Universidade Federal de Pernambuco Depto. de Letras, Programa de Espanhol Disciplina: História da Língua Espanhola

Centro de Artes e Comunicação Professor: Dr. João Sedycias Código da Disciplina: ______

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Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Indo-European Languages

The Divergence of Indo-European Languages

Linguists have not found a reliable and precise way to determine from linguistic evidence alone the date at which any set of related languages must have begun diverging. The best that can be done is to estimate the degree of difference between the languages in question, taking into account all that is known about them, and then compare this estimate with the estimated degrees of difference within families of languages – such as the Romance family – whose actual time of divergence is approximately known. Using this sort of "dead reckoning," it can be said that the earliest attested Indo-European languages – Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, and Greek – are different enough that the parent language must have been split into several distinct languages before 3000 BCE, but similar enough that the first split into separate languages is not likely to have been earlier than about 4500 BCE.

For further progress the linguistic findings must be correlated with archaeological evidence. Linguistic, historical, and geographic considerations suggest that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European were a relatively small and homogeneous Eurasian population group that underwent significant expansion and fragmentation in the period around 4000 BCE. Some scholars believe that the Indo-Europeans were the bearers of the Kurgan (Barrow) culture of the Black Sea and the Caucasus and west of the Urals.

The Kurgan culture, however, was only one of a number of related steppe cultures extending across the entire Black Sea-Caspian Sea region, an area that was transformed about 4000 BCE by the advent of horse-drawn wheeled vehicles and related innovations. It is probably best, therefore, to follow J.T. Mallory (In Search of the Indo-Europeans [1989]) in locating the speakers of Proto-Indo-European among the populations of this region, but not to attempt a more precise identification until further evidence is available.

Remote relationship of Indo-European to the Uralic languages is not improbable. Geographically, the earliest reconstructible locations of the two families are contiguous; lexically, there are strong resemblances in a number of basic words or word parts, including personal, demonstrative, interrogative, and relative pronouns, personal endings of verbs, the accusative case ending -m, and such words as those for water' and name'; typologically, the families are fairly similar – e.g., both have many suffixes, but few or no prefixes or infixes (elements inserted within words). The resemblances, however, are too few to permit the reconstruction of a common "Indo-Uralic" parent language; the two families, if they are related at all, must have separated thousands of years before the breakup of Proto-Indo-European.

If Indo-European is related to other language families – e.g., to Afro-Asiatic (which includes the Semitic languages) or to Kartvelian (which includes Georgian) – it must have diverged from them much earlier than it diverged from Uralic, because the number of cogent resemblances is much smaller. There is no significant evidence at present for a "Nostratic" superfamily embracing these and other groups.

Characteristic Developments of Indo-European Languages

As Proto-Indo-European was splitting into the dialects that were to become the first generation of daughter languages, different innovations spread over different territories.

Changes in Phonology

Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Albanian agree in changing the palatal stops *k, *g, and *gh into spirants (s, sh, th, etc.) or affricates – e.g., Sanskrit ashri- sharp edge,' Old Church Slavonic ostru sharp,' Armenian aseln needle,' Albanian athëtë bitter' beside Greek ákros tip,' Latin acidus biting,' all from a basic element *H₂ek- sharp, pointed.' (Spirants, also called fricatives, are sounds produced with audible friction as a result of the airstream passing through a narrow, but unstopped, passage in the mouth – e.g., English s, f, v. Affricates are sounds that begin as stops, with complete stoppage of the airstream, but are released as spirants, or fricatives – e.g., the ch in church, the j in jam). The languages that change the palatal stops to spirants or affricates are known as "satem" languages, from the Avestan word satm hundred' (Proto-Indo-European *kmtóm), which illustrates the change. The languages that preserve the palatal stops as k-like sounds are known as "centum" languages, from centum (/kentum/), the corresponding word in Latin. The satem languages are not geographically separated from one another by any recorded languages that preserve the palatals as stops; it is therefore inferred that the change to affricates (whence later spirants) occurred just once and spread over a cohesive dialect area of Proto-Indo-European. (See satem language group).

Of the languages that share this change, however, Balto-Slavic shares with Germanic (including English) an m in certain case endings where other Indo-European languages, including Indo-Iranian, Armenian, and Albanian, have bh or a sound regularly developed from bh. Examples of the m ending include English the-m and Old Church Slavonic te-mu to those ones'; the bh and related sounds (ph, v, b) are illustrated in the following: Sanskrit té-bhyas to those ones,' Armenian noro-vk' with new ones,' Albanian male-ve to mountains,' Greek ókhes-phin with chariots,' Latin omni-bus for all.' Because Balto-Slavic and Germanic are neighbours, it is inferred that m replaced bh in these case endings just once in the parent language and that the area over which this innovation spread only partly overlapped the area that adopted affricated pronunciation of the palatals.

This pattern is general for changes dating from the time the parent language was breaking up into distinct languages. Each of the resulting languages shares some innovations with some of its neighbours, but only rarely do different innovations shared by two or more branches of Indo-European cover exactly the same territory.

Once the dialects had become differentiated enough to be distinct languages – certainly by 2500 BCE in most cases – each largely went its own way, and agreements in developments since then are due either to borrowing across language boundaries (as in the notable convergences between Modern Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and the southernmost Slavic languages) or to parallel but independent workings out of the same base material.

In phonology, the most striking changes have been loss or reduction in many languages of final or unaccented syllables, and loss in several languages of certain consonants between vowels, often followed by contraction of the resulting vowel sequence. Thus words in modern Indo-European languages are often much shorter than their Proto-Indo-European ancestors – e.g., English four,' Armenian c'ork', colloquial Persian car four' from *k^wetwóres; French vit (pronounced vi) lives' from *g^wíH₃weti; Russian dvestí two hundred' from *duwóyH₁ któyH₁.

Changes in Morphology

As a result of the fact that much of the marking of Proto-Indo-European inflectional categories was done in final syllables, loss and reduction of these syllables have often had serious grammatical consequences. In the noun, loss of endings has generally led to loss or great reduction of the case and gender systems, while ways have generally been found to salvage the distinction between singular and plural. In Modern Persian, for example, where all final syllables have been lost, the old case and gender distinctions have disappeared also, but plural number is still regularly marked, either with -an (originally the genitive plural ending of some nouns) or with -ha (of obscure origin).

In the verb, where more endings originally had two syllables, loss of final syllables has had less serious consequences for morphology. Even here, however, some languages, including English, have totally or almost totally given up the marking of subject by personal endings. Compare English "I, we, you, they love" and "he, she loves" with the Spanish conjugation for love' – amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman – or the Russian version – ljubljú, ljúbish, ljúbit, ljúbim, ljúbite, ljúbjat.

Changes in noun inflection have generally involved simplification. Almost everywhere the dual number has been lost; in many languages the noun genders have been reduced from three to two (as in French, Swedish, Lithuanian, and Hindi) or lost entirely (as in English, Armenian, and Bengali). Only Slavic has complicated the gender system by imposing on the inherited distinctions contrasts of animate versus inanimate or of personal versus nonpersonal.

Everywhere except in the oldest Indo-Iranian languages the original eight Indo-European cases have suffered reduction. Proto-Germanic had only six cases, the functions of ablative (place from which) and locative (place in which) being taken over by constructions of preposition plus the dative case. In Modern English these are reduced to two cases in nouns, a general case that does duty for the vocative, nominative, dative, and accusative ("Henry, did Bill give John the letter?") and a possessive case continuing the old genitive ("Bill's letter"). In languages such as French and Welsh, nouns are no longer inflected for case at all. In some languages, to be sure, nouns have begun fusing with words placed directly after the nouns to create new case systems, coexisting with relics of the old. Thus, Old Lithuanian had in addition to seven inherited cases an illative (place into), made by adding -n(a) to the accusative (peklosna into hell'), an allative (place to, toward), made by adding -p(i) to the genitive (Jesausp to Jesus'), and an adessive (place at which), made by adding -p(i) to the locative (Joniep in John').

Changes in the verb have been more complex. Besides loss or merger of old categories, many new forms have been created and many old forms have acquired new values. In Ancient Greek the focus of the stative aspect (perfect) has largely shifted from the present state ("he is dead") to the previous event that led to this state ("he has died"). As a result, the perfect came to mean the same as the perfective past (aorist), and it has therefore disappeared from Modern Greek. New forms created in Ancient Greek include future and future perfect tenses, based on the desiderative present forms (such as "he wants to walk") of the parent language.

In Germanic the principal new creation was the weak past tense (ending in a t or d), such as English loved, thought, German liebte, dachte, made by combining the verb stem with a past tense of the Germanic verb for do.' (The strong past tense formed by vowel alternations, like "sing, sang," "run, ran" comes from the Proto-Indo-European stative aspect).

In some languages participles have come to function as finite verbs. Thus in Hindi admi larki-ko dekhta the man sees the girl,' dekhta sees' is etymologically a participle seeing,' agreeing in number and gender with the subject admi man.' In the past tense, admi-ne larki dekhi the man saw the girl,' the verb dekhi is etymologically a past passive participle seen,' agreeing in gender and number with the object larki girl,' and the subject is marked with an instrumental ending.

Vocabulary Changes

Changes in vocabulary have been even greater than those in sounds and grammar. Words in modern Indo-European languages have several sources. They may be recognizable loanwords, such as English skunk, chain, and inch (from Algonquian, French, and Latin, respectively); they may have been formed within the history or prehistory of the language itself, such as English radar and rightness; they may be of obscure origin, such as English drink, which is common Germanic but has no cognates outside Germanic, or boy, which is peculiar to English and Frisian; or they may be inherited words that have changed meaning, such as English merry from Proto-Indo-European *mrghú- short.' Only a small fraction of the vocabulary can be traced back to words that can confidently be asserted to have existed in the parent language with approximately their present meaning. The same is true, albeit in a lesser degree, even for the oldest recorded Indo-European languages. None has more than a few hundred words and roots that are clearly inherited from the parent language without essential change of meaning. Table 1 gives examples of words that have been widely retained with little change. Typically they include pronouns; nouns, verbs, and adjectives of relatively simple and ubiquitous meaning; numerals; and simple adverbs and prepositions.

Non-Indo-European Influence on the Family

Indo-European languages, like all languages, have always been subject to influence from neighbouring languages, both related and unrelated.

The influence of non-Indo-European languages on the sounds and grammar of Proto-Indo-European is not demonstrable, partly because there is no direct evidence about the languages that were in contact with Indo-European before roughly 3000 BCE. It can be surmised, however, that some words are loans – e.g., *péleku- ax,' a word for an object likely to be imported or learned of from neighbours with superior technology and which is not analyzable into a known Indo-European root plus a known Indo-European suffix.

When Indo-European languages have been carried within historic times into areas occupied by speakers of other languages, they have generally taken over a number of loanwords, as with English and Spanish in the Americas or Dutch in South Africa. Aside from the special case of pidgin and creole languages, however, there has been comparatively little effect on sounds and grammar. These have been significantly affected within historic times only when an Indo-European language has been spoken in prolonged close contact with non-Indo-European speakers, as with Ossetic (an Iranian language) in the Caucasus, or when its speakers have been very strongly influenced culturally by speakers of a non-Indo-European language, as with Persian, in which Arabic plays much the same role as Latin does in English.

In prehistoric times most branches of Indo-European were carried into territories presumably or certainly occupied by speakers of non-Indo-European languages, and it is reasonable to suppose that these languages had some effect on the speech of the newcomers. For the lexicon, this is indeed demonstrable in Hittite and Greek, at least. It is much less clear, however, that these non-Indo-European languages affected significantly the sounds and grammar of the Indo-European languages that replaced them. Perhaps the best case is India, where certain grammatical features shared by Indo-European and Dravidian languages appear to have spread from Dravidian to Indo-European rather than vice versa. For most other branches of Indo-European languages any attempt to claim prehistoric influence of non-Indo-European languages on sounds and grammar is rendered almost impossible because of ignorance of the non-Indo-European languages with which they might have been in contact.

Bibliography

Karl Brugmann, Elements of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages, 5 vol. (also published as A Comparative Grammar of the Indo-Germanic Languages, 1888-95; originally published in German, 1886-1900), is the latest completed full treatment of the whole family. A. Meillet, Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes, 8th ed. corrected (1937, reissued 1978), is dated but still an excellent introduction to the subject. Jerzy Kurylowicz, Indogermanische Grammatik, ed. by Manfred Mayrhofer, especially vol. 1, part 1, Einleitung, by Warren Cowgill (1986), and part 2, Lautlehre (segmentale Phonologie des Indogermanischen), by Manfred Mayrhofer (1986), contains the most up-to-date account of the Indo-European sound system. Andrew L. Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1995), focuses on the classical languages but provides the fullest introduction to Indo-European linguistics in English. Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2 vol. (1951-69), offers the most recent etymological dictionary of the whole family. Carl Darling Buck, A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages (1949, reissued 1988), assembles a mine of information about Indo-European words for several hundred basic concepts. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, rev. and ed. by Calvert Watkins (1985), focuses on the Indo-European component of English. Holger Pedersen, Linguistic Science in the Nineteenth Century (1931, reissued as The Discovery of Language, 1962; originally published in Danish, 1924), comprises a very good account of 19th-century work in the field. J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989), provides a full and balanced account of the Indo-European homeland problem. The wide-ranging work by Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon (1995), studies aspects of Indo-European comparative poetics, religion, and mythology.

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