Proto-Indo-European Phonology, Morphology, and External History

Vocabulary flashcards covering Proto-Indo-European phonology, morphological categories, case system, verbal aspect, sound shifts, language family branches, and external history.

Panini

An ancient Indian grammarian who established the fixed literary form of Classical Sanskrit in the 4th century B.C.

Early PIE Vowels

The reconstructed vowel system of early Proto-Indo-European consisting primarily of a single vowel phoneme /e/.

Late PIE Vowels

The vowel system present in late Proto-Indo-European and most dialects, featuring short vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ and long vowels /i:/, /e:/, /a:/, /o:/, /u:/.

PIE Ablaut

A morphological system of vowel alteration in Proto-Indo-European where early PIE */e/ changed into */e/, */e:/, */o/, */o:/, or disappeared across different grades.

PIE Case System

The set of eight nominal inflectional cases in Proto-Indo-European: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Locative, Ablative, and Vocative.

Ethnologue 27 Language Family Counts

A language family ranking where Niger-Congo leads with 1,552 languages, followed by Austronesian (1,256), Trans-New Guinea (481), Sino-Tibetan (458), and Indo-European (454).

PIE Plosives

Stop consonants in PIE classified by voicing and aspiration into voiced stops (b, d, g, gw), voiceless stops (p, t, k, kw), and voiced aspirated stops (bh, dh, gh, gwh).

Fall of Laryngeals

The historical loss of early PIE laryngeal phonemes (*/h1, h2, h3/), which disappeared while altering the quality or length of adjacent vowels.

Grimm's Law

A Proto-Germanic sound shift in which PIE voiced stops changed into voiceless stops, such as PIE */d/ shifting to Proto-Germanic */t/.

Verner's Law

A Proto-Germanic sound change where voiceless consonants became voiced following an unstressed vowel, such as PIE */s/ shifting to Proto-Germanic */z/.

Palatal Umlaut

An Old English sound change where a back vowel shifted to a front vowel before an /i/, such as Proto-Germanic */o:/ changing to Old English /e:/.

Great Vowel Shift

A major sound change in Early Modern English where long vowels raised, shifting /e:/ to /i/.

Nominative Case

The PIE nominal case used to indicate the subject and subject complement.

Genitive Case

The PIE nominal case used as a nominal modifier.

Dative Case

The PIE nominal case used to express the indirect object.

Accusative Case

The PIE nominal case used to express the direct object.

Instrumental Case

The PIE nominal case used to denote the instrument or accompaniment.

Locative Case

The PIE nominal case indicating location or time (at or within).

Ablative Case

The PIE nominal case indicating motion from or separative relationship.

Vocative Case

The PIE nominal case used for direct address.

Imperfective Aspect

A PIE verbal aspect where the internal structure of the event is important, such as PIE */'wes-tor/ ('(s)he is wearing').

Perfective Aspect

A PIE verbal aspect where the internal structure of the event is not treated as important, such as PIE */h1lu'dh-ed/ ('(s)he arrived').

Stative Aspect

A PIE verbal aspect that denotes a state of affairs rather than an event, such as PIE */'wojde/ ('(s)he knows').

Rig-veda

The oldest literary texts of the Indian group, composed in Vedic Sanskrit around 1500 B.C.

Avestan

An Eastern Iranian language containing the sacred Zoroastrian texts (the Avesta) dating possibly to 1000 B.C.

Old Persian

A Western Iranian language preserved in cuneiform inscriptions of King Darius and King Xerxes.

Language Isolates in IE

Branches of the Indo-European family represented by a single language lineage without close subgroup relatives: Armenian, Greek, and Albanian.

Linear B

Clay tablets from 1450–1200 B.C. containing the earliest known written texts in Greek.

Koiné Greek

The common Greek variety based on the Attic dialect that spread through Alexander the Great's conquests and was used in the New Testament.

Romance Languages

The modern descendants of Latin that evolved from Vulgar Latin, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Catalan, Galician, Provençal, Rhaeto-Romanic, and Walloon.

Old Church Slavonic

The oldest recorded Slavic language text tradition (also known as Old Bulgarian), dating to the 9th century A.D.

Hittite Group

An Anatolian IE group discovered in 1907 at Boghazköi with nearly 10,000 clay tablets, which confirmed Saussure's laryngeals hypothesis.

Tocharian Group

An extinct IE branch comprising Tocharian A and Tocharian B, attested in texts from around the 6th century A.D. and extinct by the 9th century A.D.

Pontic-Caspian Steppe

The most widely accepted location for the Proto-Indo-European homeland, located in modern Ukraine and southern Russia, dating to roughly 4500–2500 BCE.