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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
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.
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)
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)
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)
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?
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.
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.
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?:
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 *kwid. From my own (unpublished) lexicostatistical studies, I tend to believe that *kw 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 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)
Let me see if I got all 10 of these correct:
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)
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)
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)
In this thread [1] you can read controversial claim why PIE can be Adamic language, as suggested by Catherine Emmerich revelations.
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.
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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, 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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".
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.
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)
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)
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)
“ | 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)
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)
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)
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 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
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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). —Angr 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. —Angr 16:52, 12 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)
I still disagree and believe that Angr and "Ƶ§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)
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)
"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)
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)
"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)
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)
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)
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. — LlywelynII 12:31, 20 April 2015 (UTC)
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 dictionaryCalling 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)
"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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
"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 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)]
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
I quite agree that the Further Reading needed pruning, so thanks to Cornellier for that. However, I think a small amount of baby has been thrown out with a lot of bathwater. Renfrew's work is surely important enough to list, since it's the main representative of the second most popular homeland theory - in fact it probably ought to be used as a reference in the body of the article. Also, Pokorny, as the fundamental work on etymology and IE roots, really needs to go back in my view. Any reason not to see reinstate these two? --Pfold (talk) 23:48, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
According to WP:LEAD, the lead should summarize the contents of the article. Its second and third sentences are:
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)
What about starting a Proto-Indo-European Wikipedia? 188.108.108.25 (talk) 11:04, 24 September 2012 (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)
Why is proto-Albanian not featured among the subfamilies? 184.153.89.10 (talk) 06:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)
How would you say in 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)
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)
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)
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.--JohnBlackburnewordsdeeds 01:34, 3 March 2017 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Is there a "Proto-Indo-European in fiction" section somewhere? SharkD Talk 01:16, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
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)
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)
References
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)
KIENGIR and ExperiencedArticleFixer disagree about the wording of the lead.
I suggest as concise alternative:
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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.
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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)
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)
"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)
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)