The Morava ( German : March ) is a river in Central Europe , a left tributary of the Danube . It is the main river of Moravia historical region in the Czech Republic , which derives its name from the river. The Morava originates on the Králický Sněžník mountain in the north-eastern corner of Pardubice Region , near the border between the Czech Republic and Poland and has a vaguely southward trajectory. The lower part of the river's course forms the border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and then between Austria and Slovakia.
40-605: The root of the river's name, mor- , is derived from the Proto-Indo-European word for 'water', 'marsh', from which the Latin word mare arose. The suffix -ava is a Slavic form of the Proto-Germanic word ahwa , meaning 'water', 'river'. The name of the river was first documented as Maraha in an 892 deed. The river gave its name to the entire historical land of Moravia , yet the oldest surviving record of
80-545: A plain , commonly known as flatland , is a flat expanse of land that generally does not change much in elevation , and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains , as coastal plains , and as plateaus or uplands . Plains are one of the major landforms on earth, being present on all continents and covering more than one-third of the world's land area. Plains in many areas are important for agriculture . There are various types of plains and biomes on them. A plain or flatland
120-546: 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
160-677: 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
200-549: 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
240-453: 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
280-627: 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
320-600: A major part of the Vienna Basin . In the Czech Republic, several larger cities and towns lie on the Morava, particularly Olomouc , Kroměříž , Otrokovice , Uherské Hradiště , Veselí nad Moravou and Hodonín . Brno , the second largest city of the Czech Republic, lies within the river basin. As of 2009, the catchment area of the river had a population of c. 3.5 million people. Downstream of Hodonín,
360-613: 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 ,
400-512: A valley, a plain is enclosed on two sides, but in other cases a plain may be delineated by a complete or partial ring of hills, by mountains, or by cliffs . Where a geological region contains more than one plain, they may be connected by a pass (sometimes termed a gap ). Coastal plains mostly rise from sea level until they run into elevated features such as mountains or plateaus. Plains can be formed from flowing lava ; from deposition of sediment by water, ice, or wind; or formed by erosion by
440-422: 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
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#1732765789270480-408: Is a flat expanse of land with a layer of grass that generally does not change much in elevation , and is primarily treeless. Plains occur as lowlands along valleys or at the base of mountains , as coastal plains , and as plateaus or uplands . Plains are one of the major landforms on earth, where they are present on all continents, and cover more than one-third of the world's land area. In
520-572: 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
560-524: 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: Plain In geography ,
600-424: 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
640-489: The Danube with an average discharge rate of 110 m/s (3,900 cu ft/s), collected from a drainage area of 26,658 km (10,293 sq mi), of which 20,692.4 km (7,989.4 sq mi) is in the Czech Republic. The Morava is a lowland river with a basin that consists of 51% plains ; mountains make up only seven percent of the basin while thirty five percent are considered highland. The average slope of
680-530: The Danube Delta . During the 20th century however, large tracts of the river, especially downstream from Litovel , have been regulated with the ensuing effect of loss of inundation areas (floodplains). Since the river basin is densely populated and, especially the Czech part, industrialised, the river also receives a lot of wastewater. Agriculture also contributes to spreading nitrogen and other nutrients into
720-558: 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 ,
760-681: The Kingdom of Hungary (within the Habsburg monarchy during 1526–1918 because of imperial expansion). During the Cold War , this section of the river was part of the Iron Curtain , forming the frontier between Austria and Czechoslovakia . In July 1997, the Morava basin (especially its northern and eastern part) was affected by heavy stratiform rain, which lasted several days and caused catastrophic floods . The Morava originates in
800-591: 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
840-830: The New Stone Age . The lower part of the river, downstream of the confluence with the Thaya at Hohenau an der March , which today marks the Austro-Slovakian border, is one of the oldest national boundaries still extant in continental Europe: it was the eastern boundary of the Carolingian Empire with the Avar Khaganate around 800, and from the 10th century onward marked the border of the Imperial marcha orientalis , later Duchy of Austria , with
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#1732765789270880-478: 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
920-664: The Danube Valley and the plains of northern Europe , for animals as well as, at least historically, for humans. Its weak slope across flat plains furthermore means that the river is prone to meander and flood, creating vast floodplains . Because of these reasons, the floodplains of the Morava River are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems in Europe. Its richness in plant and animal species (some 12,000 species have been identified) ranks it second in diversity only to
960-569: 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
1000-638: 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
1040-526: 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
1080-404: The agents from hills or mountains. Biomes on plains include grassland ( temperate or subtropical ), steppe ( semi-arid ), savannah ( tropical ) or tundra ( polar ). In a few instances, deserts and rainforests may also be considered plains. Plains in many areas are important for agriculture because where the soils were deposited as sediments they may be deep and fertile , and
1120-602: 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
1160-582: 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
1200-595: The flatness facilitates mechanization of crop production; or because they support grasslands which provide good grazing for livestock . The types of depositional plains include: Erosional plains have been leveled by various agents of denudation such as running water, rivers, wind and glacier which wear out the rugged surface and smoothens them. Plain resulting from the action of these agents of denudation are called peneplains (almost plain) while plains formed from wind action are called pediplains . Structural plains are relatively undisturbed horizontal surfaces of
1240-595: The land (from 822) is older than the record of the river. The German name of the Morava, March , was derived from the Slavic name. The banks of the Morava have been inhabited for a very long time. The village of Stillfried [ de ] , on the Austrian part of the river, was already the location of a human settlement 30,000 years ago. Agriculture began to be practiced in the Morava valley approximately 7,000 years ago, and fortified settlements began to appear during
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1280-654: 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
1320-534: 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
1360-426: 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
1400-428: 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
1440-595: The river flows along a sparsely inhabited, forested border area, all the way to its outfall into the Danube, just below Devín Castle on the outskirts of the Slovak capital Bratislava . The total length of the Morava is 352 km (219 mi), of which 269.4 km (167.4 mi) is in the Czech Republic (including the Czech-Slovak border), making it the third longest river in the Czech Republic . The Morava feeds
1480-462: The river is 1.8‰ and at the confluence 4‰. The bedrock of the river basin is mostly crystalline bedrock and flysch . The Morava is unusual in that it is a European blackwater river . The longest tributary of the Morava is the Thaya , flowing in at the tripoint of the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia. The longest tributaries of the Morava are: The Morava River forms an important link between
1520-684: The river. Nevertheless, the central part of the river has retained much of its natural character and in later years conscious efforts have been made to protect the nature and ecosystem of the river basin. Proto-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 Proto-Indo-European ( PIE )
1560-730: 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
1600-1043: The territory of Dolní Morava in the Králický Sněžník Mountains , on the slope of the Králický Sněžník mountain at an elevation of 1,371 m (4,498 ft), not far from the border with Poland. The lowlands formed by the river are the Upper Morava Valley and then the Lower Morava Valley in Moravia, the Morava Field or Marchfeld in Lower Austria , and the Záhorie Lowland in Slovakia. The latter three are actually continuous parts of one large basin, forming
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