Abnoba is a name with theological and geographical meanings: It is the name of a Gaulish goddess who was worshiped in the Black Forest and surrounding areas. It is also the name of a mountain or mountain range .
80-426: The etymology of the theonym is uncertain. It has been associated with the etymon * abo-s "water, river", found in e.g. Avon ( *abonā ). The second element has been connected to either a PIE * nogʷo- , either "naked, nude" or "tree", or with the verbal root * nebh- "burst out, be damp". Abnoba has been interpreted to be a forest and river goddess, and is known from about nine epigraphic inscriptions. One altar at
160-563: A where the other languages also have a , and French k occurs elsewhere, the difference is caused by different environments (being before a conditions the change), and the sets are complementary. They can, therefore, be assumed to reflect a single proto-phoneme (in this case *k , spelled ⟨c⟩ in Latin ). The original Latin words are corpus , crudus , catena and captiare , all with an initial k . If more evidence along those lines were given, one might conclude that an alteration of
240-485: A "regular correspondence" between k in Hawaiian and t in the other Polynesian languages. Similarly, a regular correspondence can be seen between Hawaiian and Rapanui h , Tongan and Samoan f , Maori ɸ , and Rarotongan ʔ . Mere phonetic similarity, as between English day and Latin dies (both with the same meaning), has no probative value. English initial d- does not regularly match Latin d- since
320-546: 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
400-677: 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
480-549: 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
560-453: 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
640-431: A different cluster must be reconstructed for each set. His reconstructions were, respectively, *hk , *xk , *čk (= [t͡ʃk] ), *šk (= [ʃk] ), and çk (in which ' x ' and ' ç ' are arbitrary symbols, rather than attempts to guess the phonetic value of the proto-phonemes). Typology assists in deciding what reconstruction best fits the data. For example, the voicing of voiceless stops between vowels
720-627: 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
800-417: A large set of English and Latin non-borrowed cognates cannot be assembled such that English d repeatedly and consistently corresponds to Latin d at the beginning of a word, and whatever sporadic matches can be observed are due either to chance (as in the above example) or to borrowing (for example, Latin diabolus and English devil , both ultimately of Greek origin ). However, English and Latin exhibit
880-406: A linguist might attempt to investigate the possibilities that either what was earlier reconstructed as *b is in fact *m or that the *n and *ŋ are in fact *d and *g . Even a symmetrical system can be typologically suspicious. For example, here is the traditional Proto-Indo-European stop inventory: An earlier voiceless aspirated row was removed on grounds of insufficient evidence. Since
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#1732773272129960-491: A non-distinctive quality of both. That example of the application of linguistic typology to linguistic reconstruction has become known as the glottalic theory . It has a large number of proponents but is not generally accepted. The reconstruction of proto-sounds logically precedes the reconstruction of grammatical morphemes (word-forming affixes and inflectional endings), patterns of declension and conjugation and so on. The full reconstruction of an unrecorded protolanguage
1040-441: A plan, in setting immediately before the eyes of the student the final results of the investigation in a more concrete form, and thereby rendering easier his insight into the nature of particular Indo-European languages , there is, I think, another of no less importance gained by it, namely that it shows the baselessness of the assumption that the non-Indian Indo-European languages were derived from Old-Indian ( Sanskrit ). The aim of
1120-408: A regular correspondence of t- : d- (in which "A : B" means "A corresponds to B"), as in the following examples: If there are many regular correspondence sets of this kind (the more, the better), a common origin becomes a virtual certainty, particularly if some of the correspondences are non-trivial or unusual. During the late 18th to late 19th century, two major developments improved
1200-407: A rigorous methodology for historical linguistic comparisons and proposed the existence of an Indo-European proto-language, which he called "Scythian", unrelated to Hebrew but ancestral to Germanic, Greek, Romance, Persian, Sanskrit, Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. The Scythian theory was further developed by Andreas Jäger (1686) and William Wotton (1713), who made early forays to reconstruct
1280-415: A single original phoneme : "some sound changes, particularly conditioned sound changes, can result in a proto-sound being associated with more than one correspondence set". For example, the following potential cognate list can be established for Romance languages , which descend from Latin : They evidence two correspondence sets, k : k and k : ʃ : Since French ʃ occurs only before
1360-413: A single parent language called the ' proto-language '. A sequence of regular sound changes (along with their underlying sound laws) can then be postulated to explain the correspondences between the attested forms, which eventually allows for the reconstruction of a proto-language by the methodical comparison of "linguistic facts" within a generalized system of correspondences. Every linguistic fact
1440-507: A subgroup of Indo-European that Russian does not belong to, the Germanic languages . The division of related languages into subgroups is accomplished by finding shared linguistic innovations that differentiate them from the parent language. For instance, English and German both exhibit the effects of a collection of sound changes known as Grimm's Law , which Russian was not affected by. The fact that English and German share this innovation
1520-613: 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 ,
1600-422: 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
1680-464: Is based on their concepts of how to proceed. This step involves making lists of words that are likely cognates among the languages being compared. If there is a regularly-recurring match between the phonetic structure of basic words with similar meanings, a genetic kinship can probably then be established. For example, linguists looking at the Polynesian family might come up with a list similar to
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#17327732721291760-572: 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
1840-417: Is common, but the devoicing of voiced stops in that environment is rare. If a correspondence -t- : -d- between vowels is found in two languages, the proto- phoneme is more likely to be *-t- , with a development to the voiced form in the second language. The opposite reconstruction would represent a rare type. However, unusual sound changes occur. The Proto-Indo-European word for two , for example,
1920-497: Is defined as transmission across the generations: children learn a language from the parents' generation and, after being influenced by their peers, transmit it to the next generation, and so on. For example, a continuous chain of speakers across the centuries links Vulgar Latin to all of its modern descendants. Two languages are genetically related if they descended from the same ancestor language . For example, Italian and French both come from Latin and therefore belong to
2000-407: Is inferred by the analysis of features within that language. Ordinarily, both methods are used together to reconstruct prehistoric phases of languages; to fill in gaps in the historical record of a language; to discover the development of phonological, morphological and other linguistic systems and to confirm or to refute hypothesised relationships between languages. The comparative method emerged in
2080-485: Is not considered "related" to Arabic. However, it is possible for languages to have different degrees of relatedness. English , for example, is related to both German and Russian but is more closely related to the former than to the latter. Although all three languages share a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European , English and German also share a more recent common ancestor, Proto-Germanic , but Russian does not. Therefore, English and German are considered to belong to
2160-496: Is not possible. Forming an exception, Phrygian is sufficiently well-attested to allow proposals of a particularly close affiliation with Greek, and a Graeco-Phrygian branch of Indo-European is becoming increasingly accepted. Proto-Indo-European phonology has been reconstructed in some detail. Notable features of the most widely accepted (but not uncontroversial) reconstruction include: The vowels in commonly used notation are: Comparative method In linguistics ,
2240-420: Is part of a whole in which everything is connected to everything else. One detail must not be linked to another detail, but one linguistic system to another. Relation is considered to be "established beyond a reasonable doubt" if a reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible. The ultimate proof of genetic relationship, and to many linguists' minds the only real proof, lies in a successful reconstruction of
2320-726: Is reconstructed as *dwō , which is reflected in Classical Armenian as erku . Several other cognates demonstrate a regular change *dw- → erk- in Armenian. Similarly, in Bearlake, a dialect of the Athabaskan language of Slavey , there has been a sound change of Proto-Athabaskan *ts → Bearlake kʷ . It is very unlikely that *dw- changed directly into erk- and *ts into kʷ , but they probably instead went through several intermediate steps before they arrived at
2400-419: Is seen as evidence of English and German's more recent common ancestor—since the innovation actually took place within that common ancestor, before English and German diverged into separate languages. On the other hand, shared retentions from the parent language are not sufficient evidence of a sub-group. For example, German and Russian both retain from Proto-Indo-European a contrast between the dative case and
2480-424: 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
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2560-572: The Gothick and the Celtick , though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. The comparative method developed out of attempts to reconstruct the proto-language mentioned by Jones, which he did not name but subsequent linguists have labelled Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The first professional comparison between
2640-558: 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 ,
2720-480: The Indo-European languages that were then known was made by the German linguist Franz Bopp in 1816. He did not attempt a reconstruction but demonstrated that Greek, Latin and Sanskrit shared a common structure and a common lexicon. In 1808, Friedrich Schlegel first stated the importance of using the eldest possible form of a language when trying to prove its relationships; in 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask developed
2800-453: 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. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both
2880-591: 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
2960-621: The Roman baths at Badenweiler , Germany , and another at Mühlenbach identify her with Diana , the Roman goddess of the hunt. Abnoba, sometimes spelt Arnoba or Arbona, has been used to refer to a mountain range comprising the Odenwald , Spessart , and Baar mountains. This composite range extends from the Rhine to the Neckar , and is referred to by one of the various names listed depending on
3040-401: The accusative case , which English has lost. However, that similarity between German and Russian is not evidence that German is more closely related to Russian than to English but means only that the innovation in question, the loss of the accusative/dative distinction, happened more recently in English than the divergence of English from German. In classical antiquity , Romans were aware of
3120-413: The comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards to infer the properties of that ancestor. The comparative method may be contrasted with the method of internal reconstruction in which the internal development of a single language
3200-478: 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
3280-463: The 9th or 10th century AD, Yehuda Ibn Quraysh compared the phonology and morphology of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic but attributed the resemblance to the Biblical story of Babel, with Abraham, Isaac and Joseph retaining Adam's language, with other languages at various removes becoming more altered from the original Hebrew. In publications of 1647 and 1654, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn first described
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3360-790: The Alps, which it does not. If Rauricum is to be identified with the Roman settlement, Augusta Raurica, modern Augst in Basel-Landschaft canton of Switzerland , Pliny must be confusing the Rhine and its tributaries with the Danube. The Danube begins with two small rivers draining the Black Forest : the Breg and the Brigach , both Celtic names. The longest is the most favorable candidate:
3440-622: The Breg. The Abnobaei montes would therefore be the Baar foothills of the Swabian Alb near Furtwangen im Schwarzwald . Ptolemy 's Geography (2.10) also mentions the mountain range, but incorrectly implies a position north of the Agri Decumates and Main river . It has been suggested that this error comes about through the use of differing and imperfect sources to make this section of
3520-771: The Geography. In effect Ptolemy has apparently confused the Abnoba with the Roman border, and therefore with what are today called the Taunus mountains. PIE 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 Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )
3600-569: 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
3680-638: 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
3760-526: 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
3840-443: The ancestral forms from which the semantically corresponding cognates can be derived. In some cases, this reconstruction can only be partial, generally because the compared languages are too scarcely attested, the temporal distance between them and their proto-language is too deep, or their internal evolution render many of the sound laws obscure to researchers. In such case, a relation is considered plausible, but uncertain. Descent
3920-580: The application of the comparative method to reconstruct Proto-Indo-European since Indo-European was then by far the most well-studied language family. Linguists working with other families soon followed suit, and the comparative method quickly became the established method for uncovering linguistic relationships. There is no fixed set of steps to be followed in the application of the comparative method, but some steps are suggested by Lyle Campbell and Terry Crowley , who are both authors of introductory texts in historical linguistics. This abbreviated summary
4000-480: The change, the accent shifted to initial position. Verner solved the puzzle by comparing the Germanic voicing pattern with Greek and Sanskrit accent patterns. This stage of the comparative method, therefore, involves examining the correspondence sets discovered in step 2 and seeing which of them apply only in certain contexts. If two (or more) sets apply in complementary distribution , they can be assumed to reflect
4080-546: 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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#17327732721294160-477: The comparative method is to highlight and interpret systematic phonological and semantic correspondences between two or more attested languages . If those correspondences cannot be rationally explained as the result of linguistic universals or language contact ( borrowings , areal influence , etc.), and if they are sufficiently numerous, regular, and systematic that they cannot be dismissed as chance similarities , then it must be assumed that they descend from
4240-470: The development *b → m would have to be assumed to have occurred only once. In the final step, the linguist checks to see how the proto- phonemes fit the known typological constraints . For example, a hypothetical system, has only one voiced stop , *b , and although it has an alveolar and a velar nasal , *n and *ŋ , there is no corresponding labial nasal . However, languages generally maintain symmetry in their phonemic inventories. In this case,
4320-528: The early 19th century with the birth of Indo-European studies , then took a definite scientific approach with the works of the Neogrammarians in the late 19th–early 20th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) and Karl Verner (1846–1896), and the German scholar Jacob Grimm (1785–1863). The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language
4400-582: 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
4480-481: The evidence of other Indo-European languages . For instance, the Latin suffix que , "and", preserves the original *e vowel that caused the consonant shift in Sanskrit: Verner's Law , discovered by Karl Verner c. 1875, provides a similar case: the voicing of consonants in Germanic languages underwent a change that was determined by the position of the old Indo-European accent . Following
4560-522: The first sound-law based on comparative evidence showing that a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on other factors within the same word (such as neighbouring phonemes and the position of the accent ), which are now called conditioning environments . Similar discoveries made by the Junggrammatiker (usually translated as " Neogrammarians ") at the University of Leipzig in
4640-505: The following (their actual list would be much longer): Borrowings or false cognates can skew or obscure the correct data. For example, English taboo ( [tæbu] ) is like the six Polynesian forms because of borrowing from Tongan into English, not because of a genetic similarity. That problem can usually be overcome by using basic vocabulary, such as kinship terms, numbers, body parts and pronouns. Nonetheless, even basic vocabulary can be sometimes borrowed. Finnish , for example, borrowed
4720-400: The languages and b in only one of them, if *b is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume five separate changes of *b → m , but if *m is reconstructed, it is necessary to assume only one change of *m → b and so *m would be most economical. That argument assumes the languages other than Arapaho to be at least partly independent of one another. If they all formed a common subgroup,
4800-453: The late 19th century led them to conclude that all sound changes were ultimately regular, resulting in the famous statement by Karl Brugmann and Hermann Osthoff in 1878 that "sound laws have no exceptions". That idea is fundamental to the modern comparative method since it necessarily assumes regular correspondences between sounds in related languages and thus regular sound changes from the proto-language. The Neogrammarian hypothesis led to
4880-534: The later forms. It is not phonetic similarity that matters for the comparative method but rather regular sound correspondences. By the principle of economy , the reconstruction of a proto-phoneme should require as few sound changes as possible to arrive at the modern reflexes in the daughter languages. For example, Algonquian languages exhibit the following correspondence set: The simplest reconstruction for this set would be either *m or *b . Both *m → b and *b → m are likely. Because m occurs in five of
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#17327732721294960-654: 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
5040-432: The method's effectiveness. First, it was found that many sound changes are conditioned by a specific context . For example, in both Greek and Sanskrit , an aspirated stop evolved into an unaspirated one, but only if a second aspirate occurred later in the same word; this is Grassmann's law , first described for Sanskrit by Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini and promulgated by Hermann Grassmann in 1863. Second, it
5120-627: The mid-20th century, a number of linguists have argued that this phonology is implausible and that it is extremely unlikely for a language to have a voiced aspirated ( breathy voice ) series without a corresponding voiceless aspirated series. Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov provided a potential solution and argued that the series that are traditionally reconstructed as plain voiced should be reconstructed as glottalized : either implosive (ɓ, ɗ, ɠ) or ejective (pʼ, tʼ, kʼ) . The plain voiceless and voiced aspirated series would thus be replaced by just voiceless and voiced, with aspiration being
5200-534: 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
5280-521: The original k took place because of a different environment. A more complex case involves consonant clusters in Proto-Algonquian . The Algonquianist Leonard Bloomfield used the reflexes of the clusters in four of the daughter languages to reconstruct the following correspondence sets: Although all five correspondence sets overlap with one another in various places, they are not in complementary distribution and so Bloomfield recognised that
5360-527: The primitive common language. In 1710 and 1723, Lambert ten Kate first formulated the regularity of sound laws , introducing among others the term root vowel . Another early systematic attempt to prove the relationship between two languages on the basis of similarity of grammar and lexicon was made by the Hungarian János Sajnovics in 1770, when he attempted to demonstrate the relationship between Sami and Hungarian . That work
5440-535: The principle of regular sound-changes to explain his observations of similarities between individual words in the Germanic languages and their cognates in Greek and Latin. Jacob Grimm , better known for his Fairy Tales , used the comparative method in Deutsche Grammatik (published 1819–1837 in four volumes), which attempted to show the development of the Germanic languages from a common origin, which
5520-426: 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
5600-565: The region it is passing through. According to Tacitus 's Germania , Abnoba was the name of a mountain, from a grassy slope of which flows the source of the River Danube . Pliny the Elder also gives us some statements about Abnoba ( Natural History , 4.79). He says that it arises opposite the town of Rauricum in Gaul and flows from there beyond the Alps, implying that the river begins in
5680-428: 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
5760-461: The regular sound-correspondences exhibited by the lists of potential cognates. For example, in the Polynesian data above, it is apparent that words that contain t in most of the languages listed have cognates in Hawaiian with k in the same position. That is visible in multiple cognate sets: the words glossed as 'one', 'three', 'man' and 'taboo' all show the relationship. The situation is called
5840-518: The same family, the Romance languages . Having a large component of vocabulary from a certain origin is not sufficient to establish relatedness; for example, heavy borrowing from Arabic into Persian has caused more of the vocabulary of Modern Persian to be from Arabic than from the direct ancestor of Persian, Proto-Indo-Iranian , but Persian remains a member of the Indo-Iranian family and
5920-730: 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
6000-503: The similarities between Greek and Latin, but did not study them systematically. They sometimes explained them mythologically, as the result of Rome being a Greek colony speaking a debased dialect. Even though grammarians of Antiquity had access to other languages around them ( Oscan , Umbrian , Etruscan , Gaulish , Egyptian , Parthian ...), they showed little interest in comparing, studying, or just documenting them. Comparison between languages really began after classical antiquity. In
6080-477: The word for "mother", äiti , from Proto-Germanic *aiþį̄ (compare to Gothic aiþei ). English borrowed the pronouns "they", "them", and "their(s)" from Norse . Thai and various other East Asian languages borrowed their numbers from Chinese . An extreme case is represented by Pirahã , a Muran language of South America, which has been controversially claimed to have borrowed all of its pronouns from Nheengatu . The next step involves determining
6160-416: Was August Schleicher (1821–1868) in his Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen , originally published in 1861. Here is Schleicher's explanation of why he offered reconstructed forms: In the present work an attempt is made to set forth the inferred Indo-European original language side by side with its really existent derived languages. Besides the advantages offered by such
6240-416: Was found that sometimes sound changes occurred in contexts that were later lost. For instance, in Sanskrit velars ( k -like sounds) were replaced by palatals ( ch -like sounds) whenever the following vowel was *i or *e . Subsequent to this change, all instances of *e were replaced by a . The situation could be reconstructed only because the original distribution of e and a could be recovered from
6320-517: Was later extended to all Finno-Ugric languages in 1799 by his countryman Samuel Gyarmathi . However, the origin of modern historical linguistics is often traced back to Sir William Jones , an English philologist living in India , who in 1786 made his famous observation: The Sanscrit language , whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek , more copious than
6400-401: Was the first systematic study of diachronic language change. Both Rask and Grimm were unable to explain apparent exceptions to the sound laws that they had discovered. Although Hermann Grassmann explained one of the anomalies with the publication of Grassmann's law in 1862, Karl Verner made a methodological breakthrough in 1875, when he identified a pattern now known as Verner's law ,
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