Pontic Steppe
82-668: Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy . The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages . Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian and South Picene . Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including the Samnites , the Aurunci ( Ausones ), and the Sidicini . The latter two tribes were often grouped under the name " Osci ". The Oscan group
164-690: A language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe , the Iranian plateau , and the northern Indian subcontinent . Some European languages of this family— English , French , Portuguese , Russian , Dutch , and Spanish —have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, of which there are eight groups with languages still alive today: Albanian , Armenian , Balto-Slavic , Celtic , Germanic , Hellenic , Indo-Iranian , and Italic ; another nine subdivisions are now extinct . Today,
246-535: A French Jesuit who spent most of his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. According to current academic consensus, Jones's famous work of 1786 was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian , Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi . In 1818, Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated
328-659: A PIE homeland, the Kurgan and Anatolian hypotheses are the ones most widely accepted, and also the ones most debated against each other. Following the publication of several studies on ancient DNA in 2015, Colin Renfrew, the original author and proponent of the Anatolian hypothesis, has accepted the reality of migrations of populations speaking one or several Indo-European languages from the Pontic steppe towards Northwestern Europe. The table lists
410-663: A common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European . Membership in the various branches, groups, and subgroups of Indo-European is also genealogical, but here the defining factors are shared innovations among various languages, suggesting a common ancestor that split off from other Indo-European groups. For example, what makes the Germanic languages a branch of Indo-European is that much of their structure and phonology can be stated in rules that apply to all of them. Many of their common features are presumed innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic ,
492-495: A confirmation of de Saussure's theory. The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include ten major branches, listed below in alphabetical order: In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages and language-groups have existed or are proposed to have existed: Membership of languages in the Indo-European language family is determined by genealogical relationships, meaning that all members are presumed descendants of
574-544: A conventional mark of reconstructed words, such as * wódr̥ , * ḱwn̥tós , or * tréyes ; these forms are the reconstructed ancestors of the modern English words water , hound , and three , respectively. No direct evidence of PIE exists; scholars have reconstructed PIE from its present-day descendants using the comparative method . For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English: piede and foot , padre and father , pesce and fish . Since there
656-453: A detailed, though conservative, overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated by 1959. Jerzy Kuryłowicz's 1956 Apophonie gave a better understanding of Indo-European ablaut . From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian became robust enough to establish its relationship to PIE. Scholars have proposed multiple hypotheses about when, where, and by whom PIE was spoken. The Kurgan hypothesis , first put forward in 1956 by Marija Gimbutas , has become
738-794: A diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian. Gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, Mikhail Lomonosov compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic (" Kurlandic "), Iranian (" Medic "), Finnish , Chinese , "Hottentot" ( Khoekhoe ), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German, and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors. The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on
820-499: A few features that distinguish it from its Latin counterpart. These nouns in Oscan are declined as follows: Like in Latin, the third declension in Oscan is a merger of the i -stem nouns with the consonant-stem nouns. These nouns in Oscan are declined as follows. Neuters are not attested. Verbs in Oscan are inflected for the following categories: Present, future and future perfect forms in
902-404: A final -m , o becomes more like u . Long ō becomes denoted by u or uu . Short u generally remains unchanged; after t , d , n , the sound becomes that of iu . Long ū generally remains unchanged; it changed to an ī sound in monosyllables, and may have changed to an ī sound for final syllables. Oscan had the following diphthongs: The sounds of diphthongs remain unchanged from
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#1732844236256984-606: A language. From the 1870s, the Neogrammarians proposed that sound laws have no exceptions, as illustrated by Verner's law , published in 1876, which resolved apparent exceptions to Grimm's law by exploring the role of accent (stress) in language change. August Schleicher 's A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages (1874–77) represented an early attempt to reconstruct
1066-458: A linguistic area). In a similar vein, there are many similar innovations in Germanic and Balto-Slavic that are far more likely areal features than traceable to a common proto-language, such as the uniform development of a high vowel (* u in the case of Germanic, * i/u in the case of Baltic and Slavic) before the PIE syllabic resonants * ṛ, *ḷ, *ṃ, *ṇ , unique to these two groups among IE languages, which
1148-508: A sound shift in Oscan to become ~[uː]. Í was used to denote a higher-mid [ẹ] . [REDACTED] The Z of the native alphabet is pronounced [ts] . Doubling of vowels was used to denote length but a long I is written IÍ . Oscan written with the Greek alphabet was identical to the standard alphabet with the addition of two letters: one for the native alphabet's H and one for its V . The letters η and ω do not indicate quantity. Sometimes,
1230-456: A surviving local toponym. In phonology too, Oscan exhibited a number of clear differences from Latin: thus, Oscan 'p' in place of Latin 'qu' (Osc. pis , Lat. quis ) (compare the similar P-Celtic/Q-Celtic cleavage in the Celtic languages ); 'b' in place of Latin 'v'; medial 'f' in contrast to Latin 'b' or 'd' (Osc. mefiai , Lat. mediae ). Oscan is considered to be the most conservative of all
1312-597: A thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis , the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations ,
1394-422: Is a consistent correspondence of the initial consonants ( p and f ) that emerges far too frequently to be coincidental, one can infer that these languages stem from a common parent language . Detailed analysis suggests a system of sound laws to describe the phonetic and phonological changes from the hypothetical ancestral words to the modern ones. These laws have become so detailed and reliable as to support
1476-567: Is believed to have had an elaborate system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes (analogous to English child, child's, children, children's ) as well as ablaut (vowel alterations, as preserved in English sing, sang, sung, song ) and accent . PIE nominals and pronouns had a complex system of declension , and verbs similarly had a complex system of conjugation . The PIE phonology , particles , numerals , and copula are also well-reconstructed. Asterisks are used by linguists as
1558-510: Is cited to have been radically non-treelike. Specialists have postulated the existence of higher-order subgroups such as Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Aryan or Graeco-Armeno-Aryan, and Balto-Slavo-Germanic. However, unlike the ten traditional branches, these are all controversial to a greater or lesser degree. The Italo-Celtic subgroup was at one point uncontroversial, considered by Antoine Meillet to be even better established than Balto-Slavic. The main lines of evidence included
1640-402: Is eo die (8) comitia non habuerit. In English: (3) … he shall take oath with the assent of the majority of the senate, provided that not less than (4) 40 are present, when the matter is under advisement. If anyone by right of intercession shall prevent the assembly, before preventing it, (5) he shall swear wittingly in the assembly without guile, that he prevents this assembly rather for
1722-531: Is in agreement with the wave model. The Balkan sprachbund even features areal convergence among members of very different branches. An extension to the Ringe - Warnow model of language evolution suggests that early IE had featured limited contact between distinct lineages, with only the Germanic subfamily exhibiting a less treelike behaviour as it acquired some characteristics from neighbours early in its evolution. The internal diversification of especially West Germanic
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#17328442362561804-703: Is part of the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic family, and includes the Oscan language and three variants ( Hernican , Marrucinian and Paelignian ) known only from inscriptions left by the Hernici , Marrucini and Paeligni , minor tribes of eastern central Italy. Adapted from the Etruscan alphabet, the Central Oscan alphabet was used to write Oscan in Campania and surrounding territories from the 5th century BCE until at least
1886-514: Is possible that both languages existed simultaneously under different conditions, in which Latin was given political, religious, and administrative importance while Oscan was considered a "low" language. This phenomenon is referred to as diglossia with bilingualism. Some Oscan graffiti exists from the 1st century CE, but it is rare to find evidence from Italy of Latin-speaking Roman citizens representing themselves as having non–Latin-speaking ancestors. Oscan speakers came into close contact with
1968-424: Is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family . No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language , and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during
2050-463: Is written ú or, rarely, u . Short e "generally remains unchanged;" before a labial in a medial syllable, it becomes u or i , and before another vowel, e raises to higher-mid [ẹ], written í . Long ē similarly raises to higher-mid [ẹ], the sound of written í or íí . Short i becomes written í . Long ī is spelt with i but when written with doubling as a mark of length with ií . Short o remains mostly unchanged, written ú ; before
2132-549: The Indian subcontinent became aware of similarities between Indo-Iranian languages and European languages, and as early as 1653, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for the following language families: Germanic , Romance , Greek , Baltic , Slavic , Celtic , and Iranian . In a memoir sent to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1767, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux ,
2214-598: The Latium population. Early Latin texts have been discovered nearby major Oscan settlements. For example, the Garigliano Bowl was found close to Minturnae , less than 40 kilometers from Capua , which was once a large Oscan settlement. Oscan had much in common with Latin , though there are also many striking differences, and many common word-groups in Latin were absent or represented by entirely different forms. For example, Latin volo , velle , volui , and other such forms from
2296-528: The Neogrammarian hypothesis : the Indo-European sound laws apply without exception. William Jones , an Anglo-Welsh philologist and puisne judge in Bengal , caused an academic sensation when in 1786 he postulated the common ancestry of Sanskrit , Greek , Latin , Gothic , the Celtic languages , and Old Persian , but he was not the first to state such a hypothesis. In the 16th century, European visitors to
2378-471: The Proto-Indo-European root *welh₁- ('to will') were represented by words derived from *ǵʰer- ('to desire'): Oscan herest ('(s)he shall want, (s)he shall desire', German cognate 'begehren', Dutch 'begeren', English cognate 'yearn') as opposed to Latin volent (id.). Latin locus (place) was absent and represented by the hapax slaagid (place), which Italian linguist Alberto Manco has linked to
2460-532: The n is lost) and possibly before nf and nx as well. Anaptyxis , the development of a vowel between a liquid or nasal and another consonant, preceding or following, occurs frequently in Oscan; if the other (non-liquid/nasal) consonant precedes, the new vowel is the same as the preceding vowel. If the other consonant follows, the new vowel is the same as the following vowel. Short a remains in most positions Long ā remains in an initial or medial position. Final ā starts to sound similar to [ɔː] so that it
2542-432: The " wave model " is a more accurate representation. Most approaches to Indo-European subgrouping to date have assumed that the tree model is by-and-large valid for Indo-European; however, there is also a long tradition of wave-model approaches. In addition to genealogical changes, many of the early changes in Indo-European languages can be attributed to language contact . It has been asserted, for example, that many of
Oscan language - Misplaced Pages Continue
2624-407: The 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan , Iranian , and European languages. In 1583, English Jesuit missionary and Konkani scholar Thomas Stephens wrote a letter from Goa to his brother (not published until the 20th century) in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin . Another account
2706-411: The 1880s. Brugmann's neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussure 's development of the laryngeal theory may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as Calvert Watkins , Jochem Schindler , and Helmut Rix ) developed a better understanding of morphology and of ablaut in
2788-471: The 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages , and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method ) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age , though estimates vary by more than
2870-665: The 1st century of the common era . In total, as of 2017, there were 800 found Oscan texts, with a rapid expansion in recent decades. Oscan was written in various scripts depending on time period and location, including the "native" Oscan script, the South Oscan script which was based on Greek, and the ultimately prevailing Roman Oscan script. In coastal zones of Southern Italy, Oscan is thought to have survived three centuries of bilingualism with Greek between 400 and 100 BCE, making it "an unusual case of stable societal bilingualism" wherein neither language became dominant or caused
2952-654: The 1st century CE. Oscan is known from inscriptions dating as far back as the 5th century BCE. The most important Oscan inscriptions are the Tabula Bantina , the Oscan Tablet or Tabula Osca, and the Cippus Abellanus . In Apulia , there is evidence that ancient currency was inscribed in Oscan (dating to before 300 BCE) at Teanum Apulum . Oscan graffiti on the walls of Pompeii indicate its persistence in at least one urban environment well into
3034-476: The Anatolian and Tocharian language families, in that order. The " tree model " is considered an appropriate representation of the genealogical history of a language family if communities do not remain in contact after their languages have started to diverge. In this case, subgroups defined by shared innovations form a nested pattern. The tree model is not appropriate in cases where languages remain in contact as they diversify; in such cases subgroups may overlap, and
3116-400: The Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non- satem languages in general—including Anatolian—might be due to their peripheral location in
3198-558: The Bronze Age in the form of Mycenaean Greek and the Anatolian languages of Hittite and Luwian . The oldest records are isolated Hittite words and names—interspersed in texts that are otherwise in the unrelated Akkadian language , a Semitic language —found in texts of the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in eastern Anatolia dating to the 20th century BC. Although no older written records of
3280-786: The Indo-European language-area and to early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship. Hans J. Holm, based on lexical calculations, arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. Proto-Indo-European language Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )
3362-581: The Indo-Iranian branch. All Indo-European languages are descended from a single prehistoric language, linguistically reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European , spoken sometime during the Neolithic or early Bronze Age . The geographical location where it was spoken, the Proto-Indo-European homeland , has been the object of many competing hypotheses; the academic consensus supports the Kurgan hypothesis , which posits
Oscan language - Misplaced Pages Continue
3444-606: The Latin word originally meant ‘piece (of meat).’ Oscan tangin- "judgement, assent" is ultimately related to English 'think'. Indo-European language Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Indo-European languages are
3526-558: The North Adriatic region are sometimes classified as Italic. Albanian and Greek are the only surviving Indo-European descendants of a Paleo-Balkan language area, named for their occurrence in or in the vicinity of the Balkan peninsula . Most of the other languages of this area—including Illyrian , Thracian , and Dacian —do not appear to be members of any other subfamilies of PIE, but are so poorly attested that proper classification of them
3608-571: The Pontic–Caspian steppe and into eastern Europe. Other theories include the Anatolian hypothesis , which posits that PIE spread out from Anatolia with agriculture beginning c. 7500–6000 BCE, the Armenian hypothesis , the Paleolithic continuity paradigm , and the indigenous Aryans theory. The last two of these theories are not regarded as credible within academia. Out of all the theories for
3690-517: The Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Kartvelian languages due to early language contact , as well as some morphological similarities—notably the Indo-European ablaut , which is remarkably similar to the root ablaut system reconstructible for Proto-Kartvelian. The Lusitanian language was a marginally attested language spoken in areas near the border between present-day Portugal and Spain . The Venetic and Liburnian languages known from
3772-511: The Proto-Indo-European origins. The consonant inventory of Oscan is as follows: In Oscan, s between vowels did not undergo rhotacism as it did in Latin and Umbrian; but it was voiced, becoming the sound /z/ . However, between vowels, the original cluster rs developed either to a simple r with lengthening on the preceding vowel, or to a long rr (as in Latin), and at the end of a word, original rs becomes r just as in Latin. Unlike in Latin,
3854-782: The active voice use the following set of personal endings: Imperfect, perfect indicative and all tenses of the subjunctive in the active voice use a different set of endings: Passive endings are attested only for the 3rd person: singular -ter , plural -nter . Perfect stems are derived from the present stem in different ways. Latin -vī- and -s- perfects are not attested in Oscan. Instead, Oscan uses its own set of forms, including reduplicated perfects such as deded 'gave', -tt- suffix as in prúfa-tt-ed 'approved', -k- suffix as in kella-k-ed 'collected, and -f- suffix as in aíkda-f-ed 'rebuilt'. Some verbs also use suppletive forms. Other tenses are formed by suffixation: The following non-finite forms are attested (all of them are based on
3936-455: The archaic Etruscan alphabet during the 7th century BCE, but a recognizably Oscan variant of the alphabet is attested only from the 5th century BCE. At the beginning of the 3rd century BCE its sign inventory was extended over the classical Etruscan alphabet by the introduction of lowered variants of I and U, transcribed as Í and Ú. Ú came to be used to represent Oscan /o/, while U was used for /u/ as well as historical long */oː/, which had undergone
4018-425: The clusters ηι and ωϝ denote the diphthongs /ei/ and /ou/ respectively while ει and oυ are saved to denote monophthongs /iː/ and /uː/ of the native alphabet. At other times, ει and oυ are used to denote diphthongs, in which case o denotes the /uː/ sound. When written in the Latin alphabet, the Oscan Z does not represent [ts] but instead [z] , which is not written differently from [s] in
4100-422: The colloquial usage of the language is the presence of Oscan graffiti on walls of Pompeii that were reconstructed after the earthquake of 62 CE , which must therefore have been written between 62 and 79 CE. Other scholars argue that this is not strong evidence for the survival of Oscan as an official language in the area, given the disappearance of public inscriptions in Oscan after Roman colonization. It
4182-537: The common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833, he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend , Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, and German . In 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what became known as Grimm's law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik . Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages and demonstrated that sound change systematically transforms all words of
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#17328442362564264-524: The death of the other; however, over the course of the Roman period , both Oscan and Greek were progressively effaced from Southern Italy, excepting the controversial possibility of Griko representing a continuation of ancient dialects of Greek. Oscan's usage declined following the Social War . Graffiti in towns across the Oscan speech area indicate it remained in colloquial usage. One piece of evidence that supports
4346-577: The effects of hypothetical sounds which no longer exist in all languages documented prior to the excavation of cuneiform tablets in Anatolian. This theory was first proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879 on the basis of internal reconstruction only, and progressively won general acceptance after Jerzy Kuryłowicz 's discovery of consonantal reflexes of these reconstructed sounds in Hittite. Julius Pokorny 's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ('Indo-European Etymological Dictionary', 1959) gave
4428-650: The existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name: The Sanscrit [ sic ] language, whatever be 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 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. Thomas Young first used
4510-485: The family relationships between the Indo-European languages, and the reconstruction of their common source, was central to the development of the methodology of historical linguistics as an academic discipline in the 19th century. The Indo-European language family is not considered by the current academic consensus in the field of linguistics to have any genetic relationships with other language families, although several disputed hypotheses propose such relations. During
4592-483: The gender or the verb system) have been interpreted alternately as archaic debris or as innovations due to prolonged isolation. Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia and the preservation of laryngeals. However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence. According to another view,
4674-416: The genitive suffix -ī ; the superlative suffix -m̥mo ; the change of /p/ to /kʷ/ before another /kʷ/ in the same word (as in penkʷe > *kʷenkʷe > Latin quīnque , Old Irish cóic ); and the subjunctive morpheme -ā- . This evidence was prominently challenged by Calvert Watkins , while Michael Weiss has argued for the subgroup. Evidence for a relationship between Greek and Armenian includes
4756-510: The homeland to be the Pontic–Caspian steppe in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia , associated with the Yamnaya culture and other related archaeological cultures during the 4th millennium BC to early 3rd millennium BC. By the time the first written records appeared, Indo-European had already evolved into numerous languages spoken across much of Europe , South Asia , and part of Western Asia . Written evidence of Indo-European appeared during
4838-567: The individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani , Bengali , Punjabi , French and German each with over 100 million native speakers; many others are small and in danger of extinction. In total, 46% of the world's population (3.2 billion people) speaks an Indo-European language as a first language —by far the highest of any language family. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue , with over two-thirds (313) of them belonging to
4920-528: The known Italic languages , and among attested Indo-European languages it is rivaled only by Greek in the retention of the inherited vowel system with the diphthongs intact. Oscan was originally written in a specific "Oscan alphabet", one of the Old Italic scripts derived from (or cognate with) the Etruscan alphabet . Later inscriptions are written in the Greek and Latin alphabets . The Osci probably adopted
5002-410: The land within the boundaries where the temple of Hercules stands in the middle, may the senate allow him to build outside of the walls that encircle the sanctuary of Hercules, across the road leads there. And a building that a man from Nola builds, shall be of use by the people of Nola. And a building that a man from Abella builds, shall be of use by the people of Abella. But beyond the wall that encircle
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#17328442362565084-654: The main Indo-European language families, comprising the languages descended from Proto-Indo-European. Slavic: Russian , Ukrainian , Belarusian , Polish , Czech , Slovak , Sorbian , Serbo-Croatian , Bulgarian , Slovenian , Macedonian , Kashubian , Rusyn Iranic: Persian , Pashto , Balochi , Kurdish , Zaza , Ossetian , Luri , Talyshi , Tati , Gilaki , Mazandarani , Semnani , Yaghnobi ; Nuristani Commonly proposed subgroups of Indo-European languages include Italo-Celtic , Graeco-Aryan , Graeco-Armenian , Graeco-Phrygian , Daco-Thracian , and Thraco-Illyrian . There are numerous lexical similarities between
5166-460: The more striking features shared by Italic languages (Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, etc.) might well be areal features . More certainly, very similar-looking alterations in the systems of long vowels in the West Germanic languages greatly postdate any possible notion of a proto-language innovation (and cannot readily be regarded as "areal", either, because English and continental West Germanic were not
5248-475: The most popular. It proposes that the original speakers of PIE were the Yamnaya culture associated with the kurgans (burial mounds) on the Pontic–Caspian steppe north of the Black Sea. According to the theory, they were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated the horse , which allowed them to migrate across Europe and Asia in wagons and chariots. By the early 3rd millennium BCE, they had expanded throughout
5330-408: The native alphabet. When Oscan inscriptions are quoted, it is conventional to transliterate those in the "Oscan" alphabet into Latin boldface , those in the "Latin" alphabet into Latin italics , and those in the "Greek" alphabet into the modern Greek alphabet. Letters of all three alphabets are represented in lower case. Vowels are regularly lengthened before ns and nct (in the latter of which
5412-477: The original Proto-Indo-European population remain, some aspects of their culture and their religion can be reconstructed from later evidence in the daughter cultures. The Indo-European family is significant to the field of historical linguistics as it possesses the second-longest recorded history of any known family, after the Afroasiatic Egyptian language and Semitic languages . The analysis of
5494-557: The perfect active particle -s fixed to the stem, link this group closer to Anatolian languages and Tocharian. Shared features with Balto-Slavic languages, on the other hand (especially present and preterit formations), might be due to later contacts. The Indo-Hittite hypothesis proposes that the Indo-European language family consists of two main branches: one represented by the Anatolian languages and another branch encompassing all other Indo-European languages. Features that separate Anatolian from all other branches of Indo-European (such as
5576-1474: The present stem): Ekkum svaí píd herieset trííbarak avúm tereí púd liímítúm pernúm púís herekleís fíísnú mefiú íst, ehtrad feíhúss pús herekleís fíísnam amfret, pert víam pússt íst paí íp íst, pústin slagím senateís suveís tanginúd tríbarakavúm líkítud. íním íúk tríbarakkiuf pam núvlanús tríbarakattuset íúk tríbarakkiuf íním úíttiuf abellanúm estud. avt púst feíhúís pús físnam amfret, eíseí tereí nep abellanús nep núvlanús pídum tríbarakattíns. avt thesavrúm púd eseí tereí íst, pún patensíns, múíníkad tanginúd patensíns, íním píd eíseí thesavreí púkkapíd eestit aíttíúm alttram alttrús herríns. avt anter slagím abellanam íním núvlanam súllad víú uruvú íst. pedú íst eísaí víaí mefiaí teremenniú staíet. In Latin : Item si quid volent aedificare in territorio quod limitibus tenus quibus Herculis fanum medium est, extra muros, qui Herculis fanum ambiunt, [per] viam positum est, quae ibi est, pro finibus senatus sui sententia, aedificare liceto. Et id aedificium quam Nolani aedificaverint, id aedificium et usus Abellanorum esto. At post muros qui fanum ambiunt, in eo territorio nec Avellani nec Nolani quidquam aedificaverint. At thesaurum qui in eo territorio est, cum paterent, communi sententia paterent, et quidquid in eo thesauro quandoque extat, portionum alteram alteri caperent. At inter fines Abellanos et Nolanos ubique via curva est, [pedes] est in ea via media termina stant. In English: And if anyone shall want to build on
5658-426: The proto-Indo-European language. By the early 1900s, Indo-Europeanists had developed well-defined descriptions of PIE which scholars still accept today. Later, the discovery of the Anatolian and Tocharian languages added to the corpus of descendant languages. A subtle new principle won wide acceptance: the laryngeal theory , which explained irregularities in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European phonology as
5740-428: The regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws ), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages. PIE
5822-461: The regular change of the second laryngeal to a at the beginnings of words, as well as terms for "woman" and "sheep". Greek and Indo-Iranian share innovations mainly in verbal morphology and patterns of nominal derivation. Relations have also been proposed between Phrygian and Greek, and between Thracian and Armenian. Some fundamental shared features, like the aorist (a verb form denoting action without reference to duration or completion) having
5904-437: The s is not dropped, either Oscan or Umbrian, from the consonant clusters sm , sn , sl : Umbrian `sesna "dinner," Oscan kersnu vs Latin cēna . Oscan nouns can have one of the seven cases: nominative , vocative , accusative , genitive , dative , ablative and locative (the latter is not present in Latin). Oscan nouns, like in Latin, are divided into multiple declension patterns. The second declension in Oscan has
5986-430: The sake of the public welfare, (6) rather than out of favor or malice toward anyone; and that too in accordance with the judgment of the majority of the senate. The presiding magistrate whose assembly is prevented in this way shall not hold the assembly on this day. Notes: Oscan carn- “part, piece” is related to Latin carn- “meat” (seen in English ‘carnivore’), from an Indo-European root *ker- meaning ‘cut’―apparently
6068-1427: The sanctuary, in that territory neither the Abellans nor the Nolans may build anything. But the treasury that is in that territory, when it is opened it shall be opened following a shared decision, and whatever is in that treasury, they shall share equally amongst them. But the road that as between the borders of Abella and Nola is a communal road. The boundaries stand in the middle of this road. out of six paragraphs in total, lines 3-8 (the first couple lines are too damaged to be clearly legible): (3) … deiuast maimas carneis senateis tanginud am … (4) XL osiins, pon ioc egmo comparascuster. Suae pis pertemust, pruter pan … (5) deiuatud sipus comenei, perum dolum malum, siom ioc comono mais egmas touti- (6)cas amnud pan pieisum brateis auti cadeis amnud; inim idic siom dat senates (7) tanginud maimas carneis pertumum. Piei ex comono pertemest, izic eizeic zicelei (8) comono ni hipid. In Latin: (3) … iurabit maximae partis senatus sententia [dummodo non minus] (4) XL adsint, cum ea res consulta erit. Si quis peremerit, prius quam peremerit, (5) iurato sciens in committio sine dolo malo, se ea comitia magis rei publicae causa, (6) quam cuiuspiam gratiae aut inimicitiae causa; idque se de senatus (7) sententia maximae partis perimere. Cui sic comitia perimet (quisquam),
6150-708: The set of correspondences in his prize essay Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse ('Investigation of the Origin of the Old Norse or Icelandic Language'), where he argued that Old Norse was related to the Germanic languages, and had even suggested a relation to the Baltic, Slavic, Greek, Latin and Romance languages. In 1816, Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit , in which he investigated
6232-537: The similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian. He included in his hypothesis Dutch , Albanian , Greek , Latin , Persian , and German , later adding Slavic , Celtic , and Baltic languages . However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of
6314-434: The source of all the Germanic languages. In the 21st century, several attempts have been made to model the phylogeny of Indo-European languages using Bayesian methodologies similar to those applied to problems in biological phylogeny. Although there are differences in absolute timing between the various analyses, there is much commonality between them, including the result that the first known language groups to diverge were
6396-549: The standard scientific term. A number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopp wrote in 1816 On the conjugational system of the Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote Comparative Grammar . This marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleicher 's 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmann 's Grundriss , published in
6478-475: The striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin , Greek , and Sanskrit , to which he tentatively added Gothic , Celtic , and Persian , though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions. In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786, conjecturing
6560-528: The term Indo-European in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from Western Europe to North India . A synonym is Indo-Germanic ( Idg. or IdG. ), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in French ( indo-germanique ) in 1810 in the work of Conrad Malte-Brun ; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than Indo-European , although in German indogermanisch remains
6642-501: The wake of Kuryłowicz 's 1956 Apophony in Indo-European, who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the Hittite consonant ḫ. Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence of coefficients sonantiques , elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European languages. This led to the so-called laryngeal theory , a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and
6724-597: Was made by Filippo Sassetti , a merchant born in Florence in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian (these included devaḥ / dio "God", sarpaḥ / serpe "serpent", sapta / sette "seven", aṣṭa / otto "eight", and nava / nove "nine"). However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry. In 1647, Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn noted
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