Indo-European: History, Families & Originsusers.clas.ufl.edu/drjdg/OE/pubs/IEIntro.pdf ·...
Transcript of Indo-European: History, Families & Originsusers.clas.ufl.edu/drjdg/OE/pubs/IEIntro.pdf ·...
Indo-European: History, Families & Origins
1
Historical Linguistics
Early observations pointed to language relatedness:
The Sanscrit language, whatever by its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists ....
Sir William Jones -- Presidential Discourse at the February 2, 1786 meeting of the Asiatic Society
2
Darwin & Historical Linguistics
Darwin's On The Origin of Species published in 1859
German biologist Ernst Haeckel persuades his friend - philologist August Schleicher, to read it
Schleicher (and generations of historical linguists) apply evolutionary principle to comparative/historical linguistics
3
Test The Methodology
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) used the comparative method to predict that a certain group of sounds had to have existed in Indo-European
20 years later, when Hittite texts were discovered, Saussure's laryngeals were attested!
4
Indo-European Family
5
Indo-European Homeland
6
Family Branching
7
Earliest Attestation of IE Daughter LanguagesAnatolian 17th c. B.C.E
Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) 15th c. B.C.E
Greek 13th c. B.C.E.
Iranian (Avestan / Old Persian) 7th c. B.C.E / 6th c. B.C.E.
Italic 6th c. B.C.E
Tocharian 6th c. B.C.E
Germanic 1st c. C.E
Celtic 3rd c. B.C.E.
Armenian 5th c. C.E.
Slavic 9th c. C.E.
Baltic "relatively late"
Albanian 15th c. C.E.
8
Cultural & Locational Information
Common root words have a good chance of being PIE in origin
These roots some light on the lives of original PIE speakers
Probably originated in a temperate climate
Lack of more data makes speculation about the exact PIE homeland dicey
9
Some IE Highlights
Elaborate Consonantal System (see readings)
voiced aspirates/syllabic consonants!
laryngeals (most probably three - glottal stop and fricatives?)
Three "genders" - Masculine, Feminine & Neuter
Rich System of nominal declension / verbal inflection
10
Nouns - 7 CasesNominative - subject
Accusative - direct object
Instrumental - by/with (I hit the wall with my head )
Dative - indirect object
Ablative - "from" case
Genitive - possessive / "of" case
Vocative - "address" case - used to address or call persons
11
Verbal InflectionPerson & Number - 1st, 2nd & 3rd -- Singular, Dual & Plural
Tense - Present / Non-Present (imperfect, aorist [summary occurence], perfect)
Mood - Indicative (unmarked), Imperative (for commands), Optative (should, could, might do something), Subjunctive (shall, can be expected to do something)
Voice - Active (default, direct action - "Gwḗn bit me" ), Medio-Passive (reflexive - "Gwḗn tripped me and I hurt myself" , passive - "I was bitten by Gwḗn" )
12
Daughter Language Tidbits
Celtic
Celts once ranged across much of Europe - Bohemia, Southern Germany, Gaul (modern France), Belgium, Northern Spain, British Isles, Northern Italy, Greece. Settled in Anatolia (modern Turkey) - "Galatians"
Best attested in Old Irish
Now limited to Great Britain (Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh) and Northern France (Breton)
13
Daughter Language Tidbits
Italic
Latin most richly attested Italic language
Coexisted early on with Oscan (4th c. C.E.) and Umbrian (3rd c. C.E.)
Dark Age / Medieval language of learning and literacy across Europe
Parent to many European languages
14
Daughter Language Tidbits
Germanic
Germanic peoples spread across modern Germany, Austria & Scandinavia
From there they spread out all over Europe (Völkerwanderung)
Literacy was a late innovation in the Germanic world (oldest surviving text is Wulfila's Gothic Bible - 4th c. C.E.)
Considerable interaction with Slavic, borrowing from Latin
15
Daughter Language Tidbits
Greek
Attested relatively early
Several major dialects - Attic & Ionic (major literary dialects of classic Greek literature), Arcadian & Cypriot, Aeolic, Doric
Modern Greek descended from Attic/Ionic "common language" (koinḕ glôssa)
16
Daughter Language Tidbits
Anatolian
Modern Turkey - home to many ancient language (Turks are recent move-ins)
Hittite - one of the oldest attested IE languages - related but also very different in many ways
17
Daughter Language Tidbits
Indo-Iranian > Iranian
Iranian & Indo-Aryans used same word to refer to themselves: ārya (Iran =genitive plural = "land of the Aryans")
Old Iranian languages - Avestan & Old Persian - Avestan older (Zoroastrian hymns composed by Zarathushtra), Old Persian attested in rock inscriptions of kings
Modern Persian, Kurdish, Pashto & Ossetic
18
Daughter Language Tidbits
Indo-Aryan > Sanskrit
Written Vedic Sanskrit very old - oral tradition even older
Sanskrit served as the scholarly lingua franca of India long after the emergence of regional languages that descended from it
Hindi-Urdu, like Serbo-Croatian, common languages divided by religion
19