus view among historical linguistics is that IE is a language family (including the corollary that PIE was a real entity at some stage in history).

Another corollary: we cannot somehow attribute a higher factuality to the existence of a language family than to the existence of the ancestral source. So if you attach the label "hypothetical" to the proto-language itself (its reconstructed shape will always be hypothetical), you must also call the decendants a "hypothetical language family". Does anybody really want this kind of wording for the IE languages? :) –Austronesier (talk) 11:23, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Regarding this last point, now we are saying "theorized", which I hope you find to be better than "hypothetical", since a theory in the broad sense is just how we see something that is currently unobservable. --ExperiencedArticleFixer (talk) 13:51, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Lineage Chart

Vishnu Sahib added a chart that shows the Prakrit and modern Indo-Aryan languages of India descended from Sanskrit. My recollection is that this is not accurate according to current research. Can you provide sources for this? There are two sources in the intro to the article that suggest it is accurate, but one is not definitive (saying 'most' modern Aryan languages are descended from Sanskrit) and the other is from a publication on a topic only indirectly related to linguistics. I've also started a discussion on the Commons page for the chart itself here. --Spasemunki (talk) 23:00, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Some more input: With such claims it is necessary to distinguish Classical from Vedic Sanskrit, as they are distinct in syntax, morphology, phonology and lexicon, and for the purposes of linguistics they should always be considered distinct languages (as are the different stages of e.g. Egyptian, Latin, or Middle Chinese). The question of whether Sanskrit is ancestral to modern Indo-Aryan languages (and, if so, which) of course depends on the definition of Sanskrit. Based on the studies I've seen, there is no chance at all that the Classical language can be considered ancestral to any modern language, and it is a literary standard based loosely on Vedic Sanskrit but with the grammar and lexicon and some sound changes of later (early-to-mid first millennium BC) northwestern Prakrit dialects. On the other hand, Vedic Sanskrit has been argued as representing the same stage that is ancestral to all or most of the Prakrits. Some take this a step further and assume that Vedic Sanskrit is synonymous with Proto-Indo-Aryan, but several differences between the reconstructed PIA phonology and that of Vedic Sanskrit cast serious doubt on this idea. In fact, the Wikipedia article already has a section on some of those discrepancies. — 69.120.64.15 (talk) 20:03, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Branches

The article is about the protolanguage, not the language family itself. Do we really need a section with detailed information on the Indo-European branches and other proposed subgroups? I think such information is obviously out of place here and should be left for the article Indo-European languages; I suggest removing the table in that section but perhaps moving it over to Indo-European languages § Classification if it's considered valuable. Plus, there is already an entire page solely for listing the Indo-European languages. So the information is largely redundant, and removing the table entirely wouldn't be any great loss. — 69.120.64.15 (talk) 19:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree with this and that's the pattern I'm following over on Gaelwiki Samalou (talk) 20:47, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Agree --Pfold (talk) 15:15, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Notation

It would be very helpful to explain the notation used for PIE orthography. It's unclear to what degree it's phonetic vs. morphological, and some symbols are completely mysterious to most readers. For example, what does "₂" mean? A lot of articles that use PIE words link to this article, so this seems like a logical place to explain it, or at least have a summary of a more detailed article here. -- Beland (talk) 22:42, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with this @Beland:. As such, the symbols have been explained in the Proto-Indo-European_phonology main article, but I think you make a good point: at the very least a summary of the sounds/symbols on this main page would be useful.

I've looked into adding this; they still won't explain, for example what h₂ would be, but that's a bit complicated and perhaps best left to the full phonology article. Best wishes, Dyḗwsuh₃nus (talk) 10:12, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

The point is, we won't explain what "₂" is, but rather what "h₂" is. We could just say in the section "Notation" something like:

"The phonetical value of the so called "laryngeals" is still unclear; conventíonally, they are spelled as h₁, h₂, h₃ If it is undecided which of these three has to be reconstructed in a proto-form, the laryngeal is spelled H."

–Austronesier (talk) 11:38, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer to that article; I've added a link from {{contains special characters}} which should cover most cases. -- Beland (talk) 16:18, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Are asterisks really necessary?

Are the asterisks in the phoneme inventories really necessary? It's explained that these are unattested and must be used in writing of PIE words but I don't see why they need to be included in the charts. These charts seem to be mixing PIE phonemes and PIE spelling conventions in an unhelpful manner. – Dyolf87 (talk) 10:51, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

The mixing was just in the vowels, and in the misleading introductory sentences. It's now strictly per PIE spelling conventions. So asterisks are fine. Btw, this section is a just summary of Proto-Indo-European_phonology. So the main point is actually whether it faithfully reflects what is written there, and whether it is a good summary. –Austronesier (talk) 11:05, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

PS to all: how is Fortson a source for a minimal vowel system? –Austronesier (talk) 11:06, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jackpaulryan. Peer reviewers: Fantinij, Chh8414.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:22, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Why y and not j in the consonant inventory?

In the consonant inventory there is a ⟨y⟩ where we would usually expect to see ⟨j⟩ for the [j] sound. Is there a reason for this? – Dyolf87 (talk) 07:34, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Dyolf87: This an old and common convention in IE historical linguistics, and also in the transliteration of ancient languages such as Hittite, Sanskrit, Avestan, Tocharian etc. Another common alternative notation is *i̯ (together with *u̯ for *w); the IPA symbol *j, however, is rarely used in the relevant literature, so introducing it here would create an insular notation. –Austronesier (talk) 14:51, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I guessed it would be something like that. Would it not be useful though, to note somewhere on or near the consonant chart that y is used for [j] in PIE? At least that way it would be less confusing for people who are starting out in their linguistic careers or hobbies? Just a thought. – Dyolf87 (talk) 15:47, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea. AJD (talk) 17:18, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Anyone know why ⟨y⟩ is traditional? Is it because British scholars used ⟨y⟩ in Sanskrit (thought by many to be closest to PIE of the known languages)? —Tamfang (talk) 05:43, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Confusion in opening paragraph

Paging User:Pfold specifically, but I feel that the line "Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists." can be confusing. Before my edit to this section, an IP user changed the last part to "No direct record of Proto-Indo-European has been found.", before ThethPunjabi reverted it. I think from its current wording, it can be easy to assume that both of the sentences are unrelated, when the most certainly are. The reason why Proto-Indo-European is reconstructed is because there is no written evidence for it, and only reflexes of it throughout its daughter languages. This may seem like a simple line of reasoning, but I think it isn't clear with the current wording, as shown with the IP editor's confusion. The pre-literacy of the Proto-Indo-Europeans seems to be pretty well established, and I think that the clarification of Proto-Indo-European being an attempt at reconstructing a pre-historic language could help. I attempted to link these concepts together a bit more closely, but understand that my implementation might of not been the best. I would love to hear other editor's thoughts on this part of the opener. JungleEntity (talk) 23:48, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

I've swapped the order of those sentences and put a semicolon between them; let's see if that helps. AJD (talk) 14:39, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I think your edit works best - thank you. JungleEntity (talk) 21:41, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Age

"Era c. 4500 – c. 2500 BC"

Which source gives that the common ancestor of the Anatolian branch and other branches still existed in 2500 BC ? --95.24.71.165 (talk) 18:51, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Don't know what sources the article uses, but The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World says: One might then place a notional date of c.4500–2500 bc on Proto-Indo-European. The terminus ante quem of 2500bc is obviously quite late, based on the earliest attestations of Anatolian languages. Tewdar 19:54, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Homeland

Shouldnt the homeland of indo-European be ukraine since Sredny stog culture was the oldest indo-European culture and they origanated firmly in ukraine? H20346 (talk) 05:59, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

The hypothesized historical homeland for the Proto-Indo-Europeans transcends today's national borders, mostly being parts of eastern Ukraine, southern Russia, and the north Caucasus. At present there is no definitive answer to what culture spoke Proto-Indo-European. JungleEntity (talk) 17:05, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

[1] Garnier, Romain; Demoule, Jean-Paul. "« L'indo-européen a-t-il existé ? »". Le grand débat, published in La Recherche n°497 (mars 2015), 83-85.

[2] Pellard, Thomas; Sagart, Laurent; Jacques, Guillaume (2018). "L'indo-européen n'est pas un mythe". Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris. 113 (1): 79–102. doi:10.2143/BSL.113.1.3285465.

[1]

[2]

What's that star thingy?

baltic or caucasian?

Velars

Is this correct??

controversial claims

Table of Correspondences & Rules List

Example texts

cut texts

Nixer

TEB728

Capitalisation of sound laws

Subscript numbers

Vocalic "allophone"???

bʰ, dʰ and gʰ

Ergative and Active hypotheses

glossary

Exceptional claims require exceptional sources.

Aorist

Future tense in PIE

Stang and the vowel repertoire

May need more research to include Dravidian languages with PIE

Family tree of languages

Proto-Slavic a generally accepted subfamily?

Finno-Ugric

Vast Majority of Linguistic Work

Proto Indo-Europeans were Turk!

Standard forms

Update

Proto-Slavic

Notation: use ey/ew instead of ei/eu?

English as a descendant

Vowels

Citation needed in the lead section

clarification question

References in popular culture

WP:NOTDICTIONARY

re: the rest of the terrible introduction: You can't seperate Indo-European from Aryan

This article grossly fails to give Wikipedians a coorect and accurate synthesis of the Proto-Indo-European language propblem

I changed what was a terrible 1st sentence

Is not /y/ a fricative?

Are There Any Known Link to Chinese In Any Form?

External Links

Further reading

Lead

Proto-Indo-European Wikipedia

Subfamily Clades: Albanian?

A question (just for fun)

Question Please

Translation of this Article into PIE

American versus British English

Sihler

Template Infobox language

English Missing From Chart?

Pre-Pie

In fiction?

Saussure

How plausible is all this?

What Context is PIE surrounded by?

Lead

Lineage Chart

Branches

Notation

Are asterisks really necessary?

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

Why y and not j in the consonant inventory?

Confusion in opening paragraph

Age

Homeland