Proto-Indo-European language

The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.

Indo-European

Indo-European languages

Indo-European studies

Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European language

Proto-Indo-European society

Proto-Indo-European religion

As PIE is not directly attested, all PIE sounds and words are reconstructed using the comparative method. The standard convention is to mark unattested forms with an asterisk: *wódr 'water', *k^{^}wó:n 'dog', *tréyes 'three (masculine)', etc. Many of the words in the modern Indo-European languages are derived from such "protowords" via regular sound change (e.g., Grimm's law).

All Indo-European languages are inflected languages (although Modern English is much less inflected), and by comparative reconstruction it is highly assurred that at least the latest stage of the common PIE mother languages (i.e. Late PIE) was an inflectional (and more suffixing than prefixing) language. However, by means of internal reconstruction and morphological (re-)analysis of the reconstructed, seemingly most archaic PIE word forms it has recently been shown to be very probable that at a more distant stage (then: Early) PIE may have been a root-inflectional language like e.g. Northwest Caucasian family, spoken in Georgia and Turkey, may be the closest relatives to the Indo-European stock. While these are not widely-held theories, substantial evidence investigated by the linguist John Colarusso seems to support their theory. In particular, the one-vowel hypothesis which has been put forward for Indo-European would be borne out by the usage of substantial secondary articulation like that found in the Northwest Caucasian languages and, indeed, in the hypothesized PIE. Also, the Northwest Caucasian languages preserve a large number of guttural phonemes which may be the modern equivalents of PIE "laryngeals".

Phonology

Proto-Indo-European is conjectured to have used the following phonemes:

Proto-Indo-European sound system

CONSONANTS	labials	coronals	palatovelars	velars	labiovelars
voiceless stops	p	t	k^	k	kw
voiced stops	b	d	g^	g	gw
breathy stops	bh	dh	g^h	gh	gwh
nasals	m	n
fricatives		s	h1, h2, h3
liquids, glides	w	r, l	y

• Short vowels a, e, o, i, u
• Long vowels a:, e:, o:
• Diphthongs ei, eu, e:i, e:u, oi, ou, ...

Notes:

1. The symbol ^{^} indicates [k]- or [g]-like sounds which underwent a characteristic change in the Satem languages; they were possibly palatalized velars ([k^j], [g^j]) in Proto-Indo-European.
2. Raised ^w stands for labialization, or lip-rounding accompanying the articulation of velar sounds ([k^w] is a sound similar to English qu in queen).
3. Raised ^h stands for aspiration.
4. The symbols h₁, h₂ and h₃ stand for three hypothetical "laryngeal" phonemes.
5. A colon (:) is employed to indicate vowel length.

According to University of Texas

• (by Geoffrey Sampson)