Lauralee York
Block Three
August 6, 1999

Who is the Indo-European language family and where do they come from? The Indo-European family is known collectively for its system of languages which unites Europe and Asia. It has by far the most extensive linguistic and literary background of any language family. An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Language and Languages by David Crystal estimates that there are over 2000 million speakers of the Indo-European languages (185-6).

According to current statistics there are ten superstratum languages in the Indo-European family. These include: Albanian, Anatolian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, Italic, and Tocharian. Scholars have used a comparison of the daughter languages to reconstruct the sound-system and grammar of the ancestral language (186).

Comparing the phonetics, grammar, meaning, and lexicon of the Indo-European daughter languages shows the similarities between the languages. Reconstruction of the root words is rewarding as images of Indo-European life from the past can be unveiled and documented by researching the root words and their meanings.

The Indo-European language family colonized Europe and Southern Asia around the fourth century BC. The people were thought to be semi-nomadic, at first living in the steppe region to the north of the Black Sea. They moved west to Europe and east to Iran and India at the beginning of the Bronze Age, according to An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Language and Languages. Daughter languages were established by 1000 BC, and Greek, Anatolian, and Indo-Iranian languages were identifiable (185).

The first hint of the existence of a family of languages occurred in 1585 AD, according to the book Linguistics at Work A Reader of Applications. Filippo Sassetti, an Italian merchant, discovered that Hindu scholars were able to speak and write an ancient language that was at least as complex as Latin or Greek. Sassetti wrote a letter home to Italy about this language he called Sanscruta (Sanskrit). Later, linguists considered the possibility this was the ancestor of European languages. However, they finally settled on the idea that Sanskrit was a sister language of the European tongues (323).

Sir William Jones, a jurist and orientalist in the employ of the East Indian Company, wrote the first scientific statement called the "Indo-European hypothesis" in 1786. His paper pointed out that Sanskrit, in relation to Greek and Latin "bears 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; there is similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit" (Thieme 324).

The languages have obvious differences in sounds, forms, and meanings. However, this paper will emphasize the similarities between the languages in the Indo-European family. We will begin with the sound correspondences and root words.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language points out that there is a regular sound correspondence of the roots among the Indo-European languages. Another similarity involves the particulars of morphology as well as forms of language in their grammatical function. The vowels of Indo-European were e, o, and a. These as well as i and u, were found in both long and short vowels. "A characteristic feature of Indo-European was the system of vocalized alterations termed apophony or abluat. This was a set of internal vowel changes expressing difference morphological functions" (2083).

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Proto-Indo-European language was a highly inflected language. The grammatical relationships and syntactic function of words in sentences were primarily marked by variations in the endings of words. "Practically none of the rich inflections originally in the languages remain, except in Germanic languages and other languages such as Latin and Greek," according to the dictionary 2083). Roots have undergone certain modification. Word extensions or enlargements do not effect the basic meaning and simply reflect formal variations between languages.

Indo-European languages used a large number of suffixes in the formation of words and there were few prefixes. The use of prefixes, sometimes derived from Latin or from Germanic languages, can be shown to be a development of the individual languages after the breakup of the common language (2083).

Composition, or the combining of two separate words or notions in to a single word, helped build simple sentences in the Indo-European language. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, "It is in the area of composition that English has most faithfully preserved the ancient Indo-European patterns of word formation by continuously forming them anew, re-creating them" (2084). Some examples of descriptive compound words in Modern English include "catfish, housewife, woodcutter, pickpocket, or blue-eyed," where the first word modifies the second. Linguists have found that similar types of descriptive compound words can be "found in the other Germanic languages and in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, and Slavic" (2084).

It is more difficult to attempt to reconstruct meaning than to reconstruct linguistic form. According to the dictionary , the meanings of roots that were once common speech among a language community, can undergo semantic changes with the passage of time. After several years, different words derived from roots words may have undergone enough change that the original meaning was lost (2084).

The lexicon of a language or its dictionary remains the one best way to approach the understanding of a culture and of its speakers. The lexicon of Indo-European family gives a remarkably clear view of the culture. Language is a social factor and is linked to habitat, eating habits, agriculture, animals, clothing, metals, tools weapons, transport, trade, family, law, and religion (2084).

According to the book Comparative Indo-European Linguists, Indo-Europeans did not have cities, but, lived in villages. "The word *uik’- (Lat. vicus, etc.) meant something like ‘village’ and was the seat of a tribe, clan, or family" (34). The houses were made of wood.. There were double doors and a ‘hearth’ (Lat. ara, Hitt, hassa-). "Words for sowing, *seh1- (Lith. seju, OCS sejo, Goth. saian, OE sawan) and plowing, *h2erh3- (Lith. ariu, OCS orjo, Gr. aroo, Lat. aro, Olr. airim, Goth. arjan) tell us that the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with agriculture. The word for ‘plow’ is derived from this last word, *h2erh3-trom (Lith. arklas, OCS ralo, Arm. arawr, Gr. arotron, Lat. aratrum, Oir. arathar)..." (35).

There are a multitude of words and phrases that demonstrate similarities between languages in the Indo-European family. Names of animals, numbers, nature, and the physical environment are some of the words that can be reconstructed and compared with generic terms like bird, which was awi- (Latin avis), and from this was derived the word "egg," or *owyo-.

Animal names are particularly interesting to compare. "The most important domesticated animal was the cow, *gweh3us (Skt. gaus, Latv. guovs, OCS adj. govezdb, Toch. A ko, Toch. B kau, Gr. bous, Lat. bos, OHG chuo, OE cu). The word for ‘bull’ was perhaps *teh2uros (Lat. taurus, etc.)..."(Beekes 35). Other domesticated animals include the sheep, the lamb and the goat. "There are two words for pig’: *suHs (Av. hus, Gr. sus, hus, Lat. sus, OHG su: cf. OE swin ‘swine’) is probably the adult pig, whereas *porko- (Lat. porcus, OE fearh) was the young pig." (The dog (*kuon) was the most popular animal, and the horse (*h1ekuos) most characterized the Indo-Europeans. The horse was necessary for travel and for pulling wagons (35-36).

In addition to the word father (*ph2ter, Lat. pater, etc.) and mother (*meh2ter, Lat. mater, etc.), there were several other references to family members. There was a predominance of names for members of the husband’s family, indicating that a patriarchal order existed (38).

The comparisons of the daughter languages in the Indo-European family are extensive. Since a sound law is always limited to a particular area and restricted to a particular period of time, there appears to be similar phonetic, semantic, lexical, and morphological similarities among the daughter languages of the Indo-European peoples (Beekes 57). Although, comparative linguistics developed only shortly before 1800 AD, when Sanskrit became know in Europe, there are an abundance of documented evidences of language relationships between the daughter languages (Beekes 11).

A study of the language family’s root words shows a sound, meaning, and word form correspondence between root words from the core vocabulary of the related languages in the Indo-European family. It also gives a clear picture of where, how, and in what manner the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples lived.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beekes, Robert S.P. Comparative Indo-European Linguistics An Introduction. Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Company, 1995. 11, 34-57.

Crystal, David. An Encyclopedia Dictionary of Language and Languages. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 185-186.

Oaks, Dallin D. "The Indo-European Languages." With Paul Thieme. Linguistics at Work A Reader of Applications. San Antonia: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998. 322-333.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 3^rd ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992. 2081-2089.

Please Note:

(* Means the ‘root’ of the word.)

(The ‘numbers’ in the root words were lowered in the original text.)