The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

[WeepingElf]

Some questions:

Working on Proto-Pasuu has given me an interest in making an apost PIE conlang, but of course I need some books to do that. As good as Morrigan's fantastic font of ebooks are, I'll admit: I'm old-fashioned and like to hold dead tree stuff, especially when I'm working on conlangs as I do nearly all of that on paper.

With the suggestions I had received earlier on in this thread I'm definitely planning on picking up a copy of Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV.

A highly recommendable book! Of all handbooks of PIE, it is IMHO the best. It also gives an overview what happened in the branches.

However, over this suggestion from Dewrad:

Arguably, for conlanging purposes, I would still say that the rather traditionalist "Brugmannian" reconstruction given in Szemerényi's Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics is more useful. It stops budding PIE-conlangers getting carried away by all the laryngeals, if nothing else.

Given that Wenetic is an awesome and high quality lang, anything suggested by Dewrad would probably be a good idea, but I'm still unsure how useful this book will be. Some internet searching shows that the book goes into really deep detail on PIE morphology, which is useful...but it also shows that Szemerényi was hell-bentedly opposed to many PIE conventions now taken for granted, such as laryngeals. As good as the book sounds...it's going to be quite odd without laryngeals, especially as for my hypothetical language I want to be a super-special snowflake and keep at least a few of the laryngeals; probably gonna have them turn into vowels when syllabic and next to a consonant (maybe with lots of wacky sound change a la Sanskrit's voiceless aspirates but far far worse), but intervocally, word-finally, and word-initially they'll stay as /h/ or /x/ or something.

For conlanging purposes, an outdated reconstruction such as Szemerényi's may be better than useless, but I don't think this is a wise advice. I still think that there is no good reason not to work with state-of-the-art source material where it is readily available.

[Chagen]

A highly recommendable book! Of all handbooks of PIE, it is IMHO the best. It also gives an overview what happened in the branches.

Good! As it appears to be a college textbook, I'm gonna hit a used college textbook store in my town to see if I can find it on the cheap there, or at least find some interesting linguistics textbooks on the cheap. I'm also thinking of getting Indo-European Linguistics by Brügger--it appears to go heavily in depth like Szemerenyi's but adheres to Laryngeal theory, at least from what I skimmed of it in Morrigans collection.

I'm not liking how Fortson's book reconstructs <a> (he says that it can be explained with <eh₂> but then says that it's pointless to do things like reconstruct "mother" as <meh₂ter>, but I disagree as /a/ in PIE is so rare the layngeal explanation works better for me)

[WeepingElf]

A highly recommendable book! Of all handbooks of PIE, it is IMHO the best. It also gives an overview what happened in the branches.

Good! As it appears to be a college textbook, I'm gonna hit a used college textbook store in my town to see if I can find it on the cheap there, or at least find some interesting linguistics textbooks on the cheap. I'm also thinking of getting Indo-European Linguistics by Brügger--it appears to go heavily in depth like Szemerenyi's but adheres to Laryngeal theory, at least from what I skimmed of it in Morrigans collection.

It's good, too, and complements Fortson well. Fortson gives a good overview of the topic; Meier-Brügger goes more into depth.

I'm not liking how Fortson's book reconstructs <a> (he says that it can be explained with <eh₂> but then says that it's pointless to do things like reconstruct "mother" as <meh₂ter>, but I disagree as /a/ in PIE is so rare the layngeal explanation works better for me)

I concur with you, but I am not sure. Most instances of PIE *a are indeed due to *h2; most of the remaining have skewed distribution and may be loanwords. Some may have been borrowed into PIE about the time it broke up, and already had /a/ from *h2e. These possibilities probably cover all instances of PIE *a.

[TaylorS]

Slightly off topic, but I am currently reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, it is a really good book on IE studies and IE archeology. I am currently only at the Sredny-Stog culture (when Anatolian branched off and spread into the Balkans following the collapse of Copper Age "Old Europe") and it is already blowing my mind.

[KathTheDragon]

I had a thought last night about the palato-velars, and it made a lot of sense. I was also half-asleep, so it could be nonsense, but I feel I ought to share it anyway. so, is it possible that the palato-velars were only phonemic in the satem dialects of PIE? That is, in the stages prior to what we can reconstruct, there were only two velar series - plain and labialised - and the plain velars had palatalised allophones in certain environments. Ablaut would cause alternations between the palatalised and plain allophones, so the satem dialects generalised the palatal allophone, while the centum dialects did not, leaving the distinct allophonic, or even dropping the distinction entirely. Does that make sense? Is it likely?

[Tropylium]

Most instances of PIE *a are indeed due to *h2; most of the remaining have skewed distribution and may be loanwords. Some may have been borrowed into PIE about the time it broke up, and already had /a/ from *h2e. These possibilities probably cover all instances of PIE *a.

Though to what extent have actual sources been determined for these "possible borrowings"? There is apparently some evidence for roots that had not only *a, but also an ablauting *a ~ *ā which would suggest a slightly older age.

is it possible that the palato-velars were only phonemic in the satem dialects of PIE? That is, in the stages prior to what we can reconstruct, there were only two velar series - plain and labialised - and the plain velars had palatalised allophones in certain environments. Ablaut would cause alternations between the palatalised and plain allophones, so the satem dialects generalised the palatal allophone, while the centum dialects did not, leaving the distinct allophonic, or even dropping the distinction entirely. Does that make sense? Is it likely?

Well, since the satem dialects are in mostly good agreement on where to put palatals and where velars, and no language shows remains of this sort of an alternation (*Ḱe ~ *Ko ablaut), the levelling of this system would have to have happened quite early on. Which then makes it a bit difficult to understand why Armenian and Indo-Iranian share almost as many similarities with Greek as they do with Balto-Slavic (dunno how Albanian fits here).

I don't see the motivation to explain the uvulars (traditional plain velars) away entirely; they could simply have been a rare bunch of phonemes. The main problem seems to be the typologically odd K Kʷ Q system which doesn't have many parallels. Usually there would be labiouvulars around too in a system like that.

However, it's entirely possible to suggest some! The traditional *Ḱw clusters are a fairly strange contrast to phonemic labiovelars, and it would be even stranger if this was *[kw] versus [kʷ]. So, let's reinterpret things a little: the "labiovelars" were instead labiouvulars, while the "palatovelar+w clusters" were plain labiovelars.

This seems to work just fine in the descendants too: Satemization pushes both series forward, at what point the labiovelars break apart into *Čw clusters. Centumization merges the velars with uvulars, including the labiovelars with labiouvulars.

[Pole, the]

ablauting *a ~ *ā

Do I understand it correctly that the paper explains — or at least attempts to explain — the source of PIE ablaut and then takes the explanation as an argument for the thesis?

[Chagen]

However, it's entirely possible to suggest some! The traditional *Ḱw clusters are a fairly strange contrast to phonemic labiovelars, and it would be even stranger if this was *[kw] versus [kʷ]. So, let's reinterpret things a little: the "labiovelars" were instead labiouvulars, while the "palatovelar+w clusters" were plain labiovelars.

This seems to work just fine in the descendants too: Satemization pushes both series forward, at what point the labiovelars break apart into *Čw clusters. Centumization merges the velars with uvulars, including the labiovelars with labiouvulars.

PIE is already one of the weirdest fucking languages ever, I don't see how this is really any weirder than its wacky ablaut system or T D Dh system.

ablauting *a ~ *ā

Call me extremely biased but I find it hard to take a powerpoint presentation seriously.

Also this guy has some weird religious hatred for periods

[hwhatting]

ablauting *a ~ *ā

Call me extremely biased but I find it hard to take a powerpoint presentation seriously.

I hate Powerpoint presentations as much as the next guy, but it's probably just a conference contribution that hasn't made it into a paper yet (or it made it into a paper that has been published somewhere, so the author cannot put it into open access).
And Piotr Gąsiorowski is someone I'd take seriously, he's a very knowledgeable IEanist.

[Sleinad Flar]

Given his credentials offline and online (he made one of the oldest online PIE grammar pages and was quite active on ye olde Yahoo Cybalist list), I take anything Piotr Gasiorowski has to say seriously. Powerpoint or not.

(INSTANT EDIT: Ninja-ed by hwhatting, but repeated for emphasis.)

Do I understand it correctly that the paper explains — or at least attempts to explain — the source of PIE ablaut and then takes the explanation as an argument for the thesis?

No, he notices some cases of ā/a-ablaut (parallel to ē/e and o/e) and tries to find an explanation for that (the Rasmussen mechanism is only one of the extant mechanisms for ablaut), without having to resort to unsupported laryngeals and ablaut patterns (really, Beekes? *néh2s(s), *nh2ésm, *nh2sés?). Like someone (Basilius?) said earlier in this thread, positing laryngeals here creates more problems than that it solves.

[KathTheDragon]

So opinions about the presence of /a/ in PIE are moving from 'didn't have it' to 'did have it'?

[WeepingElf]

Slightly off topic, but I am currently reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, it is a really good book on IE studies and IE archeology. I am currently only at the Sredny-Stog culture (when Anatolian branched off and spread into the Balkans following the collapse of Copper Age "Old Europe") and it is already blowing my mind.

This is a good book, yes, but it almost entirely talks about developments in Central Asia. It doesn't say anything about what went on in Central Europe, for instance.

[Terra]

Slightly off topic, but I am currently reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, it is a really good book on IE studies and IE archeology. I am currently only at the Sredny-Stog culture (when Anatolian branched off and spread into the Balkans following the collapse of Copper Age "Old Europe") and it is already blowing my mind.

May I ask, what exactly blew your mind? (I haven't read the book, btw.) I'm interested in what the book talks about exactly.

[WeepingElf]

Slightly off topic, but I am currently reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, it is a really good book on IE studies and IE archeology. I am currently only at the Sredny-Stog culture (when Anatolian branched off and spread into the Balkans following the collapse of Copper Age "Old Europe") and it is already blowing my mind.

May I ask, what exactly blew your mind? (I haven't read the book, btw.) I'm interested in what the book talks about exactly.

I of course don't know what blew Taylor's mind, but the book is basically about anchoring PIE and some of its daughters in archaeology (which archaeological cultures probably spoke which languages). Of course, this is a matter fraught with uncertainty, but what the author writes about it seems to make sense to me and pretty much agrees with my own thinking about these matters, but, as I have already said, the book focusses almost entirely on Central Asia and says nothing about developments in the west.

[Chagen]

Continuing from my previous questions:

With the new laptop I'm planning to buy, I'll have around 300-400 dollars for extra spending money. I want to spend this money on 3 books: Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture, Meier-Bruegger's Indo-European Linguistics, and Clackson's Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. They should total about 140 bucks with tax if I get them new off of Amazon (I may shop around for a better price, but I would like them new and high-quality).

The thing I'm wondering about is: these are all good books, from what I've seen in Morrigan's list of PDF's, but they also all go over the same subject. I'm a little worried that I'm wasting money on redundant books, but on the other PIE Linguistics is such a big topic that it's not really surprising that I'll need a lot of books to be versed in it. Any who have read them--would you say that these three books together make a good purchase?

[hwhatting]

So opinions about the presence of /a/ in PIE are moving from 'didn't have it' to 'did have it'?

I wouldn't say they're moving in one direction - it's more that this is one of the big undecided questions of PIE reconstruction, with different schools having different ideas. The idea that /a/ was not a phoneme is the newer idea, historically speaking, but it's been around for decades now.

@ Chagen: Buying three introductions seems excessive - I'd buy the one of them that will serve best as a reference later on and check out the other ones in a library. (Not having read any of them, I don't know which one that would be - maybe others will chime in. When I started, I bought Krahe's "Indogermanische Sprachwissenschaft", originally from the 1940s, although my edition was a re-issue from the 1960s, and Szemerenyi, which has been discussed already on this thread, and read others in the library. Now I don't read introductions anymore.)

[WeepingElf]

Continuing from my previous questions:

With the new laptop I'm planning to buy, I'll have around 300-400 dollars for extra spending money. I want to spend this money on 3 books: Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture, Meier-Bruegger's Indo-European Linguistics, and Clackson's Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction. They should total about 140 bucks with tax if I get them new off of Amazon (I may shop around for a better price, but I would like them new and high-quality).

The thing I'm wondering about is: these are all good books, from what I've seen in Morrigan's list of PDF's, but they also all go over the same subject. I'm a little worried that I'm wasting money on redundant books, but on the other PIE Linguistics is such a big topic that it's not really surprising that I'll need a lot of books to be versed in it. Any who have read them--would you say that these three books together make a good purchase?

I know all three; I don't think any of them is redundant. All three have different strengths. Fortson is the best introduction; Meier-Brügger gives most data; Clackson discusses the reasoning behind the reconstruction in more depth, and also addresses some controversial issues (such as: Can the "Greco-Aryan" tripartite verb aspect system really be reconstructed for pre-Anatolian PIE, or did Anatolian never have it?).

Another interesting book which complements these three is Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans by Thomas Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov, which is mostly about controversial alternative reconstructions by the authors (most famously, the glottalic theory, but there are also some other interesting - and some less appealing - ideas in it). However, I wouldn't buy it - check it out from a library, read it, and make your own decision how much of what is in it makes sense to you.

[Sleinad Flar]

Having read all three of them, I'd buy Fortson. Clackson is too much methodology and too little actual reconstruction, and I didn't like Meier-Brügger that much.

Scratch that, I'd actually buy Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, which despite its title is about PIE. Although his reconstructions aren't always the standard ones (to say the least), it's also a very, very detailed book and he explains his choices very well.

Edit, C'mon WeepingElf, of course it's redundant. The three books advocate the exact same reconstruction, and only give one version of PIE. If one wants to buy three different introductory books, then buy Fortson, Beekes and Szemerényi (or Sihler) instead. At least you'll get some variation.

[WeepingElf]

Having read all three of them, I'd buy Fortson. Clackson is too much methodology and too little actual reconstruction, and I didn't like Meier-Brügger that much.

Yes. I did buy only one of them - Fortson. Clackson indeed talks a lot about methodoloy at the cost of reconstruction; Meier-Brügger is a rather dry, pedestrian work, you are right on that, too. If you want to buy only one book, buy Fortson.

Scratch that, I'd actually buy Sihler's New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, which despite its title is about PIE. Although his reconstructions aren't always the standard ones (to say the least), it's also a very, very detailed book and he explains his choices very well.

Edit, C'mon WeepingElf, of course it's redundant. The three books advocate the exact same reconstruction, and only give one version of PIE. If one wants to buy three different introductory books, then buy Fortson, Beekes and Szemerényi (or Sihler) instead. At least you'll get some variation.

OK. Yes, Fortson, Meier-Brügger and Clackson present basically the same reconstruction; yet, they look at it from different angles. I don't know Beekes, nor Sihler. Szemerényi is simply out of date. Gamkrelidze/Ivanov is full of irreverent ideas, some of which may make sense, others not. The interesting ones are the glottalic theory and the notion that PIE may have been an active-stative language. Both are IMHO worth discussion, but at a pre-stage rather than the stage at which the language began to disintegrate. The Armenian homeland and the extra phonemes G&I posit IMHO do not have much merit. The whole thing looks like an attempt at nudging PIE closer to Kartvelian (though G&I do not claim an IE-Kartvelian family, just intense contact between PIE and Proto-Kartvelian).

[Sleinad Flar]

You might think Szemerényi is simply out of date, but other people beg to differ (even in this very thread). In fact, that's my point: one needs to familiarize themselves with the different versions of PIE extant (especially the Leiden school (Beekes) and the American school (Fortson et. al.), and maybe even ye olde Brugmannian reconstructions*) in order to get a clear picture of the problems involved in reconstructing the proto-language. See where the reconstructions agree and (especially) where they disagree.

Regardless what you think of their reconstructions, Beekes and Szemerényi are in fact very good books. And so is Sihler.

*But not the Russian guys. Avoid at all costs.

[Chagen]

Well,uh...about the books...I got a really good computer for cheap and thus decided to buy all three. They're on the way right now.

But as odd as this sounds I like to read multiple books on the same subject so I don't feel they're redudant. One of my favorite things is comparing how different authors describe different things. I got like 300 bucks left and nothing to spend it on so I might buy Beekes. Szemerényi sounds interesting but he sounds like a stubborn opponent of advances in the study.

EDIT: I'll probably buy Sihler's book soon, Amazon has a great deal on the hardcover version for the price of the paperback and I know Latin so this will be extra interesting. Even with that I still have about 260 bucks left...

Four books on PIE might be a little redundant though...

[R.Rusanov]

I read Fortson cause our library had a copy (he went to the same school as me) it was the only book they had on Indo European and I think it was pretty dang good for an introduction

Also I've decided that ʷe in PIE has to come from a back vowel originally. None of the languages merge it with o meaning some distinction was likely perceived for quite a while. Pre-Proto-Indo-European may have done like spanish and mutated כ to ue via uo which afaik is pretty rare in PIE

[KathTheDragon]

What is ^we?

(Apologies for bad formatting, I'm on my tablet, and copy-paste is broken)

[R.Rusanov]

like kwe, gwe, etc. also the lenition by stress caused it to turn into kw by itself

say kwem, kwmes

[KathTheDragon]

You mean you don't believe that PIE had labiovelars?