Appendix I. Proto-Indo-European Syntax

A Sentence is a form of words which contains a State­ment, a Question, an Exclamation, or a Command.

a.  A sentence in the form of a Statement is called a Declarative Sentence:  as, the dog runs.

b.  A sentence in the form of a Question is called an Interroga­tive Sentence: as, does the dog run?

c.   A sentence in the form of an Exclamation is called an Exclamatory Sentence: as, how fast the dog runs !

d.  A sentence in the form of a Command, an Exhortation, or an Entreaty is called an Imperative Sentence : as, go, run across the Alps; or let the dog run.

NOTE. After Lehman (1974), “The fundamental order of sentences in PIE appears to be OV. Support for this assumption is evident in the oldest texts of the materials attested earliest in the IE dialects. The fundamental order of sentences in these early dialects cannot be determined solely by frequency of sentence patterns. For, like other linguistic constructions, sentence patterns manifest marked as well as unmarked order. Marked order is expected in literary materials. The documents surviving from the earliest dialects are virtually all in verse or in literary forms of prose. Accordingly many of the individual sentences do not have the unmarked order, with verb final. For this reason conclusions about the characteristic word order of PIE and the early dialects will be based in part on those syntactic patterns that are rarely modified for literary and rhetorical effect: comparative constructions, the presence of postpositions and prepositions, and the absence of prefixes, (...)”.

Lehman is criticized by Friedrich (1975) who, like Watkins (1976) and Miller (1975), support a VO prehistoric situation, probably SVO (like those found in ‘central’ IE areas), with non-consistent dialectal SOV findings. In any case (viz. Lehman and Miller), an older IE I or IE II OV (VSO for Miller) would have been substituted by a newer VO (SOV for Miller, later SVO through a process of verb transposition) – thus, all Indo-European dialects attested have evolved (thus probably from a common Late PIE trend) into a modern SVO.

Modern Indo-European, as a modern IE language, may follow the stricter formal patterns attested in the oldest inscriptions, i.e. (S)OV, as in Vedic Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Old Latin and Avestan. A newer, general (S)VO order (found in Greek, Latin, Avestan, Germanic, etc.), which reveals the change from OV in Early PIE towards a VO in Late PIE for the spoken language of Europe – and even some forms of litterary uses, as e.g. journalism –  could be used in non-formal contexts.

 

PIE sentences were either Nominal, i.e. formed by nouns, or Verbal, if they included a verb.

I. A Subject and a Predicate. The Subject of a sentence is the person or thing spoken of.  The Predicate is that which is said of the Subject.

a. The Subject is usually a Noun or Pronoun, or some word or group of words used as a Noun.

b. The Predicate of a sentence may be a Verb (as the dog runs), or it may consist of some form of es and a Noun or Adjective which describes or defines the subject (as It is good). Such a noun or adjective is called a Predicate Noun or Adjective.

II.  In Proto-Indo-European, simple sentences may be composed of only one word, a noun or a verb; as, God!, or (it) rains.

NOTE 1. Nominal sentences of this type are usually Interjections and Vocatives. Verbal sentences of this type include Imperatives (at least of 2^nd P.Sg.) and impersonal verbs, which had never a subject in the oldest dialects attested; as, for Eng. (it) rains, cf. Goth. rigneiþ, Lat. pluit, Gk. ὓει, Skt. várṣati. It is believed that when IE dialects became SVO in structure, so that a subject was required, the third singular anaphoric pronoun, corresponding to it, German es, French il, etc., was introduced as subject in such sentences. Such pronouns were introduced because SVO languages must have subjects in sentences, as do intransitive verbs in any OV language. Such verbs could be supplemented by substantives in various cases, among them the accusative. These constructions are especially prominent for verbs referring to the emotions; as, Lat. miseret, pudet, taedet, Skr. kitaváṃ tatāpa. Compare also Cicero’s Lat. eōrum nōs miseret, or O.H.G. thes gánges thih nirthrúzzi. In PIE sentences various case forms could be used with verbs. The simplest sentences may consist of verbs accompanied by nouns in seven of the eight cases; only the vocative is not so used. The nouns fill the role of objects or, possibly better stated, of complements.

NOTE 2. Besides the simple sentence which consists only of a verb, a simple sentence in the early dialects and in PIE could consist of a verb accompanied by a noun or pronoun as complement. A subject however wasn’t mandatory. Nor were other constructions which may seem to be natural, such as indirect objects with verbs like ‘give’. The root *dō- or in its earlier form *deH- had in its simplest sense the meaning ‘present’ and was often unaccompanied by any nominal expression (Lehman).

Nominal sentences, in which a substantive is equated with another substantive, an adjective, or a particle, make up one of the simplest type of sentence in PIE.

NOTE 1. Such a type of sentence is found in almost every IE dialect; cf. Hitt. attaš aššuš, “the father (is) good”, Skr. tváṃ váruṇa, “you (are) Varuna”, O.Pers. adam Dārayavauš, “I (am) Darius”, Lat. omnia praeclara rara, “all the best things (are) rare”, etc. In all dialects, however, such sentences were restricted in its use to a especially formal use or, on the contrary, they are found more often than originally in PIE. Thus, in Latin and Germanic dialects they are found in proverbs and sayings, as in Old Irish; in Greek it is also found in epic and poetry. However, in Balto-Slavic dialects the pure nominal sentence has become the usual type of nominal sentence, even when the predicate is an adverb or an adverbial case. However, such a use, which is more extended in modern dialects (like Russian) than in the older ones (as Old Slavic), is considered the result of Finno-Ugrian influence.

NOTE 2. In the course of time a nominal sentence required a verb; this development is in accordance with the subjective characteristic of PIE and the endings which came to replace the individual qualifier markers of early PIE. The various dialects no longer had a distinct equational sentence type. Verbs might of course be omitted by ellipsis. And, remarkably, in Slavic, nominal sentences were reintroduced, as Meillet has demonstrated (1906-1908). The reintroduction is probably a result of influence from OV languages, such as the Finno-Ugric. This phenomenon illustrates that syntactic constructions and syntactic characteristics must be carefully studied before they can be ascribed to inheritance. In North Germanic too an OV characteristic was reintroduced, with the loss of prefixes towards the end of the first millennium A.D. (Lehmann 1970). Yet in spite of these subsequent OV influences, nominal sentences must be assumed for PIE.

A. There are traces of Pure Nominal Sentences with a predicate made by an oblique case of a noun or a prepositional compound, although they are not common to all Indo-European dialects.

NOTE. Apart from Balto-Slavic examples (due to Finno-Ugric influence), only some isolated examples are found; cf. Skr. havyaír Agnír mánuṣa īrayádhyai, “Agni must be prayed with the sacrifices of men”, Gk. pàr hépoige kaì hálloi oi ké mé timḗsousi, “near me (there are) others who [particle] will praise me” (Mendoza).

B. In addition to such expansions by means of additional nouns in nonrequired cases, sentences could be expanded by means of particles.

NOTE. For Lehman, three subsets of particles came to be particularly important. One of these is the set of preverbs, such as ā. Another is the set of sentence connectives, such as Hitt. nu. The third is the set of qualifier expressions, e.g., PIE mē ‘(must) not’. An additional subset, conjunctions introducing clauses, will be discussed below in the section on compound clauses.

Preverbs are distinctively characterized by being closely associated with verbs and modifying their meaning. In their normal position they stand directly before verbs (Watkins 1964).

Generally, thus, Concordance governed both members of the Pure Nominal Sentence.

NOTE. Unlike the personal verb and its complements (governed by inflection), the Nominal Sentence showed a strong reliance on Concordance between Subject and Predicate as a definitory feature: both needed the same case, and tended to have the same number and gender.

The copulative verb es is only necessary when introducing late categories in the verbal morphology, like Time and Mood. Therefore, when the Mood is the Indicative, and the Time is neuter (proverbs without timing, or Present with semantic neuter) there is no need to use es.

NOTE 1. The basic form of nominal sentences has, however, been a matter of dispute. Some Indo-Europeanists propose that the absence of a verb in nominal sentences is a result of ellipsis and assume an underlying verb es- ‘be’ (Benveniste 1950). They support this assumption by pointing to the requirement of such a verb if the nominal sentence is in the past tense; cf. Hitt. ABU.I̯A genzuu̯alaš ešta, “My father was merciful”. On the contrary, Meillet (1906-1908), followed by Lehman and Mendoza, thought that nominal sentences did not require a verb but that a verb might be included for emphasis. This conclusion may be supported by noting that the qualifiers which were found in PIE could be used in nominal sentences without a verb. As an example we may cite a Hittite sentence which is negative and imperative, 1-aš 1-edani menahhanda lē idāluš, “One should not be evil toward another one”. Yet, if a passage was to be explicit, a form of es could be used, as in Skr. nákir indra tvád úttaro ná jyyāṅ asti, “No one is higher than you, Indra, nor greater”.

NOTE 2. On the original meaning of es, since Brugmann (1925) meant originally “exist” hence its use as a copulative verb through constructions in which the predicate express the existence of the subject, as in Hom. Gk. eím Oduseús Laertiádes, “I am Odisseus, son of Laertes” (Mendoza). In PIE times there were seemingly other verbs (with similar meanings of ‘exist’) which could be used as copulatives; compare IE bhū, “exist, become, grow” (cf. O.Ind. bhávati, or as supletives in Lat. past fui, O.Ir. ba, O.Lith. búvo, fut. bùs, O.C.S. impf. bease, etc.), Germanic wes, ‘live, dwell’.

The most simple structure of the common Indo-European sentence consists of a verb, i.e. the carrying out of an action. In it, none of the verbal actors (Subject and Object) must be expressed – the subject is usually not obligatory, and the object appears only when it is linked to the lexical nature of the verb.

NOTE. The oldest morphological categories, even time, were expressed in the PIE through lexical means, and many remains are found of such a system; cf. Hitt. -za (reflexive), modal particles in Gk. and O.Ind., modal negation in some IE dialects, or the simple change in intonation, which made interrogative or imperative a declarative sentence – in fact, the imperative lacks a mark of its own.

The relationship between the Subject and the Object is expressed through the case.

There is no clear morphological distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs in Proto-Indo-European.

NOTE. Some Indo-European dialects have specialized some verbal suffixes as transitives (causatives) or intransitives, as Gk. -en, Gmc. -io, Lat. -a, etc., while in some others a preverb combined with a verbal root makes the basic verb transitive or intransitive.

When subjects are explicitly expressed, the nominative is the case employed.

NOTE. Expression of the subject is the most prominent extension of simple sentences to include more than one substantival expression. Besides such explicit mention of the subject, predicates may consist of verbs accompanied by two or more nouns, in cases which supplement the meanings of the verbs (v.i.). Such constructions must be distinguished from the inclusion of additional nouns whose case forms indicate adverbial use.

Few verbs are mandatorily accompanied by two nouns.

1. the use of the dative in addition to the accusative, as in Skr. tbhiām enaṃ pári dehi, ‘Give him over to those two’.

2. the instrumental and ablative, as Skr. áhan vṛtrám ... índro vájreṇa, ‘Indra killed ... Vṛtra with his bolt’. Skr. tváṃ dásyūm̐r ókaso agna ājaḥ, ‘You drove the enemies from the house, O Agni.’

NOTE.  While the addition to these sentences which is indicated by the nouns in the instrumental and the ablative is essential for the meaning of the lines in their context, it does not need to be included in the sentence for syntactic reasons.

3.  The causative accompanied by two accusatives, as Skr. devn̐ uśataḥ pāyayā havíḥ, ‘Make the desiring gods drink the libation’.

In such sentences the agent-accusative represents the object of the causative element: as Arthur A. Macdonell indicated (1916), in a corresponding simple sentence this noun would have been given in the nominative, as Skr. dev havíḥ pibanti, ‘The gods drink the libation’.

Accordingly a simple verb in PIE was at the most accompanied by one substantive, unless the additional substantive was complementary or adverbial.

Nonmandatory case forms are found in great variety, as may be determined from the studies of substantival inflections and their uses. Five groups of adverbial elements are identified: (1) circumstance, purpose, or result; (2) time; (3) place; (4) manner; (5) means.

1) Additional case forms may be used to indicate the Purpose, Result, or Circumstance of an action.

So e.g. the Instrumental in Skr. mṛḷáyā naḥ suastí, ‘Be gracious to us for our well-being’.

The Dative was commonly used in this sense, as in the infinitival form Skr. prá ṇa yur jīváse soma tārīḥ ‘Extend our years, soma, for our living [so that we may live long].’,

NOTE. Cf. Hitt. nu-kan ^mNana-Luin kuin DUMU.LUGAL ANA ^mNuwanza haluki para nehhun, ‘and the prince NanaLUiš whom I sent to Nuwanza to convey the message’ where Hittite dative noun haluki. (Raman 1973).

When an animate noun is involved, this use of the dative has been labeled the indirect object; as, Skr. riṇákti kṛṣṇ raṛuṣya pánthām, ‘Black night gives up the path to the red sun’.

NOTE. As these examples may indicate, the dative, like the other cases, must be interpreted with reference to the lexical properties of the verbal element.

2) A further adverbial segment in sentences indicates the Time of Occurrence. The cases in question are various, as in Skr. dívā náktaṃ śárum asmád yuyotam, ‘By day and during the night protect us from the arrow’.

NOTE. The nominal form dívā, which with change of accent is no longer an instrumental but an adverbial form outside the paradigm, and the accusative náktaṃ differ in meaning. The instrumental, like the locative, refers to a point in time, though the “point” may be extended; the accusative, to an extent of time. Differing cases accordingly provide different meanings for nouns marked for the lexical category time.

3) Nouns indicating Place also differ in meaning according to case form:

A. The Accusative indicates the goal of an action, as in Lat. Rōmam īre ‘go to Rome’, Hitt. tuš alkištan tarnahhe ‘and those (birds) I release to the branch’ (Otten and Souček 1969:38 § 37).

B. The Instrumental indicates the place “over which an action extends” (Macdonell 1916: 306): sárasvatyā yānti ‘they go along the Sarasvatī’.

C. The Ablative indicates the starting point of the action: sá ráthāt papāta ‘he fell from his chariot’; and the following example from Hittite (Otten and Souček 1969): iššaz (š)mit lālan AN.BARaš [d]āi, ‘He takes the iron tongue out of their mouths.’

D. The Locative indicates a point in space, e.g., Skt. diví ‘in heaven’ or the locative kardi in the following Hittite example (Otten and Souček): kardi-šmi-i̯a-at-kán dahhun, ‘And I took away that [illness which was] in your heart’.

Nouns with lexical features for place and for time may be used in the same sentence, as in Skr. ástam úpa náktam eti, ‘He goes during the night to the house’. Although both nouns are in the Accusative, the differing lexical features lead to different interpretations of the case. In this way, inflectional markers combine with lexical features to yield a wide variety of adverbial elements.

4) Among the adverbial elements which are most diverse in surface forms are those referring to Manner. Various cases are used, as follows.

A. The Accusative is especially frequent with adjectives, such as Skt. kṣiprám ‘quickly’, bahú ‘greatly’, nyák ‘downward’.

B. The Instrumental is also used, in the plural, as in Skt. máhobhiḥ ‘mightily’, as well as in the singular, sáhasā ‘suddenly’.

Similar to the expression of manner is the instrumental used to express the sense of accompaniment: Skr. devó devébhir ā́gamat, ‘May the god come [in such a way that he is] accompanied by the other gods’.

C. The Ablative is also used to express manner in connection with a restricted number of verbs such as those expressing ‘fear’: réjante víśvā kṛtrímāṇi bhīṣ, ‘All creatures tremble fearfully’.

5) Adverbial expressions of Means are expressed especially by the instrumental; as, Skr. áhan vṛtrám ... índro vájreṇa, ‘Indra killed ... Vṛtra with his bolt.’ The noun involved frequently refers to an instrument; cf. Hitt. kalulupuš šmuš gapinit hulaliemi, ‘I wind the thread around their fingers’.

Animate nouns may also be so used. When they are, they indicate the agent: agnínā turváṣaṃ yáduṃ parāváta ugr devaṃ havāmahe, ‘Through Agni we call from far Turvasa, Yadu, and Ugradeva’. This use led to the use of the instrumental as the agent in passive constructions.

The sentence was characterized in PIE by patterns of Order and by Selection.

A. Selection classes were determined in part by inflection, in part by lexical categories, most of which were covert.

NOTE. Some lexical categories were characterized at least in part by formal features, such as abstract nouns marked by -ti-, nouns in the religious sphere marked by -u- and collectives marked by *-h.

B. In addition to characterization by means of order and categories of selection, the sentence was also delimited by Intonation based on variations in pitch.

To the extent that the pitch phonemes of PIE have been determined, a high pitch may be posited, which could stand on one syllable per word, and a low pitch, which was not so restricted.

NOTE. The location of the high pitch is determined by Lehman primarily from the evidence in Vedic; the theory that this was inherited from PIE received important corroboration from Karl Verner's demonstration of its maintenance into Germanic (1875). Thus the often cited correlation between the position of the accent in the Vedic perfect and the differing consonants in Germanic provided decisive evidence for reconstruction of the PIE pitch accent as well as for Verner's law, as in the perfect (preterite) forms of the root deik-, show.

Words were characterized on one syllable by a high pitch accent, unless they were enclitic, that is, unmarked for accent.

Accented words could lose their high pitch accent if they were placed at specific positions in sentences.

A.  Vocatives lost their accent if they were medial in a sentence or clause; and finite verbs lost their accent unless they stood initially in an independent clause or in any position in a dependent clause in Vedic. These same rules may be assumed for PIE. On the basis of the two characteristic patterns of loss of accent for verbs, characteristic patterns of intonation may also be posited for the IE sentence.

Judging on the basis of loss of high pitch accent of verbs in them, independent clauses were characterized by final dropping in pitch. For in unmarked order the verb stands finally in the clause.

Clauses, however, which are marked either to convey emphasis or to indicate subordination, do not undergo such lowering. They may be distinguished with final

NOTE. The intonation pattern indicated by apparently conveyed the notion of an emotional or emphatic utterance or one requiring supplementation, as by another clause. These conclusions are supported by the patterns found in Germanic alliterative verse. For, as is well known, verbs were frequently placed by poets in the fourth, nonalliterating, metrically prominent position in the line: þeodcyninga þrym gefrūnon, of-people's-kings glory we-heard-of, ‘We heard of the glory of the kings of the people’. This placing of verbs, retained by metrical convention in Germanic verse, presumably maintains evidence for the IE intonation pattern. For, by contrast, verbs could alliterate when they stood initially in clauses or in subordinate clauses; egsode eorlas, syððan ǣrest wearð, he-terrified men since first he-was, ‘He terrified men from the time he first was [found]’. þenden wordum wēold wine Scyldinga, as-long-as with-words he-ruled the-friend of-the-Scyldings. The patterns of alliteration in the oldest Germanic verse accordingly support the conclusions that have been derived from Vedic accentuation regarding the intonation of the Indo-European sentence, as do patterns in other dialects.

Among such patterns is the preference for enclitics in second position in the sentence (Wackernagel 1892). Words found in this position are particles, pronouns, and verbs, which have no accent in Vedic texts. This observation of Wackernagel supports the conclusion that the intonation of the sentence was characterized by initial high pitch, with the voice trailing off at the end. For the enclitic elements were not placed initially, but rather they occupied positions in which unaccented portions of words were expected, as in Skr. prāvep mā bṛható mādayanti, ‘The dangling ones of the lofty tree gladden me’. The pronoun mā ‘me’, like other such enclitics, makes up a phrase with the initial word; in this way it is comparable to unaccented syllables of individual words, as in Skr. pravātej íriṇe várvṛtānāḥ, ‘[born] in a windy place, rolling on the dice-board’

A simple sentence then consisted not only of a unit accompanied by an intonation pattern, but also of subunits or phrases. These were identified by their accent and also by patterns of permitted finals.

The particles concerned are PIE nu, so, to, all of them introductory particles.

NOTE. Their homonymity with the adverb nu, nun and the anaphoric pronoun was one of the reasons earlier Indo-Europeanists failed to recognize them and their function. Yet Delbrück had already noted the clause-introducing function of Skr. sa (1888), as in Skr. tásya tni śīrṣṇi prá cicheda. sá yát somapnam sa tátaḥ kapíñjalaḥ sám abhavat, ‘He struck off his heads. From the one that drank soma, the hazel-hen was created’. Delbrück identified sa in this and other sentences as a particle and not a pronoun, for it did not agree in gender with a noun in the sentence. But it remained for Hittite to clarify the situation.

In Hittite texts the introductory use of the particles is unmistakable (J.Friedrich 1960); ta and šu occur primarily in the early texts, nu in the later, as illustrated in the following Old Hittite example (Otten and Souček 1969): GAD-an pešiemi šu- uš LÚ-aš natta aušzi ‘I throw a cloth over it and no one will see them’.

Besides such an introductory function (here as often elsewhere translated ‘and’), these particles were used as first element in a chain of enclitics, as in n-at-ši ‘and it to-him’, nu-mu-za-kan ‘and to-me self within’ and so on.

NOTE 1. In Homeric Greek such strings of particles follow different orders, but reflect the IE construction, as in: oudé nu soí per entrépetai phílon êtor, Olúmpie, ‘But your heart doesn't notice, Zeus’. As the translation of per here indicates, some particles were used to indicate the relationships between clauses marking the simple sentence.

NOTE 2. Many simple sentences in PIE would then be similar to those in Hittite and Vedic Sanskrit, such as those in the charming story taken by Delbrück from the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa. Among the simplest is Skr. tám índro didveṣa, ‘Indra hated him’. Presumably tam is a conflated form of the particle ta and the enclitic accusative singular pronoun; the combination is attested in Hittite as ta-an (J. Friedrich 1960). Besides the use of sentence-delimiting particles, these examples illustrate the simplicity of PIE sentences. Of the fifteen sentences in the story, only two have more than one nominal form per verb, and these are adverbial as observed above. Similar examples from the other early dialects could be cited, such as the Italic inscription of Praeneste, or the Germanic Gallehus inscription: Ek HlewagastiR HoltijaR horna tawido, ‘I, Hlewagastir of Holt, made the horn’. In these late texts, the subject was mandatory, and accordingly two nominal forms had come to be standard for the sentence. If however the subject is not taken into consideration, many sentences contained only one nominal element with verbs, in the early dialects as well as in PIE.

The Injunctive has long been identified as a form unmarked for mood and marked only for stem and person. It may thus be compared with the simplest form of OV languages.

 By contrast the Present indicative indicates “mood”. We associate this additional feature with the suffix -i, and assume for it declarative meaning.

NOTE 1. Yet it is also clear that, by the time of Vedic Sanskrit and, we assume, Late PIE, the injunctive no longer contrasted directly with the present indicative. We must therefore conclude that the declarative qualifier was expressed by other means in the sentence. We assume that the means of expression was an intonation pattern. For, in normal unmarked simple sentences, finite unaccented verbs stood finally in their clause, as did the predicative elements of nominal sentences; Delbrück's repeatedly used example may be cited once again to illustrate the typical pattern: víśaḥ kṣatríyāya balíṃ haranti, ‘The villagers pay tribute to the prince’. Since the verb haranti was unaccented, i.e., had no high pitch, we may posit for the normal sentence an intonation pattern in which the final elements in the sentence were accompanied by low pitch.

NOTE 2. Lehman supports this assumption by noting that a distinctive suprasegmental was used in Vedic to distinguish a contrasting feature, interrogation or request (Wackernagel 1896). This marker, called pluti by native grammarians, consisted of extra length, as in ágnā3i ‘O fire’ (3 indicates extra length). But a more direct contrast with the intonation of simple sentences may be exemplified by the accentuation of subordinate clauses. These have accented verbs, as in the following line from the Rigveda: antáś ca prgā áditir bhavāsi, ‘If you have entered inside, you will be Aditi’. As the pitch accent on ágā indicates, verbs in subordinate clauses maintained high pitch, in contrast with verbs of independent clauses like bhavāsi. We may conclude that this high pitch was an element in an intonation pattern which indicated incompleteness, somewhat like the pattern of contemporary English.

Evidence from other dialects supports the conclusion that, in late PIE, Declarative sentences were indicated by means of an intonation pattern with a drop in accentuation at the end of the clause.

NOTE. In Germanic verse, verbs of unmarked declarative sentences tend to occupy unaccented positions in the line, notably the final position (Lehmann 1956). Although the surface expression of accentuation patterns in Germanic is stress, rather than the pitch of Vedic and PIE, the coincidence of accentuation pattern supports our conclusions concerning PIE intonation.

The Interrogation was apparently also indicated by means of Intonation, for some questions in our early texts have no surface segmental indication distinguishing them from statements, for example, Plautus Aulularia 213, aetatem meam scis, ‘Do you know my age?’

NOTE. Only the context indicates to us that this utterance was a question; we may assume that the spoken form included means of expressing Int., and in view of expressions in the later dialects we can only conclude that these means were an intonation pattern.

Questions are generally classified into two groups:

A. Those framed to obtain clarification (Verdeutlichungsfragen), and

B. Those framed to obtain confirmation (Bestätigungsfragen). This feature accompanies statements in which a speaker sets out to elicit information from the hearer.

NOTE. It may be indicated by an intonation pattern, as noted above, or by an affix or a particle, or by characteristic patterns of order, as in German Ist er da? ‘Is he here?’ When the Interrogative sentence is so expressed, the surface marker commonly occupies second position among the question elements, if the entire clause is questioned. Such means of expression for Int. are found in IE languages, as Lat. -ne, which, according to Minton Warren “occurs about 1100 times in Plautus and over 40 times in Terence” (1881). Besides expressions like Lat. egone ‘Me?’, sentences like the following occur (Plautus Asinaria 884): Aúdin quid ait? Artemona: Aúdio. ‘Did you hear what he is saying? Artemona: yes’

Other evidence for a postponed particle for expressing Int. is found in Avestan, in which -na is suffixed to some interrogatives, as in Av. kas-nā ‘who (then)?’; and in Germanic, where na is found finally in some questions in Old High German. Old Church Slavic is more consistent in the use of such a particle than are these dialects, as in chošteši li ‘Do you wish to?’ This particle is also used in contemporary Russian.

The particle used to express Interrogation in Latin, Avestan, and Germanic is homophonous with the particle for expressing negation, PIE nĕ.

NOTE. It is not unlikely that PIE ne of questions is the same particle as that used for the negative. As the interrogative particle, however, it has been lost in most dialects. After Lehman (1974), its loss is one of the indications that late PIE was not a consistent OV language. After Mendoza, the fact that such Interrogatives of a yes/no-answer are introduced by different particles in the oldest attested dialects means that no single particle was generalized by Late PIE; cf. Goth. u, Lat. -ne, nonne, num Gk. ἣ, νὐ , Skr. nu, Sla. li. However, the common findings of Hittite, Indo-Iranian, Germanic and Latin are similar if not the same. In any case, for most linguists, rather than a postposed particle, 1) Intonation was used to express the Interrogatives, as well as 2) Particles that were placed early in clauses, often Initially.

The partial Interrogative sentences are those which expect an aclaratory answer; they are introduced in PIE by pronominal or adverbial forms derived from interrogative qi/qo, always placed initially but for marked sentences, where a change in position is admited to emphasize it.

NOTE. In some languages, Interrogatives may be strengthened by the addition of posposed particles with interrogative sense, as in Av. kaš-na. Such forms introduce indirect interrogatives when they ask about a part of the sentence. Indirect interrogatives in the form of Total interrogatives (i.e., not of yes/no-answer) are introduces by particles derived from direct interrogative particles (when there are) or by conditional conjunctions; as Hitt. man.

Indications of Negation, by which the speaker negates the verbal means of expression, commonly occupies third position in the hierarchy of sentence elements.

We can only posit the particles nĕ and mē, neither of which is normally postposed after verbs.

NOTE 1. For prohibitive particle mē, compare Gk. μή, O.Ind.,Av.,O.Pers. mā, Toch. mar/mā, Arm. mi, Alb. mos. In other IE dialects it was substituted by nē, cf. Goth. ne, Lat. nē (also as modal negation), Ira. ni. It is not clear whether Hitt. lē is ultimately derived from mē or nē. PIE nĕ is found as Goth.,O.H.G. ni, Lat. nĕ- (e.g. in nequis) O.Ind. ná, O.Sla. ne, etc. Sometimes it is found in lengthened or strengthened forms as Hitt. natta, Lat. non, Skr. ned, etc. A common PIE lengthened form is nei, which appears in Lat. ni, Lith. neî, Sla. ni, etc., and which may also ultimately be related to Proto-Uralic negative *ei- (Kortlandt, v.s.).

NOTE 2. In the oldest languages, negation seems to have been preverbal; Vedic nákis, Gk. oú tis, mḗ tis, Lat. nēmo, OHG nioman ‘no one’, and so on. The negative element ne was not used in compounding in PIE (Brugmann 1904); ṇ- had this function. Moreover, there is evidence for proposing that other particles were placed postverbally in PIE (Delbrück 1897). Delbrück has classified these in a special group, which he labels particles. They have been maintained postpositively primarily in frozen expressions: ē in Gk. egṓnē, ge in égōge ‘I’ (Schwyzer 1939). But they are also frequent in Vedic and early Greek; Delbrück (1897) discusses at length the use of Skt. gha, Gk. ge, and Skt. sma, Gk. mén, after pronouns, nouns, particles, and verbs, cf. Lat. nōlo < ne volo, Goth. nist< ni ist, and also, negative forms of the indefinite pronoun as O.Ind. m-kis, ná-kis, Lat. ne-quis, etc. which may indicate an old initial absolute position, which could be also supported by the development of corrleative forms like Lat. neque, etc., which combine negation and coordination. Lehman, on the contrary, believes in an older posposed order, characteristic of OV languages (i.e. a situation in IE II), because of the usually attributed value of emphasis to the initial position of negation, postverbal negation examples (even absolute final position in Hittite and Greek), the old existence of the form nei, as well as innovative forms like Lat. ne-quis or Gk. oú-tis.

NOTE 3. In Modern Indo-European, thus, negation should usually be preverbal, as in modern Romance languages (cf. Fr. n’est, Spa. no es, etc.), but it can be postponed in emphatic contexts, as it is usual in modern Germanic languages (cf. Eng. is not, Ger. ist nicht, etc.), as well as in very formal texts, thus imitating some of the most archaic findings of early PIE dialects.

1. Proto-Indo-European Attributive Adjectives were normally preposed.

NOTE. Delbrück summarizes the findings for Vedic, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, and Germanic, giving examples like the following from Vedic: śvetḥ párvatāḥ, ‘white mountains’ (1900).  Lehman (1974) adds an example of Hitt. šuppi watar, ‘pure water’.

In marked constructions Adjectives might be postposed, as in áśvaḥ śvetáḥ, ‘a white horse, a gray’.

2. The position of the Attributive Genitive is the same as that of the Attributive Adjective.

NOTE. A striking example is given from the Old English legal language (Delbrück 1900): ōðres mannes hūses dura, ‘the door of the house of the other man’.

Like the adjective construction, the attributive-genitive construction may have the modifier postposed for marked effect, as is sómasya in SB 3.9.4.15 (Delbrück 1878): kíṃ nas tátaḥ syād íti? prathamabhakṣsá evá sómasyar jña íti, ‘What might then happen for us?’ ‘The first enjoyment of [Prince] Soma’.

NOTE 1. The relatively frequent marked use of the genitive may be the cause for the apparently free position of the genitive in Greek and Latin. The ambivalent order may also have resulted from the change of these languages toward a VO order. But, as Delbrück indicates, the preposed order is well attested in the majority of dialects. This order is also characteristic of Hittite (J. Friedrich 1960). We may therefore assume it for PIE.

NOTE 2. In accordance with Lehman’s views on syntactic structure, the attributive genitive, like the attributive adjective, must be derived from an embedded sentence. The sentence would have a noun phrase equivalent with that in the matrix sentence and would be a predicate nominal sentence. Such independent sentences are attested in the older dialects. Delbrück gives a number of examples, among them: aṣṭaú ha vaí putr ádites, ‘Aditi had eight sons’. áhar devnām sīt, ‘Day belonged to the gods’. These sentences accordingly illustrate that the genitive was used in predicate nominative sentences to convey what Calvert Watkins has labeled its primary syntactic function: the sense “of belonging”. When such a sentence was embedded in another with an equivalent NP, the NP was deleted, and the typical genitive construction resulted. Hittite also uses s as a genitive as well as a nominative marker. For “genitives” like haššannaššaš ‘(one) of his race’ can be further inflected, as in the accusative haššannaš-šan ‘(to one) of his race’ (J. Friedrich).

1. In the derivation of compounds special compounding rules apply.

The verbal compounds in a language observe the basic order patterns, For PIE we would expect an older OV order in compounds, as e.g. Skt. agnídh- ‘priest’ < agni ‘fire’ + idh ‘kindle.’

NOTE. A direct relationship between compounds and basic syntactic patterns is found only when the compounds are primary and productive. After a specific type of compound becomes established in a language, further compounds may be constructed on the basis of analogy, for example Gk. híppagros ‘wild horse’, in contrast with the standard productive Greek compounds in which the adjectival element precedes the modified, as in agriókhoiros ‘wild swine’ (Risch 1944-1949). Here we will consider the primary and productive kinds of compounds in PIE.

2. Two large classes and other minor types  are found:

A. the Synthetics (noun+noun), which make up the majority of the PIE compounds,

a. Pure Synthetics, i.e. noun+noun.

b. Sinthetics in which the first element is adverbial, i.e. adverb+noun.

B. The Bahuvrihis.

C. Adjective + Nouns, apparently not so productive in PIE as in its dialects.

D. A small number of additive compounds.

Synthetics

Synthetics consist of a nominal element preceding a verbal, in their unmarked forms, as in Skt. agnídh-, ‘priest’. As in this compound, the relation of the nominal element to the verbal is that of target.

The particular relationship of nominal and verbal elements was determined by the lexical properties of the verb; accordingly, the primary relationship for most PIE verbs was that of target. But other nominal categories could also be used with verbs.

3. Kinds of Relationships:

1) The Receptor relationship, as Skr. devahéḍana, ‘angering the gods’.

2) The Instrument or Means relationship; as Skr. ádrijūta, ‘speeded by the stones’,

The compound ṛtajā of this passage may illustrate the Time relationship.

3) The Source relationship, as Skr. aṅhomúc, ‘freeing from trouble’.

4)  The Place relationship, as Skr. druṣád, ‘sitting in a tree’.

5) The Manner relationship; as, Skr. īśānakŕt, ‘acting like a ruler’.

These compounds exhibit the various relationships of nominal constituents with verbal elements, as in Skr. tv-datta, ‘given by you’.

NOTE. Synthetics attested in the Rigveda accordingly illustrate all the nominal relationships determinable from sentences. Synthetics are frequently comparable to relative constructions, as in the following sentence:  gnír agāmi bhrato vṛtrah purucétaṇaḥ, ‘Agni, the god of the Bharatas, was approached, he who killed Vṛtra, who is seen by many’.

Besides the large number of synthetics of the NV pattern, others are attested with the pattern VN. These are largely names and epithets, such as púṣṭi-gu, a name meaning ‘one who raises cattle’ (RV 8.51.1.), and sanád-rayi ‘dispensing riches’.

Bahuvrihis

The second large group of PIE compounds, Bahuvrihis, are derived in accordance with the sentence pattern expressing Possession. This pattern is well known from the Latin mihi est construction (Bennett 1914; Brugmann 1911): nulli est homini perpetuom bonum, “No man has perpetual blessings”.

Lehman accounts for the derivation of bahuvrihis, like Lat. magnanimus ‘great-hearted’, by assuming that an equational sentence with a noun phrase as subject and a noun in the receptor category indicating possession is embedded with an equivalent noun, as in the following example (‘great spirit is to man’ = ‘the man has great spirit’):

On deletion of the equivalent NP (homini) in the embedded sentence, a bahuvrihi compound magnanimus ‘greathearted’ is generated. This pattern of compounding ceased to be primary and productive when the dialects developed verbal patterns for expressing possession, such as Lat. habeo ‘I have’.

Bahuvrihis may be adjectival in use, or nominal, as in the vocative use of sūnari ‘having good strength’ (made up of su ‘good’ and *xner- ‘(magical) strength’) in Slr. víśvasya hí prṇanaṃ jvanaṁ tvé, ví yid uchási sūnari, ‘For the breath and life of everything is in you, when you light up the skies, you who have good strength’. The Greek cognate may illustrate the adjectival use: phéron d’ euḗnora khalkón ‘They carried on board the bronze of good strength’. The bahuvrihis are accordingly similar to synthetics in being comparable to relative clauses.

NOTE. Although the bahuvrihis were no longer primary and productive in the later dialects, their pattern remained remarkably persistent, as we may note from the various philo- compounds in Greek, such as philósophos, ‘one who holds wisdom dear’, phíloinos, ‘one who likes wine’, and many more. Apart from the loss of the underlying syntactic pattern, the introduction of different accentual patterns removed the basis for bahuvrihis. As Risch pointed out, Greek eupátōr could either be a bahuvrihi ‘having a good father’ or a tatpurusha ‘a noble father’. In the period before the position of the accent was determined by the quantity of final syllables, the bahuvrihi would have had the accent on the prior syllable, like rja-putra ‘having kings as sons’, RV 2.27.7, in contrast with the tatpurusha rja-putrá ‘king's son’, RV 10.40.3. The bahuvrihis in time, then, were far less frequent than tatpurushas, of which only a few are to be posited for late PIE. An example is Gk. propátōr ‘forefather’. If the disputed etymology of Latin proprius ‘own’ is accepted, *pro-p(a)triós ‘from the forefathers’, there is evidence for assuming a PIE etymon; Wackernagel (1905) derives Sanskrit compounds like prá-pada ‘tip of foot’ from PIE. Yet the small number of such compounds in the early dialects indicates that they were formed in the late stage of PIE (Risch).

NOTE 2. Dvandvas, such as índrāviṣ́ṇu and a few other patterns, like the teens, were not highly productive in PIE, if they are to be assumed at all. Their lack of productiveness may reflect poorly developed coordination constructions in PIE (Lehmann 1969). Besides the expansion of tatpurushas and dvandvas in the dialects, we must note also the use of expanded root forms. Thematic forms of noun stems and derived forms of verbal roots are used, as in Skt. deva-kṛta, ‘made by the gods’. Such extended constituents become more and more prominent and eventually are characteristic elements of compounds, as the connecting vowel -o- in Greek and in early Germanic; Gk. Apolló-dōros ‘gift of Apollo’ (an n- stem) and Goth. guma-kunds ‘of male sex’ (also an n- stem). Yet the relationships between the constituents remain unchanged by such morphological innovations. The large number of tatpurushas in the dialects reflects the prominence of embedded-modifier constructions, as the earlier synthetics and bahuvrihis reflected the embedding of sentences, often to empty noun nodes. As noted above, they accordingly have given us valuable information about PIE sentence types and their internal relationships.

Nouns are generally unaccompanied by modifiers, as characteristic passages from an Archaic hymn of the Rigveda and from an Old Hittite text may indicate.

Demonstratives are infrequent; nouns which might be considered definite have no accompanying determinative marker unless they are to be stressed. The Demonstrative then precedes.

The relationship between such Demonstratives and accompanying Nouns has been assumed to be Appositional; it may be preferable to label the relationship a loose one, as of pronoun or noun plus noun, rather than adjective or article plus noun.

NOTE. In Homer too the “article” is generally an anaphoric pronoun, differing from demonstratives by its lack of deictic meaning referring to location (Munro). Nominal phrases as found in Classical Greek or in later dialects are subsequent developments; the relationship between syntactic elements related by congruence, such as adjectives, or even by case, such as genitives, can often be taken as similar to an appositional relationship (Meillet 1937).

To illustrate nominal phrases, cf. Vedic eṣām marútām, “of-them of-Maruts”. The nominal phrase which may seem to consist of a demonstrative preceding a noun, eṣām marútām, is divided by the end of the line; accordingly eṣām must be interpreted as pronominal rather than adjectival.

The following Hittite passage from a ritual illustrates a similar asyndetic relationship between the elements of nominal phrases (Otten and Souček 1969): harkanzi- ma –an ^dHantašepeš anduhšaš harša[(r)] –a ^gišŠUKUR^hi.a , But the Hantašepa-gods hold heads of men as well as lances. In this sentence the nouns for ‘heads’ and ‘lances’ supplement ‘it’. Moreover, while the meaning of the last word is uncertain, its relationship to the preceding elements is imprecise, for it is a nominative plural, not an accusative. Virtually any line of Homer might be cited to illustrate the absence of close relationships between the members of nominal phrases; cf. Odyssey nēȗs dé moi hḗd’ héstēken ep’ agroȗ nósphi pólēos, en liméni Rheíthrōi hupò Nēíōi hulḗenti, ‘My ship is berthed yonder in the country away from the city, in a harbor called Rheithron below Neion, which is wooded’. The nouns have no determiners even when, like nēus, they are definite; and the modifiers with liméni and Neíoi seem to be loosely related epithets rather than closely linked descriptive adjectives.

The conclusions about the lack of closely related nominal phrases may be supported by the status of compounds in PIE. The compounds consisting of Descriptive Adjectives + Noun are later; the most productive are reduced verbal rather than nominal constructions. And the bahuvrihis, which indicate a descriptive relationship between the first element and the second, support the conclusion that the relationship is relatively general; rājá-putra, for example, means ‘having sons who are kings’ rather than ‘having royal sons’; gó-vapus means ‘having a shape like a cow’, said of rainclouds, for which the epithet denotes the fructifying quality rather than the physical shape.

Accordingly, closely related nominal expressions are to be assumed only for the dialects, not for PIE. Definiteness was not indicated for nouns. The primary relationship between nominal elements, whether nouns or adjectives, was appositional.

The syntactic patterns assumed for late PIE may be illustrated by narrative passages from the early dialects. The following passage tells of King Hariśchandra, who has been childless but has a son after promising Varuna that he will sacrifice any son to him. After the birth of the son, however, the king asks Varuna to put off the time of the sacrifice, until finally the son escapes to the forest; a few lines suffice to illustrate the simple syntactic patterns.

	AB 7.14.	athainam uvāca varuṇaṁ rājānam upadhāva putro then-him he-told Varuna king you-go-to son Acc. sg. Perf. 3 sg. Acc. sg. Acc. sg. Imper. 2 sg. Nom. sg.
		me jāyatāṁ tena tvā yajā to-me let-him-be-born with-him you I-worship   Imper. 3 sg. Inst. sg. Acc. sg. Mid. Pres.
		iti. tatheti. sa varuṇaṁ end-quotation indeed-end quotation ‘he’ Varuna   (<tathā iti) 3 sg. Nom.
		rājānam upasasāra putro me jāyatāṁ tena king went-to son to-me let-him-be-born with-him   Perf. 3 sg.
		tvā yajā iti. tatheti. you I-worship end-quotation indeed-end-quotation
		tasya ha putro jajñe rohito nāma. his, of-him now son he-was-born Rohita name Gen. sg. m. Ptc.   Mid. Perf. 3 sg.
		taṁ hovācājani te vai putro him Ptc.-he-told-he-was born to-you indeed son Acc. sg. Aor. Pass. 3 sg. Ptc.   Ptc.
		yajasva māneneti. sa you-worship me-with-him-end-quotation ‘he’ Mid. Imper. 2 sg. Acc. sg.-Inst. sg.
		hovāca yadā vai paśur nirdaśo Ptc.-he-told when indeed animal above-ten   Conj. Ptc. Nom. sg. m. Nom. sg. m.
		bhavatyatha sa medhyo bhavati. nirdaśo he-becomes-then he strong he-becomes above-ten Pres. 3 sg.-Ptc.   Nom. sg. m.
		’nvastvatha tvā yajā iti. Ptc.-let-him-be-then you I-worship end-quotation Imper. 2 sg. Acc. sg.
		tatheti. sa ha nirdaśa āsa indeed-end-quotation he now above-ten he-was Perf. 3 sg.
	Then he [the Rishi Narada] told him [Hariśchandra]: “Go to King Varuna. [Tell him]: ‘Let a son be born to me. With him I will worship you [= I will sacrifice him to you] .’”
	“Fine,” [he said].
	He went to King Varuna [saying]: “Let a son be born to me. I will sacrifice him to you.”
	“Fine,” [he said]
	Now his son was born. Rohita [was his] name.
	[Varuna] spoke to him. “A son has indeed been born to you. Sacrifice him to me.”
	He said thereupon: “When an animal gets to be ten [days old], then he becomes strong [= fit for sacrifice]. Let him be ten days old; then I will worship you.”
	“Fine,” he said.
	He now became ten.

As this passage illustrates, nouns have few modifiers. Even the sequence: tasya ha putro, which might be interpreted as a nominal phrase corresponding to ‘his son’, consists of distinct components, and these should be taken as meaning: “Of him a son [was born]”. As in the poetic passage cited above, nouns and pronouns are individual items in the sentence and when accompanied by modifiers have only a loose relationship with them, as to epithets.

Apposition is traditionally “when paratactically joined forms are grammatically, but not in meaning, equivalent”.

NOTE. Because of the relationship between nouns and modifiers, and also because subjects of verbs were only explicit expressions for the subjective elements in verb forms, Meillet (1937) considered apposition a basic characteristic of Indo-European syntax. As in the previous passage, subjects were included only when a specific meaning was to be expressed, such as putra ‘son’. The element sa may still be taken as an introductory particle, a sentence connective, much as iti of tathā iti, etc., is a sentence-final particle. And the only contiguous nouns in the same case, varunam rājānam, are clearly appositional.

A distinction is made between Appositional and Attributive (Delbrück); an appositional relationship between two or more words is not indicated by any formal expression, whereas an attributive relationship generally is.

NOTE. Thus the relationships in the following line of the Odyssey are attributive: arnúmenos hḗn te psukhḗn kaì nóston hetaírōn, lit. “striving-for his Ptc. life and return of-companions”. The relationship between hḗn and psukhḗn is indicated by the concordance in endings; that between nóston and hetaírōn by the genitive. On the other hand the relationship between the two vocatives in the following line is appositional, because there is no mark indicating the relationship: tȏn hamóthen ge, theá, thúgater Diós, eipè kaì hēmȋn, ‘Tell us of these things, beginning at any point you like, goddess, daughter of Zeus’. Both vocatives can be taken independently, as can any appositional elements.

Asyndetic constructions which are not appositive are frequently attested, as Skr. té vo hṛdé mánase santu yajñ, ‘These sacrifices should be in accordance with your heart, your mind’. Coordinate as well as appositive constructions could thus be without a specific coordinating marker.

Comparable to appositional constructions are titles, for, like appositions, the two or more nouns involved refer to one person.

NOTE. In OV languages titles are postposed in contrast with the preposing in VO languages; compare Japanese Tanaka-san with Mr. Middlefield. The title ‘king’ with Varuna and similarly in the Odyssey, Poseidáōni ánakti, when ánaks is used as a title. But, as Lehman himself admits, even in the early texts, titles often precede names, in keeping with the change toward a VO structure.

Appositions normally follow, when nouns and noun groups are contiguous, as in the frequent descriptive epithets of Homer: Tòn d’ ēmeíbet’ épeita theá, glaukȏpis Athḗnē, ‘Him then answered the goddess, owl-eyed Athene’.

To indicate a marked relationship, however, they may precede (Schwyzer 1950). But the early PIE position is clear from the cognates: Skt. dyaus pitā, Gk. Zeȗ páter, Lat. Jūpiter.

While coordination is prominent in the earliest texts, it is generally implicit.

The oldest surviving texts consist largely of paratactic sentences, often with no connecting particles.

New sentences may be introduced with particles, or relationships may be indicated with pronominal elements; but these are fewer than in subsequent texts.

Similar patterns of paratactic sentences are found in Hittite, with no overt marker of coordination or of subordination. J. Friedrich states that “purpose and result” clauses are not found in Hittite (1960), but that coordinate sentences are simply arranged side by side with the particle nu, as in the Hittite Laws. Conditional relationships too are found in Hittite with no indication of subordination (J. Friedrich 1960).

NOTE. The subordinate relationships that are indicated, however, have elements that are related to relative particles. Accordingly the subordination found in the early dialects is a type of relative construction. As such examples and these references indicate, no characteristic patterns of order, or of verb forms, distinguish subordinate from coordinate clauses in PIE and the early dialects. Hermann therefore concluded in his celebrated article that there were no subordinate clauses in PIE (1895). For Lehman (1974), the paratactic arrangement which he assumed for PIE, however, is characteristic of OV languages. Hypotaxis in OV languages is often expressed by nonfinite verb forms and by postposed particles.

The arrangement of sentences in sequence is a typical pattern of PIE syntax, whether for hypotactic or for paratactic relationships.

Expressions for coordination were used largely for elements within clauses and sentences. When used to link sentences, conjunctions were often accompanied by initial particles indicating the beginning of a new clause and also indicating a variety of possible relationships with neighboring clauses.

NOTE. Sentence-connecting particles are, however, infrequent in Vedic and relatively infrequent in the earliest Hittite texts; Lehman concludes that formal markers of sentence coordination were not mandatory in PIE.

The normal coordinating particle in most of the dialects is a reflex of PIE -qe.

This is postposed to the second of two conjoined elements, or to both.

NOTE. Hittite -a, -i̯a is used similarly, as in attaš annaš a ‘father and mother’ (J. Friedrich 1960).

The disjunctive particle PIE -w is also postposed

NOTE 1. In Hittite, however, besides the postposed disjunctive particles -ku ... -ku ‘or’, there was the disjunctive particle našma, which stood between nouns rather than after the last. This pattern of conjunction placement came to be increasingly frequent in the dialects; it indicates that the conjunction patterns of VO structure have come to be typical already by IE II.

NOTE 2. With the change in coordinating constructions, new particles were introduced; some of these, for example, Lat. et, Goth. jah, OE and, have a generally accepted etymology; others, like Gk. kaí, are obscure in etymology. Syntactically the shift in the construction rather than the source of the particles is of primary interest, though, as noted above, the introduction of new markers for the new VO patterns provides welcome lexical evidence of a shift. The syntactic shift also brought with it patterns of coordination reduction (Ersparung) which have been well described for some dialects (Behaghel). Such constructions are notable especially in SVO languages, in which sequences with equivalent verbs (S, V, O, Conj., S₂, V₁, O₂) delete the second occurrence of the verb , as M.H.G. daz einer einez will und ein ander ein anderz, ‘that one one-thing wants and another an other’.

Reduction of equivalent nouns in either S or O position is also standard, as in Beowulf.

NOTE. But in the paratactic structures characteristic of Hittite, such reduction is often avoided. In an SVO language the second memii̯as would probably not have been explicitly stated, as in: ‘now my speech came to be halting and was uttered slowly’. The lack of such reduction, often a characteristic of OV languages, gives an impression of paratactic syntax. Another pattern seeming to be paratactic is the preposing of “subordinate clauses,” either with no mark of subordination or with a kind of relative particle, as in the concluding passage of Muršilis Sprachlähmung (Götze and Pedersen 1934). The second from last clause has no mark to indicate subordination; the earlier clauses contain a form of relative particle.

	IŠTU GIŠBANŠUR-ma-za-kán kuizza azikinun from table-but-Refl.-Ptc. from-which I-was-accustomed-to-eat
	IŠTU GAL-i̯a-kán kuizza akkuškinun from beaker-and-Ptc. from-which I-was-accustomed-to-drink
	šašti-i̯a-za-kán ku̯edani šeškeškinun IŠTU in-bed-and-Refl.-Ptc. in-which I-was-accustomed-to-sit from
	URUDDU10xA-ia-za-kán kuizza arreškinun basin-and-Refl.-Ptc. from-which I-was-accustomed-to-wash
	kuit-i̯a imma ÚNUTU anda u̯erii̯an ešta nu UL what-and else utensil Adv.-Ptc. mentioned it-was now not
	kuitki dattat IŠTU DINGIRLI QATAMMA SIxDI-at any it-was-taken from god likewise it-was-determined
	‘The god also determined that nothing more should be used of the table from which I was accustomed to eat, of the beaker from which I was accustomed to drink, of the bed in which I was accustomed to sleep, of the basin in which I was accustomed to wash, and of whatever other article was mentioned’

In an SVO language like English, the principal clause, which stands last in Hittite, would be placed first. The interpretation of the preceding clause as a result clause is taken from Götze and Pedersen. The initial clauses contain relative particles which indicate the relationship to kuitki of the second-from-last clause; they also contain coordinating particles: a, i̯a. In this passage the clauses, whether coordinate or subordinate from our point of view, are simply arrayed in sequence. Each concludes with a finite verb which provides no evidence of hypotaxis. The sentence connectives which occur—repeated instances of a/ia—heighten the impression of coordination.

The absence in Hittite of verb forms – which are cognates of the Vedic and Greek optative and subjunctive –  which came to be used largely to indicate subordination is highly consistent in its OV patterning, as such verb forms were not required.

Hittite however did not forego another device, which is used to indicate subordinate relationship in OV as well as VO languages, the so-called nonfinite verb forms. These are used for less explicit kinds of complementation, much the way relative constructions are used for more explicit kinds.

 

Compound sentences may result from the embedding of nominal modifiers.

NOTE. In VO languages embedded nominal modifiers follow nouns, whereas in OV languages they precede nouns. This observation has led to an understanding of the Hittite and the reconstructed PIE relative constructions. if we follow the standard assumption that in relative constructions a second sentence containing an NP equivalent to an NP in the matrix sentence is embedded in that matrix sentence, we may expect that either sentence may be modified. A sentence may also be embedded with a dummy noun; the verb forms of such embedded sentences are commonly expressed with nominal forms of the verb, variously called infinitives, supines, or participles. In OV languages these, as well as relative constructions, precede the verb of the matrix sentence.

An example with participles in the IE languages is Skr. vásānaḥ in the last lines of the following Strophic hymn: rúśad vásānaḥ sudṛśīkarūpaḥ, “brightly dressing-himself beautifully-hued”.

It may also have “a final or consequential sense”, as in the following Strophic hymn: tvám indra srávitav apás kaḥ, ‘You, O Indra, make the waters to flow.’ Also in the poetic texts such infinitives may follow the main verb, as in ábodhi hótā yajáthāya devn, lit. “he-woke-up priest for-sacrificing gods”, ‘The priest has awakened to sacrifice to the gods’.

NOTE. The postposed order may result from stylistic or poetic rearrangement; yet it is also a reflection of the shift to VO order, a shift which is reflected in the normal position for infinitives in the other IE dialects. In the Brahmanas still, infinitives normally stand directly before the verb, except in interrogative and negative sentences (Delbrück).  On the basis of the Brahmanic order we may assume that in PIE nonfinite verbs used as complements to principal verbs preceded them in the sentence. Hittite provides examples of preposed complementary participles and infinitives to support this assumption (J. Friedrich). Participles were used particularly with har(k)- ‘have’ and eš- ‘be’, as in uerii̯an ešta ‘was mentioned’; the pattern is used to indicate state.

1. Infinitives could indicate result, with or without an object (J. Friedrich 1960): 1-aš 1-an kunanna lē šanhanzi, lit. “one one to-kill not he-tries”, i.e. ‘One should not try to kill another’.

2. Infinitives could be used to express purpose, as in the following example, which pairs an infinitive with a noun (J. Friedrich): tuk-ma kī uttar ŠÀ-ta šii̯anna išhiull-a ešdu, lit. “to-you-however this word in-heart for-laying instruction-and it-should-be”, i.e. ‘But for you this word should be for taking to heart and for instruction’.

3. The Infinitive could be loosely related to its object, as in examples cited by Friedrich, such as apāš-ma-mu harkanna šan(a)hta, lit. “he-however-me for-deteriorating he-sought”, i.e. ‘But he sought to destroy me’.

4. The complementary infinitive indicates the purpose of the action; as Friedrich points out, it is attached to the verb šanhta plus its object mu in a construction quite different from that in subsequent dialects.

NOTE. These uses are paralleled by uses in Vedic, as may be noted in the work of Macdonell (1916), from which some examples are taken in Lehman (1974). On the basis of such examples in Vedic and in Hittite, he assumes that infinitive constructions were used to indicate a variety of complements in PIE.

Hittite and Sanskrit also provide examples of Participles functioning appositionally or as adjectives indicating state (J. Friedrich 1960): ammuk-u̯ar-an akkantan IQ.BI, lit. to-me-Pte.-indicating-quotation-him dying he-described, i.e. ‘He told me that one had died.’

NOTE. This pattern had been noted by Delbrück for the Rigveda, with various examples (1900:327), as śiśīhí mā śiśayáṃ tvā śṛṇomi, ‘Strengthen me; I hear that you are strong.’ The adjective śiśayá ‘strengthening’ is an adjective derived from the same root as śiśīhí. Delbrück also noted that such “appositives” are indicated in Greek by means of clauses. Greek represents for Lehman accordingly a further stage in the development of the IE languages to a VO order. Yet Greek still maintained preposed participles having the same subject as does the principal verb, as in: tḕn mèn idṑn gḗthēse, lit. “it Ptc. seeing he-rejoiced”

This pattern permits the use of two verbs with only one indicating mood and person; the nonfinite verb takes these categories from the finite.

 Participles were thus used in the older period for a great variety of relationships. though also without indicating some of the verbal categories.

Dependent clauses are more flexible in indicating such relationships, and more precise, especially when complementary participles and infinitives follow the principal verb.

Indo-Europeanists have long recognized the relationship between the Subordinating Particles and the stem from which Relative Pronouns were derived in Indo-Iranian and Greek.

NOTE. Thus Delbrück has pointed out in detail how the neuter accusative form of PIE jo- was the basis of the conjunction jod in its various meanings: (1) Temporal, (2) Temporal-Causal, (3) Temporal-Conditional, (4) Purpose. He also recognized the source of conjunctional use in sentences like Skr. yáj jyathās tád áhar asya kme ’ṅśóḥ pīyū́ṣam apibo giriṣṭhm, ‘On the day you were born you drank the mountain milk out of desire for the plant’.

1) Relative clauses must have stood Before the Main Clause originally and

2) The earliest type of subordinate jo- clauses must have been the Preposed Relative constructions.

NOTE. This conclusion from Vedic receives striking support from Hittite, for in it we find the same syntactic relationship between relative clauses and other subordinate clauses as is found in Vedic, Greek, and other early dialects. But the marker for both types of clauses differs. In Hittite it is based on IE qid rather than jod; thus, Hittite too uses the relative particle for indicating subordination. The remarkable parallelism between the syntactic constructions, though they have different surface markers, must be ascribed to typological reasons; we assume that Hittite as well as Indo-Aryan and Greek was developing a lexical marker to indicate subordination. As does yad in Vedic, Hitt. kuit signals a “loose” relationship between clauses which must be appropriately interpreted.

As J. Friedrich has stated (1960), kuit never stands initially in its clause. Sentences in which it is used are then scarcely more specifically interconnected than are conjoined sentences with no specific relating word, as in examples cited by Friedrich (ibid.): nu taškupāi nu URU-aš dapii̯anzi išdammašzi, lit. Ptc. you-shout Ptc. city whole it-hears, ‘Now cry out [so that] the whole city hears’. Like this example, both clauses in a kuit construction generally are introduced with nu (J. Friedrich 1960). We may assume that kuit became a subordinating particle when such connections were omitted, as in Friedrich's example. These examples illustrate that both yád and kuit introduce causal clauses, though they do not contain indications of the origin of this use.

It is therefore generally believed that Subordinates originated in Relative sentences, as Vedic, Old Irish, Avestan and Old Persian illustrate. Proverbs and maxims are a particularly conservative field in all languages, and even etymologically there are two series which especially often; namely, qo-...to-, and jo-...to-.

NOTE 1. For IE qo-..to-, cf. Lat. cum...tum, qualis...talis, quam...tam, or Lith. kàs...tàs, kòks...tàs, kaîp...taîp, kíek...tíek, etc., and for jo-...to-, Ved. yás...sá tád, yáthā...táthā, yvat...tvat, Gk. oios...toios, ósos...tósos, O.Pers. haya (a compound from so+jo, with the same inverse compound as Lat. tamquam, from two correlatives), etc.

NOTE 2. For Haudry this correlative structure is the base for subordination in all Indo-European languages. Proto-Indo-European would therefore show an intermediate syntax between parataxis and hypotaxis, as the correlative structure is between a ‘loose’ syntax and a ‘locked’ one.

Lehman assumes that the use of Skr. yád, Hitt. kuit, and other relative particles to express a causal relationship arose from subordination of clauses introduced by them to an Ablative; cf. Skr.  ácittī yát táva dhármā yuyopimá (lit. unknowing that, because your law, order we-have-disturbed), m nas tásmād énaso deva rīriṣaḥ (lit. not us because-of-that because-of-sin O-god you-harm), ‘Do not harm us, god, because of that sin [that] because unknowingly we have disturbed your law’.

As such relationships with ablatives expressing Cause were not specific, more precise particles or conjunctions came to be used. In Sanskrit the ablatival yasmāt specifies the meaning ‘because’.

Further, yad and yátra specify the meaning ‘when’. In Hittite, mān came to be used for temporal relationships, possibly after combined use with kuit; kuitman expressed a temporal relationship even in Late Hittite, corresponding to ‘while, until’, though mahhan has replaced mān (J. Friedrich 1960 gives further details). The conjunction mān itself specifies the meanings ‘if’ and ‘although’ in standard Hittite. In both Hittite and Vedic then, the “loose” relative-construction relationship between subordinate clauses and principal clauses is gradually replaced by special conjunctions for the various types of hypotactic relationship: Causal, Temporal, Conditional, Concessive.

Just as the Causal relationship developed from an Ablative modified by a Relative construction, so the Temporal and Conditional relationship developed from a clause modifying an underlying Time node.

The less differentiated and less precisely related subordinate clauses are often still evident, however, as in yád clauses of the Archaic hymn, Rigveda 1.167. For conciseness, only yád clauses will be cited here, with Hoffmann's interpretation of each; the entire stanzas and their translations are given by Hoffmann (1967).

	RV 1.167.5. jóṣad yád īm asuryā̀ sacádhyai   she-desires when them Asuryan to-follow ‘when the Asuryan will desire to follow them’
	RV 1.167.6. arkó yád vo maruto havíṣmān   song-of-praise whenever, if for-you Maruts accompanied-by-libations ‘if the song of praise accompanied by libations is designed for you, Maruts’
	RV 1.167.7. sácā yád īṃ vṛ́ṣamaṇā ahaṁyú together because them manly-minded proud   sthirā́ cij jánīr váhate subhāgā́ḥ rigid though women she-drives well-favored

‘because the manly minded, proud, yet stubborn [Rodasi] brings along other favored women’

In these three stanzas yad introduces subordinate clauses with three different relationships: Temporal, Conditional, Causal. Such multiple uses of yad belong particularly to the archaic style; subsequently they are less frequent, being replaced by more specific conjunctions.

In addition to the greater specificity of subordinate relationship indicated by particles, the early, relatively free hypotactic constructions come to be modified by the dominant subjective quality of the principal verb. The effect may be illustrated by passages like the following from a Strophic hymn, in which the verb of the principal clause is an optative:

	RV 1.38.4.	yád yūyám pṛṣnimātaro if, when you having-Prsni-as-mother [Maruts]
		mártāsaḥ syā́tana mortals you-would-be
		stotā́ vo amṛ́taḥ syāt singer your immortal he-would-be
	‘Your singer would be immortal if [= in a situation when] you Maruts were mortals.’ (That is, if our roles were reversed, and you were mortals, then you would wish me to be immortal.)

This passage illustrates how the use of the Optative in the principal clause brings about a Conditional relationship in the Subordinate clause (see also Delbrück 1900). Through its expression of uncertainty the Optative conveys a Conditional rather than a Temporal meaning in the yad clause.

NOTE. Lacking verb forms expressing uncertainty, Hittite indicates conditional relationships simply by means of Particles (J. Friedrich 1960). Although several particles are used in Hittite to indicate various types of conditional clauses—man ... mān for Contrary-to-Fact, takku and man for Simple Conditionals—Hittite did not develop the variety of patterns found in other dialects. These patterns, as well described in the handbooks, are brought about not only by differing particles but also by the uses of the various tense and mood forms. Constructions in the dialects which have developed farthest from those of PIE are those in which the tense, mood, or person is modified in accordance with rules based on the verb form of the principal clause. Such shifts are among the most far-reaching results of the subjective quality of the Indo-European verb (Delbrück 1900).

Differences between the constructions in the various dialects reflect the changes as well as the earlier situation. In Homer, statements may be reported with a shift of mood and person, as in:

‘You yourself ask him so that he tells the truth.’

The form eípēi is a third-person aorist subjunctive. If the statement were in direct discourse, the verb would be eȋpe, second-person imperative, and the clause would read: eȋpe nēmertéa ‘tell the truth’. Such shifts in person and mood would not be expected in an OV language; in Vedic, for example, statements are repeated and indicated with a postposed iti. The shifts in the other dialects, as they changed more and more to VO structure, led to intricate expression of subordinate relationships, through shifts in person, in mood, and in tense, as well as through specific particles indicating the kind of subordination. The syntactic constructions of these dialects then came to differ considerably from that even in Vedic.

The earliest poems of the Vedas are transparent in syntax, as may be illustrated by Stanzas 9 and 10 of Hymn 1.167:

RV 1.167.9. nahī́ nú vo maruto ánty asmé never Ptc. your Maruts near from-us   ārttāc cic chávaso ántam āpúḥ from-far or of-strength end they-reached   té dhṛṣṇúnā śávasā śuśuvṅsó they bold power strengthened   ’rṇo ná dvéṣo dhṛṣatá pári ṣṭhuḥ flood like enmity bold against they-stand ‘Never have they reached the limit of your strength, Maruts, whether near or far from us. Strengthened by bold power they boldly oppose enmity like a flood.’

RV 1.167.10. vayám adyéndrasya préṣṭhā vayám we today-Indra's most-favored we   śvó vocemahi samaryé tomorrow we-wish-to-be-called in-battle   vayám pur máhi ca no ánu dyū́n we formerly great and us through days   tán na ṛbhukṣ narm ánu ṣyāt that us chief of-men to may-he-be ‘We today, we tomorrow, want to be called Indra's favorites in battle. We were formerly. And great things will be for us through the days; may the chief of men give that to us’.

Although the hymn offers problems of interpretation because of religious and poetic difficulties, the syntax of these two stanzas is straightforward; the verbs in general are independent of one another, in this way indicating a succession of individual sentences. Such syntactic patterns, though more complicated than those of prose passages, lack the complexity of Classical Greek and Latin, or even Homeric Greek. These early Vedic texts, like those of Old Hittite, include many of the syntactic categories found in the dialects, but the patterns of order and relationship between clauses had already changed considerably from the OV patterns of Middle PIE.

 

Noninflected words of various functions were used in indicating relationships between other words in the sentence or between sentences.

1. Some were used for modifying Nouns, often indicating the relationships of nouns to verbs. Although these were generally placed after nouns and accordingly were Postpositions, they have often been called Prepositions by reason of their function rather than their position with regard to nouns (Delbrück).

2. Others were used for modifying Verbs, often specifying more precisely the meanings of verbs; these then may be called Preverbs.

3. Others, commonly referred to as Sentence Connectives, were used primarily to indicate the relationships between Clauses or Sentences (Watkins 1964; Lehmann 1969).

Postpositions in the various dialects are found with specific cases, in accordance with their meanings.

Yet in the Old Hittite texts, the Genitive rather than such a specific case is prominent with Postpositions derived from Nouns, such as piran ‘(in) front’ (Neu 1970):

Such postpositions came to be frozen in form, whether unidentifiable as to etymology; derived from nouns, like piran; or derived from verbs, like Skr. tirás (viz. Lehman). Further, as the language came to be VO, they were placed before nouns.

As case forms were less clearly marked, they not only “governed” cases but also took over the meanings of case categories. The preposition tirás (tiró), derived from the root *tṛ- ‘cross’, illustrates both the etymological meaning of the form and its eventual development as preposition:

	RV 8.82.9.	yáṃ te śyenáḥ padbharat what for-you eagle with-foot-he-bore
		tiró rájāṅsy áspṛtam crossing, through skies not-relinquishing
		píbéd [<píba íd] asya tvám īśiṣe you-drink-indeed of-it you you-are-master (for-your-benefit)
	‘What the eagle brought for you in his claws, not dropping it [as he flew] through the skies, of that drink. You control [it for your own benefit]’.

The syntactic use of such particles with nouns is accordingly clear.

1. Rather than having the close relationships to nouns illustrated above, particles could instead be associated primarily with Verbs, often the same particles which were used as Postpositions.

2. Such combinations of particles and verbs came to be treated as units and are found repeatedly in specific uses (Delbrück 1888).

A. Preverbs might occupy various positions:

1. If unmarked, they are placed before the verb;

2. If marked, they are placed initially in clauses (Watkins 1964).

NOTE. In the course of time the Preverbs in unmarked position came to be combined with their verbs, though the identity of each element is long apparent in many of the dialects. Thus, in Modern German the primary accent is still maintained on some verbal roots, and in contrast with cognate nouns the prefix carries weak stress: erteílen ‘distribute’, Úrteil ‘judgment’. The steps toward the combination of preverb and verbal root have been described for the dialects, for example, Greek, in which uncombined forms as well as combined forms are attested during the period of our texts.

B. In the attested IE dialects:

a. Preverbs which remained uncombined came to be treated as Adverbs.

b. Combinations of Preverbs plus Verbs, on the other hand, eventually came to function like unitary elements.

The two different positions of preverbs in early texts led eventually to different word classes.

1. Particles were also used to relate sentences and clauses (J. Friedrich 1959:18, § 11):

	takku LÚ.ULÙLU-an EL.LUM QA.AZ.ZU našma GÌR-ŠU kuiški if man free his-hand or his-foot someone
	tuu̯arnizzi nušše 20 GÍN KUBABBAR paai he-breaks Ptc.-to-him 20 shekels silver he-gives
	‘If anyone breaks the hand or foot of a freeman, then he must give him twenty shekels of silver.’

Particles like the initial word in this example indicate the kind of clause that will follow and have long been well described. The function of particles like nu is not, however, equally clear.

NOTE. Dillon and Götze related nu and the use of sentence connectives to similar particles in Old Irish (Dillon 1947). Such particles introduce many sentences in Old Irish and have led to compound verb forms in this VSO language. Delbrück had also noted their presence in Vedic (1888)

Since introductory šu and ta were more frequent than was nu in the older Hittite texts, scholars assumed that sentences in IE were regularly introduced by these sentence connectives. And Sturtevant proposed, as etymology for the anaphoric pronoun, combinations of so- and to- with enclitic pronouns, as in the well-known Hittite sequence ta-at, cf. IE tod, and so on (see Otten and Souček 1969 for the use of such particles in one text).

It is clear that sentence connectives were used in Hittite to indicate continued treatment of a given topic (Raman 1973). It is also found with Hittite relative constructions, a function which may also be ascribed to Vedic sá and tád.

NOTE. For Lehman (1974), since this use may be accounted for through post-PIE influences, sentence connectives may have had a minor role in PIE.

2. Other particles, like Hitt. takku ‘if’, probably had their counterparts in PIE, even if the surface forms were completely unrelated. This is also true for Emphatic Particles like Skr. íd; they were used after nouns as well as imperatives. Such emphatic particles combined with imperatives suggest the presence of Interjections, which cannot usually be directly reconstructed for PIE but are well attested in the several dialects.

3. A coordinate sentence connective -qe can clearly be reconstructed on the basis of Goth. u(h), Skr. ca, Gk. te, Lat. que, and so on. But its primary function is the coordination of elements in the sentence rather than clauses or sentences.

NOTE. Moreover, when ca is used to connect verbs in the Vedic materials, they are parallel (Delbrück 1888); Delbrück finds only one possible exception. In an OV language the relating of successive verbs is carried out by means of nonfinite verbs placed before finite. We may then expect that coordinating particles had their primary use in PIE as connectors for sentence elements rather than for sentences.

Another such particle is -w ‘or’. Like -qe, the particle indicating disjunctive ‘or’ was postposed, in retention of the original pattern as late as Classical Latin.

 

4. Particles in PIE may also have corresponded to verbal qualifiers.

a. The most notable of these is mē, which carried a negative modal meaning.

b. There is indication of such uses of particles in other patterns, for example, of Vedic pur ‘earlier’ to indicate the past, as apparently Brugmann was the first to point out (Delbrück 1888), and also Vedic sma, to indicate repeated action in the past (Hoffmann 1967). It is curious that sma is also found after m in Vedic (Hoffmann 1967).

NOTE. Lehman suggested that such mood- and tense-carrying particles may have been transported from a postverbal to a preverbal position. Some particles may accordingly have been equivalent in an earlier stage of PIE to elements used after verbs to indicate verbal categories.

1. Elements in sentences can be emphasized, by Marking; the chief device for such emphasis is Initial Position.

Other sentence elements may also be placed in initial position for marking.

 2. In unmarked position the preverb directly precedes the verb. Changes in normal order thus provide one of the devices for conveying emphasis.

Other devices have to do with Selection, notably particles which are postposed after a marked element.

3. Emphasis can also be indicated by lexical selection.

4. Presumably other modifications might also be made, as in Intonation.

The various syntactic devices accordingly provided means to introduce marking in sentences.

Like emphasis, Topicalization is carried out by patterns of arrangement, but the arrangement is applied to coequal elements rather than elements which are moved from their normal order.

Topicalization by arrangement is well known in the study of the early languages, as in the initial lines of the Homeric poems. The Iliad begins with the noun mȇnin ‘wrath’, the Odyssey with the noun ándra ‘man’. These, to be sure, are the only possible nouns in the syntactically simple sentences opening both poems: mȇnin áeide ‘Sing of the wrath’ and ándra moi énnepe ‘Tell me of the man’. Yet the very arrangement of moi and other enclitics occupying second position in the sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's law, indicates the use of initial placement among nominal elements for topicalization.

The use of topicalization may be illustrated by a more complex set of sentences, such as the first address of Zeus in the Odyssey. Only the first lines of this will be quoted; but these indicate a shift in topic from the ‘gods’ to ‘men’, then to a particular man, Aegisthus, then to Agamemnon, and subsequently to Orestes (Lehman 1974).

Ȏ pópoi, hoȋon dḗnu theoùs brotoì aitióōntai; eks hēméōn gár phasi kák’ émmenai, hoi dè kaì autoì, sphȇisin atasthalíēisin hupèr móron álge’ ékhousin, hōs kaì nȗn Aígisthos hupèr móron Atreídao, gȇm’ álokhon mnēstḗn, tòn d’ éktane nostḗsanta,

‘Alas, how the mortals are now blaming the gods. For they say evils come from us, but they themselves have woes beyond what's fated by their own stupidities. Thus Aegisthus beyond what was fated has now married the wedded wife of Agamemnon, and killed him on his return.’

As this passage and many others that might be cited illustrate, the basic sentence patterns could be rearranged by stylistic rules, both for emphasis and for topicalization. In this way the relatively strict arrangement of simple sentences could be modified to bring about variety and flexibility.

 

Appendix II: Proto-Indo-European Phonology

A few sound-laws can be reconstructed that may have been effective prior to the final breakup of PIE by internal reconstruction.

·   Sievers' Law (Edgerton's Law, Lindeman's option)

·   Grassman's Law

·   Bartholomae's Law

Sievers' Law in Indo-European linguistics accounts for the pronunciation of a consonant cluster with a glide before a vowel as it was affected by the phonetics of the preceding syllable. Specifically it refers to the alternation between *ij and *j, and possibly *uw and *u, in Indo-European languages. For instance, Proto-Indo-European *kor-jo-s became Gothic harjis “army”, but PIE *kerdh- jo-s became Proto-Germanic *herdijas, Gothic hairdeis [hɛrdĩs] “shepherd”. It differs from an ablaut in that the alternation is context-sensitive: PIE *ij followed a heavy syllable (a syllable with a diphthong, a long vowel, or ending in more than one consonant), but *j would follow a light syllable (i.e. a short vowel followed by a single consonant). This was first noticed by Germanic philologist Eduard Sievers, and his aim was to account for certain phenomena in the Germanic languages. He originally only discussed *j in medial position. He also noted, almost as an aside, that something similar seemed to be going on in the earliest Sanskrit texts (thus in the Rigveda dāivya- “heavenly” actually had three syllables in scansion (dāivⁱya-) but say satya- “true” was scanned as written). After him, scholars would find similar alternations in Greek and Latin, and alternation between *uw and *u, though the evidence is poor for all of these. Through time, evidence was announced regarding similar alternations of syllabicity in the nasal and liquid semivowels, though the evidence is extremely poor for these, despite the fact that such alternations in the non-glide semivowels would have left permanent, indeed irreversible, traces.

The most ambitious extension of Sievers’ Law was proposed by Franklin Edgerton in a pair of articles in the journal Language in 1934 and 1943. He argued that not only was the syllabicity of prevocalic semivowels by context applicable to all six Indo-European semivowels, it was applicable in all positions in the word. Thus a form like *djēus, “sky” would have been pronounced thus only when it happened to follow a word ending with a short vowel. Everywhere else it would have had two syllables, *dijēus.

The evidence for alternation presented by Edgerton was of two sorts. He cited several hundred passages from the oldest Indic text, the Rigveda, which he claimed should be rescanned to reveal hitherto unnoticed expressions of the syllable structure called for by his theory. But most forms show no such direct expressions; for them, Edgerton noted sharply skewed distributions that he interpreted as evidence for a lost alternation between syllabic and nonsyllabic semivowels. Thus say śiras “head” (from *śṛros) has no monosyllabic partner *śras (from *śros), but Edgerton noted that it occurred 100% of the time in the environments where his theory called for the syllabification of the *r. Appealing to the “formulaic” nature of oral poetry, especially in tricky and demanding literary forms like sacred Vedic versification, he reasoned that this was direct evidence for the previous existence of an alternant *śras, on the assumption that when (for whatever reason) this *śras and other forms like it came to be shunned, the typical collocations in which they would have (correctly) occurred inevitably became obsolete pari passu with the loss of the form itself. And he was able to present a sizeable body of evidence in the form of these skewed distributions in both the 1934 and 1943 articles.

In 1965 Fredrik Otto Lindeman published an article proposing a significant modification of Edgerton's theory. Disregarding Edgerton's evidence (on the grounds that he was not prepared to judge the niceties of Rigvedic scansion) he took instead as the data to be analyzed the scansions in Grassmann's Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda. From these he concluded that Edgerton had been right, but only up to a point: the alternations he postulated did indeed apply to all semivowels; but in word-initial position, the alternation was limited to forms like *djēws/dijēws “sky”, as cited above—that is, words where the “short” form was monosyllabic.

Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant in the next syllable, the first one loses the aspiration. The descriptive (synchronic) version was described for Sanskrit by Panini.

Here are some examples in Greek of the effects of Grassmann's Law:

·   [t^hu-oː] θύω 'I kill an animal'

·   [e-tu-t^heː] ἔτυθη 'it was killed'

·   [t^hrik-s] θρίξ 'hair'

·   [trik^h-es] τριχές 'hairs'

·   [t^hap-sai] θάψαι 'to bury (aorist)'

·   [t^hapt-ein] θάπτειν 'to bury (present)'

·   [tap^h-os] τάφος 'a grave'

·   [tap^h-e] ταφή 'burial'

In the reduplication which forms the perfect tense in both Greek and Sanskrit, if the initial consonant is aspirated, the prepended consonant is unaspirated by Grassmann's Law. For instance [p^hu-oː] φύω 'I grow' : [pe-p^huː-ka] πεφυκα 'I have grown'.

Diaspirate roots

Cases like [t^hrik-s] ~ [trik^h-es] and [t^hap-sai] ~ [tap^h-ein] illustrates the phenomenon of diaspirate roots, for which two different analyses have been given.

In one account, the “underlying diaspirate” theory, the underlying roots are taken to be /t^hrik^h/ and /t^hap^h/. When an /s/ (or word edge, or various other sounds) immediately follows, then the second aspiration is lost, and the first aspirate therefore survives ([t^hrik-s], [t^hap-sai]). If a vowel follows the second aspirate, it survives unaltered, and therefore the first aspiration is lost by Grassmann's Law ([trik^h-es], [tap^h-ein]).

A different analytical approach was taken by the ancient Indian grammarians. In their view, the roots are taken to be underlying /trik^h/ and /tap^h/. These roots persist unaltered in [trik^h-es] and [tap^h-ein]. But if an /s/ follows, it triggers an “aspiration throwback” (ATB), in which the aspiration migrates leftward, docking onto the initial consonant ([t^hrik-s], [t^hap-sai]).

Interestingly, in his initial formulation of the law Grassmann briefly referred to ATB to explain these seemingly aberrant forms. However, the consensus among contemporary historical linguists is that the former explanation (underlying representation) is the correct one.

In the later course of Sanskrit, (and under the influence of the grammarians) ATB was applied to original monoaspirates through an analogical process. Thus, from the verb root gah 'to plunge', the desiderative stem jighak^ha- is formed. This is by analogy with the forms bubhutsati (a desiderative form) and bhut (a nominal form, both from the root budh 'to be awake', originally PIE *[b^hud^h-]).

Bartholomae's law is an early Indo-European sound law affecting the Indo-Iranian family, though thanks to the falling together of plain voiced and voiced aspirated stops in Iranian, its impact on the phonological history of that subgroup is unclear.

It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents (s or a stop (plosive)), any one of which is a voiced aspirate anywhere in the sequence, the whole cluster becomes voiced and aspirated. Thus to the PIE root *bheudh “learn, become aware of” the participle *bhudh-to- “enlightened” loses the aspiration of the first stop (Grassmann's Law) and with the application of Bartholomae's Law and regular vowel changes gives Sanskrit buddha- “enlightened”.

A written form such as -ddh- (a literal rendition of the devanāgarī representation) presents problems of interpretation. The choice is between a long voiced stop with a specific release feature symbolized in transliteration by -h-, or else a long stop (or stop cluster) with a different phonational state, “murmur”, whereby the breathy release is an artifact of the phonational state. The latter interpretation is rather favored by such phenomena as the Rigvedic form gdha “he swallowed” which is morphologically a middle aorist (more exactly ‘injunctive’) to the root ghas- “swallow”, as follows: ghs-t-a > *gzdha whence gdha by the regular loss of a sibilant between stops in Indic. While the idea of voicing affecting the whole cluster with the release feature conventionally called aspiration penetrating all the way to the end of the sequence is not entirely unthinkable, the alternative—the spread of a phonational state (but murmur rather than voice) through the whole sequence—involves one less step and therefore via Occam's Razor counts as the better interpretation.

Bartholomae's Law intersects with another Indic development, namely what looks like the deaspiration of aspirated stops in clusters with s: descriptively, Proto-Indo-European *leig'h-si “you lick” becomes *leiksi, whence Sanskrit lekṣi. However, Grassmann's Law, whereby an aspirated stop becomes non-aspirated before another aspirated stop (as in the example of buddha-, above), suggests something else. In late Vedic and later forms of Sanskrit, all forms behave as though aspiration was simply lost in clusters with s, so such forms to the root dugh- “give milk” (etymologically *dhugh-) show the expected devoicing and deaspiration in, say, the desiderative formation du-dhukṣ-ati (with the root-initial dh- intact, that is, undissimilated). But the earliest passages of the Rigveda show something different: desiderative dudukṣati, aor. dukṣata (for later dhukṣata) and so on. Thus it is apparent that what went into Grassmann's Law were forms like *dhugzhata, dhudhugzha- and so on, with aspiration in the sibilant clusters intact. The deaspiration and devoicing of the sibilant clusters were later and entirely separate phenomena – and connected with yet another suite of specifically Indic sound laws, namely a ‘rule conspiracy’ to eliminate all voiced (and murmured) sibilants. Indeed, even the example ‘swallowed’ given above contradicts the usual interpretation of devoicing and deaspiration: by such a sequence, *ghs-to would have given, first, *ksto (if the process was already Indo-European) or *ksta (if Indo-Iranian in date), whence Sanskrit *kta, not gdha.

¹ After vowels. ² Before a plosive (p, t, k). ³ Before an unstressed vowel (Verner's Law). ⁴ After a (Proto-Germanic) fricative (s, f). ⁵ Before a (PIE) front vowel (i, e). ⁶ Before or after a (PIE) u. ⁷ Before or after a (PIE) o, u. ⁸ Between vowels. ⁹ Before a resonant. ¹⁰ Before secondary (post-PIE) front-vowels. ¹¹ After r, u, k, i (RUKI). ¹² Before a stressed vowel. ¹³ At the end of a word. ¹⁴ After u, r or before r, l. ¹⁵ After n.

 

¹ Before wa. ² Before r, h. ³ The existence of PIE non-allophonic a is disputed. ⁴ In open syllables (Brugmann's law). ⁵ Under stress. ⁶ Before palatal consonants. ⁷ The so-called breaking is disputed (typical examples are *proti-h₃k^wo- > Ved. prátīkam ~ Gk. πρόσωπον; *g^wih₃u̯o- > Ved. jīvá- ~ Arm. keank‘, Gk. ζωός; *duh₂ro- > Ved. dūrá- ~ Arm. erkar, Gk. δηρός) ⁸ In a final syllable. ⁹ Before velars and unstressed ¹⁰ Before ā in the following syllable. ¹¹ Before i in the following syllable. ¹² In a closed syllable. ¹³ In the neighbourhood of labials. ¹⁴ In the neighbourhood of labiovelars.

1. Direct comparison in early IE studies, informed by the Centum-Satem isogloss, yielded the reconstruction of three rows of dorsal consonants in Late Proto-Indo-European by Bezzenberger (1890), a theory which became classic after Brugmann (Grundriss, 1879) included it in its 2^nd Edition. The palatovelars [k^j], [g^j], and [g^jh] were supposedly [k]- or [g]-like sounds which underwent a characteristic phonetic change in the satemized languages – three original “velar rows” had then become two in all Indo-European dialects attested.

NOTE. It is disputed whether Albanian shows remains of two or three series (cf. Ölberg 1976, Kortlandt 1980, Pänzer 1982), although the fact that only the worst known (and neither isolated nor remote) IE dialect could be the only one to show some remains of the oldest phonetic system is indeed very unlikely.

After that original belief, then, The centum group of languages merged the palatovelars [k^j], [g^j], and [g^jh] with the plain velars [k], [g], and [g^h], while the satem group of languages merged the labiovelars [k^w], [g^w], and [g^wh] with the plain velars [k], [g], and [g^h].

NOTE. Such hypothesis would then support an evolution [k^j] > [k] of Centum dialects before e and i, what is clearly against the general tendence of velars to move forward its articulation and palatalize in these environments.

2. The existence of the palatovelars as phonemes separate from the plain velars and labiovelars has been disputed. In most circumstances they appear to be allophones resulting from the neutralization of the other two series in particular phonetic circumstances. Their dialectal articulation was probably constrained, either to an especial phonetic environment (as Romance evolution of Latin [k] before [e] and [i]), either to the analogy of alternating phonetic forms. However, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what the circumstances of the allophony are, although it is generally accepted that neutralization occurred after s and u, and often before r. 

Many PIE linguists still believe that all three series were distinct in Late Proto-Indo-European, although newest research show that the palatovelar series were a later phonetic development of certain Satem dialects, later extended to others; this belief was originally articuled by Antoine Meillet in 1893, and was followed by linguists like Hirt (1899, 1927), Lehman (1952), Georgiev (1966), Bernabé (1971), Steensland (1973), Miller (1976), Allen (1978), Kortlandt (1980), Shields (1981), Adrados (1995), etc.

NOTE. There is, however, a minority who consider the labiovelars a secondary development from the pure velars, and reconstruct only velars and palatovelars (Kuryłowicz), already criticized by Bernabé, Steensland, Miller and Allen. Still less acceptance had the proposal to reconstruct only a labiovelar and a palatal series (Magnusson).

3. The original (logical) trend to distinguish between series of “satemizable” dorsals, called ‘palatovelars’, and “non-satemizable” dorsals, the ‘pure velars’, was the easiest explanation found by neogrammarians, who apparently opened a different case for each irregularity they found. Such an initial answer should be considered erroneous today, at least as a starting-point to obtain a better explanation for this “phonological puzzle” (Bernabé).

NOTE. “Palatals” and Velars appear mostly in complementary distributions, what supports their explanation as allophones of the same phonemes. Meillet (1937) establishes the contexts in which there are only velars: before a,r, and after s,u, while Georgiev (1966) states that the palatalization of velars should have been produced before e, i, j, and before liquid or nasal or w + e, i, offering statistical data supporting his conclusions. The presence of palatalized velar before o is then produced because of analogy with roots in which (due to the apophonic alternance) the velar phoneme is found before e and o, so the alternance *k^je/*ko would be leveled as *k^je/*k^jo.

Arguments in favor of only one series of velars include:

  A) The existence of vacillating results between different so-called “Satem dialects”, as e.g.:

·   ak/ok, sharp, cf.  Lith. akúotas, O.C.S. ostru, O.Ind. asrís, Arm. aseln, but Lith. asrùs.

·    akmn, stone, cf.  Lith. akmuõ, O.C.S. kamy, O.Ind. áśma, but Lith. âsmens.

·    keu, shine, cf. Lith. kiáune, Russ. kuna, O.Ind. Svas, Arm. sukh.

·   bhleg, shine, cf. O.Ind.  bhárgas, Lith. balgans, O.C.S. blagu, but Ltv. blâzt.

·   gherdh, enclose, O.Ind. grhá, Av. gºrºda, Lith. gardas, O.C.S. gradu, Lith. zardas, Ltv. zârdas.

·   swékuros, father-in-law, cf. O.Sla. svekry, O.Ind. śvaśru.

·   etc.

   B) The existence of different pairs (“satemized” and “not-satemized”) in the same language, as e.g.:

·   selg, throw, cf. O.Ind. sṛjáti, sargas

·   kau/keu, shout, cf. Lith. kaukti, O.C.S. kujati, Russ. sova (as Gk. kauax); O.Ind. kauti, suka-.

·   kleu, hear, Lith. klausýti, slove, O.C.S. slovo;  O.Ind. karnas, sruti,  srósati, śrnóti, sravas.

·   leuk, O.Ind. rokás, ruśant-.

·   etc.

NOTE. The old argument proposed by Brugmann (and later copied by many dictionaries) about “Centum loans” is not tenable today. For more on this, see Szemerény (1978), Mayrhofer (1952), Bernabé (1971).

  C)  Non-coincidence in periods and number of satemization stages; as, Old Indian shows two stages, 1) PIE k > O.Ind. s, and 2) PIE qe, qi > O.Ind. ke, ki, & PIE ske, ski > O.Ind. c (cf. cim, candra, etc.). In Slavic, however, three stages are found, 1) PIE k > s, 2) qe, qi > č  (čto, čelobek), and 3) qoi>koi>ke gives ts (as Sla. tsená).

  D) In most attested languages which present aspirated as result of the so-called “palatals”, the palatalization of other phonemes is also attested (e.g. palatalization of labiovelars before e, i, etc.), what may indicate that there is an old trend to palatalize all possible sounds, of which the palatalization of velars is the oldest attested result.

  E) The existence of ‘Centum dialects’ in so-called Southern dialects, as Greek and some Paleo-Balkan dialects, and the  presence of Tocharian, a ‘Centum dialect’, in Central Asia, being probably a northern IE dialect.

4. It is generally believed that Satemization could have started as a late dialectal ‘wave’ (although not necessarily), which eventually affected almost all PIE dialectal groups. The origin is probably to be found in velars followed by e, i, even though alternating forms like gen/gon caused natural analogycal corrections within each dialect, which obscures still more the original situation. Thus, non-satemized forms in so-called Satem languages are actually non-satemized remains of the original situation, just as Spanish has feliz and not *heliz, or fácil and not hácil, or French uses facile and nature, and not *fêle or *nûre as one should expect from its phonetic evolution. Some irregularities are indeed explained as borrowings from non-satemized dialects.

5. Those who support the model of the threefold distinction in PIE cite evidence from Albanian (Pedersen) and Armenian (Pisani) that they treated plain velars differently from the labiovelars in at least some circumstances, as well as the fact that Luwian apparently had distinct reflexes of all three series: *k^j > z (probably [ts]); *k > k; *k^w > ku (possibly still [k^w]) (Craig Melchert).

NOTE. Also, one of the most difficult problems which subsist in the interpretation of the satemization as a phonetic wave is that, even though in most cases the variation *k^j/k may be attributed either to a phonetic environment or to the analogy of alternating apophonic forms, there are some cases in which neither one nor the other may be applied. Compare for example ok^jtō(u), eight, which presents k before an occlusive in a form which shows no change (to suppose a syncope of an older *ok^jitō, as does Szemerényi, is an explanation ad hoc). Other examples in which the palatalization cannot be explained by the next phoneme nor by analogy are swekrū-, husband’s mother, akmon, stone, peku, cattle. Such (still) unexplained exceptions, however, are not sufficient to consider the existence of a third row of ‘later palatalized’ velars (Bernabé, Cheng & Wang), although there are still scholars who come back to the support of the three velar rows’ hypothesis (viz. Tischler 1990).

6. A system of two gutturals, Velars and Labiovelars, is a linguistic anomaly, isolated in the PIE occlusive subsystem – there are no parallel oppositions b^w-b, p^w-p, t^w-t, d^w-d, etc. Only one feature, their pronunciation with an accompanying rounding of the lips, helps distinguish them from each other. Labiovelars turn velars before -u, and there are some neutralization positions which help identify labiovelars and velars; also, in some contexts (e.g. before -i, -e) velars tend to move forward its articulation and eventually palatalize. Both trends led eventually to Centum and Satem dialectalization.

1. The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of a set of three (or up to nine) consonant sounds that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). These sounds have since disappeared in all existing Indo-European languages, but some laryngeals are believed to have existed in the Anatolian languages, including Hittite.

NOTE. In this Modern Indo-European grammar, such uncertain sounds are replaced by the vowels they yielded in Late PIE dialects (an -a frequently substitutes the traditional schwa indogermanicum), cf. MIE patér for PIE *ph₂tér, MIE ōktō(u), eight, for PIE *h₃ekteh₃, etc. Again, for a MIE based on the northwestern dialects, such stricter reconstruction would give probably a simpler language in terms of phonetic irregularities (ablaut or apophony), but also a language phonologically too different from Latin, Greek, Germanic and Balto-Slavic dialects. Nevertheless, reconstructions with laryngeals are often shown in this grammar as ‘etymological sources’, so to speak, as Old English forms are shown when explaining a Modern English word in modern dictionaries. The rest of this chapter offers a detailed description of the effects of laryngeals in IE phonology and morphology.

2. The evidence for them is mostly indirect, but serves as an explanation for differences between vowel sounds across Indo-European languages. For example, Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, two descendents of PIE, exhibit many similar words that have differing vowel sounds. Assume that the Greek word contains the vowel [e] and the corresponding Sanskrit word contains [i] instead. The laryngeal theory postulates these words originally had the same vowels, but a neighboring consonant which had since disappeared had altered the vowels. If one would label the hypothesized consonant as [h₁], then the original PIE word may have contained something like [eh₁] or [ih₁], or perhaps a completely different sound such as [ah₁]. The original phonetic values of the laryngeal sounds remain controversial (v.i.)

3. The beginnings of the theory were proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879, in an article chiefly devoted to something else altogether (demonstrating that *a and *o were separate phonemes in PIE). Saussure's observations, however, did not achieve any general currency until after Hittite was discovered and deciphered in the early 20^th century. Hittite had a sound or sounds written with symbols from the Akkadian syllabary conventionally transcribed as ḫ, as in te-iḫ -ḫi , “I put, am putting”. Various more or less obviously unsatisfactory proposals were made to connect these (or this) to the PIE consonant system as then reconstructed. It remained for Jerzy Kuryłowicz (Études indoeuropéennnes I, 1935) to propose that these sounds lined up with Saussure's conjectures. Since then, the laryngeal theory (in one or another form) has been accepted by most Indo-Europeanists.

4. The late discovery of these sounds by Indo-Europeanists is largely due to the fact that Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are the only Indo-European languages where at least some of them are attested directly and consistently as consonantal sounds. Otherwise, their presence is to be seen mostly through the effects they have on neighboring sounds, and on patterns of alternation that they participate in; when a laryngeal is attested directly, it is usually as a vowel (as in the Greek examples below). Most Indo-Europeanists accept at least some version of laryngeal theory because their existence simplifies some otherwise hard-to-explain sound changes and patterns of alternation that appear in the Indo-European languages, and solves some minor mysteries, such as why verb roots containing only a consonant and a vowel have only long vowels e.g. *dō- “give”; re-reconstructing *deh₃- instead not only accounts for the patterns of alternation more economically than before, but brings the root into line with the basic consonant - vowel - consonant Indo-European type.

5. There are many variations of the Laryngeal theory. Some scholars, such as Oswald Szemerényi, reconstruct just one. Some follow Jaan Puhvel's reconstruction of eight or more (in his contribution to Evidence for Laryngeals, ed. Werner Winter). Most scholars work with a basic three:

·   *h₁, the “neutral” laryngeal

·   *h₂, the “a-colouring” laryngeal

·   *h₃, the “o-colouring” laryngeal

Many scholars, however, either insist on or allow for a fourth consonant, *h₄, which differs from *h₂ only in not being reflected as Anatolian ḫ. Accordingly, except when discussing Hittite evidence, the theoretical existence of an *h₄ contributes little. Another such theory, but much less generally accepted, is Winfred P. Lehmann's view that *h₁ was actually two separate sounds, due to inconsistent reflexes in Hittite. (He assumed that one was a glottal stop and the other a glottal fricative.)

Some direct evidence for laryngeal consonants from Anatolian:

PIE *a is a rarish sound, and in an uncommonly large number of good etymologies it is word-initial. Thus PIE (traditional) anti, in front of and facing > Greek antí “against”; Latin ante “in front of, before”; (Sanskrit ánti “near; in the presence of”). But in Hittite there is a noun ḫants “front, face”, with various derivatives (ḫantezzi “first”, and so on, pointing to a PIE root-noun *h₂ent- “face” (of which *h₂enti would be the locative singular).

NOTE. It does not necessarily follow that all reconstructed PIE forms with initial *a should automatically be rewritten as PIE *h₂e.

Similarly, the traditional PIE reconstruction for 'sheep' is *owi-, whence Skt ávi-, Latin ovis, Greek óïs. But now Luvian has ḫawi-, indicating instead a reconstruction *h₃ewi-.

But if laryngeals as consonants were first spotted in Hittite only in 1935, what was the basis for Saussure's conjectures some 55 years earlier? They sprang from a reanalysis of how the patterns of vowel alternation in Proto-Indo-European roots of different structure aligned with one another.

6. A feature of Proto-Indo-European morpheme structure was a system of vowel alternations christened ablaut (‘alternate sound’) by early German scholars and still generally known by that term, except in Romance languages, where the term apophony is preferred. Several different such patterns have been discerned, but the commonest one, by a wide margin, is e/o/zero alternation found in a majority of roots, in many verb and noun stems, and even in some affixes (the genitive singular ending, for example, is attested as -es, -os, and -s). The different states are called ablaut grades; e-grade or “full grades”, o-grade and “zero-grade”.

Thus the root sed-, “to sit (down)” (roots are traditionally cited in the e-grade, if they have one), has three different shapes: *sed-, *sod-, and *sd-. This kind of patterning is found throughout the PIE root inventory and is transparent:

·   *sed-: in Latin sedeō “am sitting”, Old English sittan “to sit” < *set-ja- (with umlaut) < *sed-; Greek hédrā “seat, chair” < *sed-.

·   *sod-: in Latin solium “throne” (Latin l sporadically replaces d between vowels, said by Roman grammarians to be a Sabine trait) = Old Irish suideⁿ /suð'e/ “a sitting” (all details regular from PIE *sod-jo-m); Gothic satjan = Old English settan “to set” (causative) < *sat-ja- (umlaut again) < PIE *sod-eje-. PIE *se-sod-e “sat” (perfect) > Sanskrit sa-sād-a per Brugmann's law.

·   *sd-: in compounds, as *ni- “down” + *sd- = *nisdos “nest”: English nest < Proto-Germanic *nistaz, Latin nīdus < *nizdos (all regular developments). The 3pl (third person plural) of the perfect would have been *se-sd-r̥ whence Indo-Iranian *sazdṛ, which gives (by regular developments) Sanskrit sedur /sēdur/.

Now, in addition to the commonplace roots of consonant + vowel + consonant structure there are also well-attested roots like *d^hē- "put, place": these end in a vowel, which is always long in the categories where roots like *sed- have full grades; and in those forms where zero grade would be expected, before an affix beginning with a consonant, we find a short vowel, reconstructed as *ə, or schwa (more formally, schwa primum indogermanicum). The cross-language correspondences of this vowel are different from the other five short vowels.

NOTE. Before an affix beginning with a vowel, there is no trace of a vowel in the root, as shown below.

Whatever caused a short vowel to disappear entirely in roots like *sed-/*sod-/*sd-, it was a reasonable inference that a long vowel under the same conditions would not quite disappear, but would leave a sort of residue. This residue is reflected as i in Indic while dropping in Iranian; it gives variously e, a, o in Greek; it mostly falls together with the reflexes of PIE *a in the other languages (always bearing in mind that short vowels in non-initial syllables undergo various adventures in Italic, Celtic, and Germanic):

·   *dō- “give”: in Latin dōnum “gift" = Old Irish dán /dāṅ/ and Sanskrit dâna- (â = ā with tonic accent); Greek dí-dō-mi (reduplicated present) “I give” = Sanskrit dádāmi. But in the participles, Greek dotós “given” = Sanskrit ditá-, Latin datus all < *də-tó-.

·   *stā- “stand”: in Greek hístēmi (reduplicated present, regular from *si-stā-), Sanskrit a-sthā-t aorist “stood”, Latin testāmentum “testimony” < *ter-stā- < *tri-stā- (“third party” or the like). But Sanskrit sthitá-“stood”, Greek stasís “a standing”, Latin supine infinitive statum “to stand”.

Conventional wisdom lined up roots of the *sed- and *dō- types as follows:

But there are other patterns of “normal” roots, such as those ending with one of the six resonants (*j w r l m n), a class of sounds whose peculiarity in Proto-Indo-Eruopean is that they are both syllabic (vowels, in effect) and consonants, depending on what sounds are adjacent:

Root *b^her-/b^hor-/b^hr̥- ~ b^hr- “carry”

·   *b^her-: in Latin ferō = Greek phérō, Avestan barā, Old Irish biur, Old English bera all “I carry”; Latin ferculum “bier, litter” < *b^her-tlo- “implement for carrying”.

·   *b^hor-: in Gothic barn “child” (= English dial. bairn), Greek phoréō “I wear [clothes]” (frequentative formation, *”carry around”); Sanskrit bhâra- “burden” (*b^hor-o- via Brugmann's law).

·   *b^hr̥- before consonants: Sanskrit bhṛ-tí- “a carrying”; Gothic gabaurþs /gaborθs/, Old English gebyrd /yebürd/, Old High German geburt all “birth” < *gaburdi- < *b^hr̥-tí-

·   *b^hr- before vowels: Ved bibhrati 3pl. “they carry” < *b^hi-b^hr-n̥ti; Greek di-phrós “chariot footboard big enough for two men” < *dwi-b^hr-o-.

Saussure's insight was to align the long-vowel roots like *dō-, *stā- with roots like *b^her-, rather than with roots of the *sed- sort. That is, treating “schwa” not as a residue of a long vowel but, like the *r of *b^her-/*b^hor-/*b^hr̥-, an element that was present in the root in all grades, but which in full grade forms coalesced with an ordinary e/o root vowel to make a long vowel, with ‘coloring’ (changed phonetics) of the e-grade into the bargain; the mystery element was seen by itself only in zero grade forms:

 

* Ẋ = syllabic form of the mystery element

Saussure treated only two of these elements, corresponding to our *h₂ and *h₃. Later it was noticed that the explanatory power of the theory, as well as its elegance, were enhanced if a third element were added, our *h₁. which has the same lengthening and syllabifying properties as the other two but has no effect on the color of adjacent vowels. Saussure offered no suggestion as to the phonetics of these elements; his term for them, “coéfficiants sonantiques”, was not however a fudge, but merely the term in general use for glides, nasals, and liquids (i.e., the PIE resonants) as in roots like *b^her-.

As mentioned above, in forms like *dwi-b^hr-o- (etymon of Greek diphrós, above), the new “coéfficiants sonantiques” (unlike the six resonants) have no reflexes at all in any daughter language. Thus the compound *mn̥s-d^heh- “to 'fix thought', be devout, become rapt” forms a noun *mn̥s-d^hh-o- seen in Proto-Indo-Iranian *mazdha- whence Sanskrit medhá- /mēdha/ “sacrificial rite, holiness” (regular development as in sedur < *sazdur, above), Avestan mazda- “name (originally an epithet) of the greatest deity”.

There is another kind of unproblematic root, in which obstruents flank a resonant. In the zero grade, unlike the case with roots of the *b^her- type, the resonant is therefore always syllabic (being always between two consonants). An example would be *b^hend^h- “tie, bind”:

·   *b^hend^h-: in Germanic forms like Old English bindan “to tie, bind”, Gothic bindan; Lithuanian beñdras “chum”, Greek peĩsma “rope, cable” /pēsma/ < *phenth-sma < *b^hend^h-smn̥.

·   *b^hond^h-: in Sanskrit bandhá- “bond, fastening” (*b^hond^h-o-; Grassmann's law) = Old Icelandic bant, OE bænd; Old English bænd, Gothic band “he tied” < *(b^he)b^hond^h-e.

·   *b^hn̥d^h-: in Sanskrit baddhá- < *b^hn̥d^h-tó- (Bartholomae's law), Old English gebunden, Gothic bundan; German Bund “league”. (English bind and bound show the effects of secondary (Middle English) vowel lengthening; the original length is preserved in bundle.)

This is all straightforward and such roots fit directly into the overall patterns. Less so are certain roots that seem sometimes to go like the *b^her- type, and sometimes to be unlike anything else, with (for example) long syllabics in the zero grades while at times pointing to a two-vowel root structure. These roots are variously called “heavy bases”, “dis(s)yllabic roots”, and “seṭ roots” (the last being a term from Pāṇini's grammar. It will be explained below).

For example, the root “be born, arise” is given in the usual etymological dictionaries as follows:

A. *gen-, *gon-, *gn̥n-

B. *genə-, *gonə-, *gn̥̄- (where n̥̄ = a long syllabic n̥)

The (A) forms occur when the root is followed by an affix beginning with a vowel; the (B) forms when the affix begins with a consonant. As mentioned, the full-grade (A) forms look just like the *bher- type, but the zero grades always and only have reflexes of syllabic resonants, just like the *b^hend^h- type; and unlike any other type, there is a second root vowel (always and only *ə) following the second consonant:

*gen(ə)-

·   PIE *genos- neut s-stem “race, clan” > Greek (Homeric) génos, -eos, Sanskrit jánas-, Avestan zanō, Latin genus, -eris.

·   Greek gené-tēs “begetter, father”; géne-sis < *genə-ti- “origin”; Sanskrit jáni-man- “birth, lineage”, jáni-tar- “progenitor, father”, Latin genitus “begotten” < genatos.

*gon(e)-

·   Sanskrit janayati “beget” = Old English cennan /kennan/ < *gon-eje- (causative); Sanskrit jána- “race” (o-grade o-stem) = Greek gónos, -ou “offspring”.

·   Sanskrit jajāna 3sg. “was born” < *ge-gon-e.

*gn̥n-/*gn̥̄-

·   Gothic kuni “clan, family” = OE cynn /künn/, English kin; Rigvedic jajanúr 3pl.perfect < *ge-gn̥n- (a relic; the regular Sanskrit form in paradigms like this is jajñur, a remodeling).

·   Sanskrit jātá- “born” = Latin nātus (Old Latin gnātus, and cf. forms like cognātus “related by birth”, Greek kasí-gnētos “brother”); Greek gnḗsios “belonging to the race”. (The ē in these Greek forms can be shown to be original, not Attic-Ionic developments from Proto-Greek *ā.)

NOTE.  The Pāṇinian term “seṭ” (that is, sa-i-ṭ) is literally “with an /i/”. This refers to the fact that roots so designated, like jan- “be born”, have an /i/ between the root and the suffix, as we've seen in Sanskrit jánitar-, jániman-, janitva (a gerund). Cf. such formations built to “aniṭ” ("without an /i/") roots, such as han- “slay”: hántar- “slayer”, hanman- “a slaying”, hantva (gerund). In Pāṇini's analysis, this /i/ is a linking vowel, not properly a part of either the root or the suffix. It is simply that some roots are in effect in the list consisting of the roots that (as we would put it) ‘take an -i-‘.

The startling reflexes of these roots in zero grade before a consonant (in this case, Sanskrti ā, Greek nē, Latin nā, Lithuanian ìn) is explained by the lengthening of the (originally perfectly ordinary) syllabic resonant before the lost laryngeal, while the same laryngeal protects the syllabic status of the preceding resonant even before an affix beginning with a vowel: the archaic Vedic form jajanur cited above is structurally quite the same (*ge-gn̥h₁-r̥) as a form like *da-dṛś-ur “they saw” < *de-dr̥k-r̥.

Incidentally, redesigning the root as *genh- has another consequence. Several of the Sanskrit forms cited above come from what look like o-grade root vowels in open syllables, but fail to lengthen to -ā- per Brugmann's law. All becomes clear when it is understood that in such forms as *gonh- before a vowel, the *o is not in fact in an open syllable. And in turn that means that a form like O.Ind. jajāna “was born”, which apparently does show the action of Brugmann's law, is actually a false witness: in the Sanskrit perfect tense, the whole class of seṭ roots, en masse, acquired the shape of the aniṭ 3 sing. forms.

There are also roots ending in a stop followed by a laryngeal, as *pleth₂-/*pl̥th₂- “spread, flatten”, from which Sanskrit pṛthú- “broad” masc. (= Avestan pərəθu-), pṛthivī- fem., Greek platús (zero grade); Skt. prathimán- “wideness” (full grade), Greek platamṓn “flat stone”. The laryngeal explains (a) the change of *t to *th in Proto-Indo-Iranian, (b) the correspondence between Greek -a-, Sanskrit -i- and no vowel in Avestan (Avestan pərəθwī “broad” fem. in two syllables vs Sanskrit pṛthivī- in three).

Caution has to be used in interpreting data from Indic in particular. Sanskrit remained in use as a poetic, scientific, and classical language for many centuries, and the multitude of inherited patterns of alternation of obscure motivation (such as the division into seṭ and aniṭ roots) provided models for coining new forms on the "wrong" patterns. There are many forms like tṛṣita- “thirsty” and tániman- “slendernes”, that is, seṭ formations to to unequivocally aniṭ roots; and conversely aniṭ forms like píparti “fills”, pṛta- “filled”, to securely seṭ roots (cf. the ‘real’ past participle, pūrṇá-). Sanskrit preserves the effects of laryngeal phonology with wonderful clarity, but looks upon the historical linguist with a threatening eye: for even in Vedic Sanskrit, the evidence has to be weighed carefully with due concern for the antiquity of the forms and the overall texture of the data.

Stray laryngeals can be found in isolated or seemingly isolated forms; here the three-way Greek reflexes of syllabic *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ are particularly helpful, as seen below.

·   *ḥ₁ in Greek ánemos “wind” (cf. Latin animus “breath, spirit; anger”, Vedic aniti “breathes”) < *anə- “breathe; blow” (now *h₂enh₁-). Perhaps also Greek híeros “mighty, super-human; divine; holy”, cf. Sanskrit iṣirá- “vigorous, energetic”.

·   *ḥ₂ in Greek patḗr “father” = Sanskrit pitár-, Old English fæder, Gothic fadar, Latin pater. Also *megḥ₂ “big” neut. > Greek méga, Sanskrit máhi.

·   *ḥ₃ in Greek árotron “plow” = Welsh aradr, Old Norse arðr, Lithuanian árklas.

The Greek forms ánemos and árotron are particularly valuable because the verb roots in question are extinct in Greek as verbs. This means that there is no possibility of some sort of analogical interference, as for example happened in the case of Latin arātrum “plow”, whose shape has been distorted by the verb arāre “to plow” (the exact cognate to the Greek form would have been *aretrum). It used to be standard to explain the root vowels of Greek thetós, statós, dotós “put, stood, given” as analogical. Most scholars nowadays probably take them as original, but in the case of “wind” and “plow”, the argument can't even come up.

Regarding Greek híeros, the pseudo-participle affix *-ro- is added directly to the verb root, so *isḥ₁-ro- > *isero- > *ihero- > híeros (with regular throwback of the aspiration to the beginning of the word), and Sanskrit iṣirá-. There seems to be no question of the existence of a root *ejsh- “vigorously move/cause to move”. If the thing began with a laryngeal, and most scholars would agree that it did, it would have to be *h₁-, specifically; and that's a problem. A root of the shape *h₁ejsh₁- is not possible. Indo-European had no roots of the type *mem-, *tet-, *d^hred^h-, i.e., with two copies of the same consonant. But Greek attests an earlier (and rather more widely-attested) form of the same meaning, híaros. If we reconstruct *h₁ejsh₂-, all of our problems are solved in one stroke. The explanation for the híeros/híaros business has long been discussed, without much result; laryngeal theory now provides the opportunity for an explanation which did not exist before, namely metathesis of the two laryngeals. It's still only a guess, but it's a much simpler and more elegant guess than the guesses available before.

The syllabic *ḥ₂ in *pḥ₂ter- “father” is not really isolated. The evidence is clear that the kinship affix seen in “mother, father” etc. was actually *-h₂ter-. The laryngeal syllabified after a consonant (thus Greek patḗr, Latin pater, Sanskrit pitár-; Greek thugátēr, Sanskrit duhitár- “daughter”) but lengthened a preceding vowel (thus say Latin māter “mother”, frāter “brother”) — even when the “vowel” in question was a syllabic resonant, as in Sanskrit yātaras “husbands' wives” < *jn̥̄t- < *jn̥-h₂ter-).

Like any other consonant, Laryngeals feature in the endings of verbs and nouns and in derivational morphology, the only difference being the greater difficulty of telling what's going on. Indo-Iranian, for example, can retain forms that pretty clearly reflect a laryngeal, but there is no way of knowing which one.

The following is a rundown of laryngeals in Proto-Indo-European morphology.

*h₁ is seen in the instrumental ending (probably originally indifferent to number, like English expressions of the type by hand and on foot). In Sanskrit, feminine i- and u-stems have instrumentals in -ī, -ū, respectively. In the Rigveda, there are a few old a-stems (PIE o-stems) with an instrumental in -ā; but even in that oldest text the usual ending is -enā, from the n-stems.

Greek has some adverbs in -ē, but more important are the Mycenaean forms like e-re-pa-te “with ivory” (i.e. elephantē? -ě?)

The marker of the neuter dual was *-ih, as in Sanskrit bharatī “two carrying ones (neut.)”, nāmanī “two names”, yuge “two yokes” (< yuga-i? *yuga-ī?). Greek to the rescue: the Homeric form ósse “the (two) eyes” is manifestly from *h₃ek^w-ih₁ (formerly *ok^w-ī) via fully-regular sound laws (intermediately *ok^wje).

*-eh₁- derives stative verb senses from eventive roots: PIE *sed- “sit (down)”: *sed-eh₁- “be in a sitting position” (> Proto-Italic *sed-ē-je-mos “we are sitting” > Latin sedēmus). It is clearly attested in Celtic, Italic, Germanic (the Class IV weak verbs), and Baltic/Slavic, with some traces in Indo-Iranian (In Avestan the affix seems to form past-habitual stems).

It seems likely, though it is less certain, that this same *-h₁ underlies the nominative-accusative dual in o-stems: Sanskrit vṛkā, Greek lúkō “two wolves”. (The alternative ending -āu in Sanskrit cuts a small figure in the Rigveda, but eventually becomes the standard form of the o-stem dual.)

*-h₁s- derives desiderative stems as in Sanskrit jighāṃsati “desires to slay” < *g^whi-g^whṇ-h₂s-e-ti- (root *g^when-, Sanskrit han- “slay”). This is the source of Greek future tense formations and (with the addition of a thematic suffix *-je/o-) the Indo-Iranian one as well: bhariṣyati “will carry” < *bher-ḥ₁s-je-ti.

*-jeh₁-/*-ih₁- is the optative suffix for root verb inflections, e.g. Latin (old) siet “may he be”, sīmus “may we be”, Sanskrit syāt “may he be”, and so on.

*h₂ is seen as the marker of the neuter plural: *-ḥ₂ in the consonant stems, *-eh₂ in the vowel stems. Much leveling and remodeling is seen in the daughter languages that preserve any ending at all, thus Latin has generalized *-ā throughout the noun system (later regularly shortened to -a), Greek generalized -ǎ < *-ḥ₂.

The categories “masculine/feminine” plainly did not exist in the most original form of Proto-Indo-European, and there are very few noun types which are formally different in the two genders. The formal differences are mostly to be seen in adjectives (and not all of them) and pronouns. Interestingly, both types of derived feminine stems feature *h₂: a type that is patently derived from the o-stem nominals; and an ablauting type showing alternations between *-jeh₂- and *-ih₂-. Both are peculiar in having no actual marker for the nominative singular, and at least as far as the *-eh₂- type, two things seem clear: it is based on the o-stems, and the nom.sg. is probably in origin a neuter plural. (An archaic trait of Indo-European morpho-syntax is that plural neuter nouns construe with singular verbs, and quite possibly *jugeh₂ was not so much “yokes” in our sense, but “yokage; a harnessing-up”.) Once that much is thought of, however, it is not easy to pin down the details of the “ā-stems” in the Indo-European languages outside of Anatolia, and such an analysis sheds no light at all on the *-jeh₂-/*-ih₂- stems, which (like the *eh₂-stems) form feminine adjective stems and derived nouns (e.g. Sanskrit devī- “goddess” from deva- “god”) but unlike the “ā-stems” have no foundation in any neuter category.

*-eh₂- seems to have formed factitive verbs, as in *new-eh₂- “to renew, make new again”, as seen in Latin novāre, Greek neáō and Hittite ne-wa-aḫ-ḫa-an-t- (participle) all “renew” but all three with the pregnant sense of “plow anew; return fallow land to cultivation”.

*-h₂- marked the 1^st person singular, with a somewhat confusing distribution: in the thematic active (the familiar -ō ending of Greek and Latin, and Indo-Iranian -ā(mi)), and also in the perfect tense (not really a tense in PIE): *-h₂e as in Greek oîda "I know" < *wojd-h₂e. It is the basis of the Hittite ending -ḫḫi, as in da-aḫ-ḫi “I take” < *-ḫa-i (original *-ḫa embellished with the primary tense marker with subsequent smoothing of the diphthong).

*-eh₃ may be tentatively identified in a “directive case”. No such case is found in Indo-European noun paradigms, but such a construct accounts for a curious collection of Hittite forms like ne-pi-ša “(in)to the sky”, ták-na-a “to, into the ground”, a-ru-na “to the sea”. These are sometimes explained as o-stem datives in -a < *-ōj, an ending clearly attested in Greek and Indo-Iranian, among others, but there are serious problems with such a view, and the forms are highly coherent, functionally. And there are also appropriate adverbs in Greek and Latin (elements lost in productive paradigms sometimes survive in stray forms, like the old instrumental case of the definite article in English expressions like the more the merrier): Greek ánō “upwards”, kátō “downwards”, Latin quō “whither?”, eō “to that place”; and perhaps even the Indic preposition/preverb â “to(ward)” which has no satisfactory competing etymology. (These forms must be distinguished from the similar-looking ones formed to the ablative in *-ōd and with a distinctive “fromness” sense: Greek ópō “whence, from where”.)

Appendix III: The Proto-Indo-Europeans

The Proto-Indo-Europeans are the speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, a prehistoric people of the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Age. They are a group of people whose existence from around 4000 BCE is inferred from their language, Proto-Indo-European.

Some things about their culture can be determined with confidence, based on the words reconstructed for their language:

·   They used a kinship system based on relationships between men.

·   The chief of their pantheon was djḗus patḗr (lit. “sky father”) and an earth god.

·   They composed and recited heroic poetry or song lyrics, that used stock phrases like undying fame.

·   The climate they lived in had snow.

·   They were both pastoral and nomadic, domesticating cattle and horses.

·   They had carts, with solid wheels, but not yet chariots, with spoked wheels.

·   What is known about the Proto-Indo-Europeans with any certainty is the result of comparative linguistics, partly seconded by archaeology. The following traits are widely agreed-upon, but it should be understood that they are hypothetical by their reconstructed nature.

·   The Proto-Indo-Europeans were a patrilineal society, probably semi-nomadic, relying on animal husbandry (notably cattle and sheep). They had domesticated the horse (ékwos). The cow (cṓus) played a central role, in religion and mythology as well as in daily life. A man's wealth would have been measured by the number of his animals (péku, the word for small livestock, acquired a meaning of “value” in both English fee and in Latin pecunia).

·   They practiced a polytheistic religion centered on sacrificial rites, probably administered by a priestly caste. The Kurgan hypothesis suggests burials in barrows or tomb chambers. Important leaders would have been buried with their belongings, and possibly also with members of their household or wives.

·   There is evidence for sacral kingship, suggesting the tribal king at the same time assumed the role of high priest. Many Indo-European societies know a threefold division of a clerical class, a warrior class and a class of peasants or husbandmen. Such a division was suggested for the Proto-Indo-European society by Georges Dumézil.

·   If there had been a separate class of warriors, then it would probably have consisted of single young men. They would have followed a separate warrior code unacceptable in the society outside their peer-group. Traces of initiation rites in several Indo-European societies suggest that this group identified itself with wolves or dogs (cf. Berserker, werewolf).

·   Technologically, reconstruction suggests a culture of the early Bronze Age: Bronze was used to make tools and weapons. Silver and gold were known. Sheep were kept for wool, and weaving was practiced for textile production. The wheel was known, certainly for ox-drawn carts, and late Proto-Indo European warfare may also have made use of horse-drawn chariots.

·   The native name of this people cannot be reconstructed with certainty. Aryo-, sometimes upheld as a self-identification of the Indo-Europeans, is attested as an ethnic designation only in the Indo-Iranian subfamily, while téuta, “people”, seems to have been lost in some dialects.

·   The scholars of the 19^th century that originally tackled the question of the original homeland of the Indo-Europeans (also called Urheimat after the German term), were essentially confined to linguistic evidence. A rough localization was attempted by reconstructing the names of plants and animals (importantly the beech and the salmon) as well as the culture and technology (a Bronze Age culture centered on animal husbandry and having domesticated the horse). The scholarly opinions became basically divided between a European hypothesis, positing migration from Europe to Asia, and an Asian hypothesis, holding that the migration took place in the opposite direction.

NOTE. However, from its early days, the controversy was tainted by romantic, nationalistic notions of heroic invaders at best and by imperialist and racist agendas at worst. It was often naturally assumed that the spread of the language was due to the invasions by some superior Aryan race. Such hypotheses suffered a particularly severe distortion for purposes of political propaganda by the Nazis. The question is still the source of much contention. Typically, nationalistic schools of thought either claim their respective territories for the original homeland, or maintain that their own culture and language have always been present in their area, dismissing the concept of Proto-Indo-Europeans altogether.

There have been many attempts to claim that particular prehistorical cultures can be identified with the PIE-speaking peoples, but all have been speculative. All attempts to identify an actual people with an unattested language depend on a sound reconstruction of that language that allows identification of cultural concepts and environmental factors which may be associated with particular cultures (such as the use of metals, agriculture vs. pastoralism, geographically distinctive plants and animals, etc).

In the twentieth century Marija Gimbutas created a modern variation on the traditional invasion theory, the Kurgan hypothesis, after the Kurgans (burial mounds) of the Eurasian steppes, in which the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic tribe in Eastern Ukraine and southern Russia and expanded on horseback in several waves during the 3^rd millennium BC. Their expansion coincided with the taming of the horse. Leaving archaeological signs of their presence, they subjugated the peaceful European Neolithic farmers of Gimbutas's Old Europe. As Gimbutas's beliefs evolved, she put increasing emphasis on the patriarchal, patrilinear nature of the invading culture, sharply contrasting it with the supposedly egalitarian, if not matrilinear culture of the invaded, to a point of formulating essentially feminist archaeology.

Her theory has found genetic support in remains from the Neolithic culture of Scandinavia, where bone remains in Neolithic graves indicated that the megalith culture was either matrilocal or matrilineal as the people buried in the same grave were related through the women. Likewise there is evidence of remaining matrilineal traditions among the Picts. A modified form of this theory by JP Mallory, dating the migrations earlier to around 4000 BC and putting less insistence on their violent or quasi-military nature, is still widely held.

Colin Renfrew is the leading propagator the “Anatolian hypothesis”, according to which the Indo-European languages spread peacefully into Europe from Asia Minor from around 7000 BC with the advance of farming (wave of advance). That theory is contradicted by the fact that ancient Anatolia is known to be inhabited by non-Indo-European people, namely the Hattians, Khalib/Karub, and Khaldi/Kardi. However, that does not preclude the possibility that those people in some way contributed to the proto-Indo-Europeans, especially since they were in close proximity to the early Kurgan cultures.

Yet another theory is connected with the Black Sea deluge theory, suggesting that PIE originated as the language of trade between early Neolithic Black Sea tribes. Under this hypothesis University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Fredrik T. Hiebert hypothesizes that the transition from PIE to IE dispersion occurred during an inundation of the Black Sea in the mid 6^th millennium BC.

The rise of Archaeogenetic evidence which uses genetic analysis to trace migration patterns also added new elements to the puzzle. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, one of the first in this field, in the 1990s used genetic evidence to combine, in some ways, Gimbutas's and Colin Renfrew's theories together. Here Renfrew's agricultural settlers, moving north and west, partially split off eventually to become Gimbutas's Kurgan culture which moves into Europe.

In any case, developments in genetics take away much of the edge of the sometimes heated controversies about invasions. They indicate a strong genetic continuity in Europe; specifically, studies by Bryan Sykes show that about 80% of the genetic stock of Europeans goes back to the Paleolithic, suggesting that languages tend to spread geographically by cultural contact rather than by invasion and extermination, i.e. much more peacefully than was described in some invasion scenarios, and thus the genetic record does not rule out the historically much more common type of invasions where a new group assimilates the earlier inhabitants. This very common scenario of successive small scale invasions where a ruling nation imposed its language and culture on a larger indigenous population was what Gimbutas had in mind:

The Process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical transformation. It must be understood as a military victory in terms of imposing a new administrative system, language and religion upon the indigenous groups.

On the other hand, such results also gave rise to a new incarnation of the “European hypothesis” suggesting the Indo-European languages to have existed in Europe since the Paleolithic (the so-called Paleolithic Continuity Theory).

A component of about 28% may be attributed to the Neolithic revolution, deriving from Anatolia about 10,000 BCE. A third component of about 11% derives from Pontic steppe. While these findings confirm that there were population movements both related to the beginning Neolithic and the beginning Bronze Age, corresponding to Renfrew's and Gimbutas's Indo-Europeans, respectively, the genetic record obviously cannot yield any information as to the language spoken by these groups.

The spread of Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup R1a1 is associated with the spread of the Indo-European languages. Its defining mutation (M17) occurred about 10,000 years ago, before the PIE stage, so that its presence cannot be taken as a certain sign of Indo-European admixture.

Even more recently, a study of the presence/absence of different words across Indo-European using stochastic models of word evolution (Gray and Atkinson, 2003) suggests that the origin of Indo-European goes back about 8500 years, the first split being that of Hittite from the rest (the so-called Indo-Hittite hypothesis). Gray and Atkinson go to great lengths to avoid the problems associated with traditional approaches to glottochronology. However, it must be noted that the calculations of Gray and Atkinson rely entirely on Swadesh lists, and while the results are quite robust for well attested branches, their calculation of the age of Hittite, which is crucial for the Anatolian claim, rests on a 200 word Swadesh list of one single language and are regarded as contentious. Interestingly, a more recent paper (Atkinson et al, 2005) of 24 mostly ancient languages, including three Anatolian languages, produced the same time estimates and early Anatolian split.

A scenario that could reconcile Renfrew's beliefs with the Kurgan hypothesis suggests that Indo-European migrations are somehow related to the submersion of the northeastern part of the Black Sea around 5600 BC: while a splinter group who became the proto-Hittite speakers moved into northeastern Anatolia around 7000 BC, the remaining population would have gone northward, evolving into the Kurgan culture, while others may have escaped far to the northeast (Tocharians) and the southeast (Indo-Iranians). While the time-frame of this scenario is consistent with Renfrew, it is incompatible with his core assumption that Indo-European spread with the advance of agriculture.

The Proto-Indo-European homeland north-east of the Black Sea has a distinctive climate, which largely results from the area being inland. The region has low precipitation, but not low enough to be a desert. It gets about 38 cms (15 inches) of rain per year. The region has a high temperature difference between summer and winter of about 33°C (60°F).

The society of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been reconstructed through analyses of modern Indo-European societies as well as archaeological evidence. PIE society was most likely patrilineal, and probably semi-nomadic, relying on animal husbandry.

The native name with which these people referred to themselves as a linguistic community, or as an ethnic unity of related tribes cannot be reconstructed with certainty.

There is evidence for sacral kingship, suggesting the tribal chief at the same time assumed the role of high priest. Many Indo-European societies still show signs of an earlier threefold division of a clerical class, a warrior class and a class of farmers or husbandmen. Such a division was suggested for the Proto-Indo-European society by Georges Dumézil.

If there was a separate class of warriors, it probably consisted of single young men. They would have followed a separate warrior code unacceptable in the society outside their peer-group. Traces of initiation rites in several Indo-European societies suggest that this group identified itself with wolves or dogs.

The people were organized in settlements (IE wéiks, English -wick “village”), probably each with its chief (IE rēgs). These settlements or villages were further divided in households (IE dṓmos), each headed by a patriarch, IE dems-póts, “house-master”, cf. Gk. despotes, Skr. dampati, also found as IE weiks-póts, “clan-master”, landlord, both compounds similar to IE ghos-póts, “guest-master”, host, in turn similar to the term “aryan”, IE alienós, originally “stranger”, hence “guest”, later used (with a semantic evolution) for “host, master”, by Indo-Iranians to refer to themselves.

 

Technologically, reconstruction suggests a culture of the Bronze Age: Words for Bronze can be reconstructed (ájos) from Germanic, Italic and Indo-Iranian, while no word for Iron can be dated to the proto-language. Gold and Silver were known.

An n̥sis was a bladed weapon, originally a dagger of Bronze or in earliest times of bone. An íkmos was a spear or similar pointed weapon. Words for axe are ácsī (Germanic, Greek, Italic) and pélekus (Greek, Indo-Iranian); these could have been either of ston or of bronze.

The wheel, qéqlos or rótā, was known, certainly for ox-drawn carts. Horse-drawn chariots developed after the breakup of the proto-language, originating with the Proto-Indo-Iranians around 2000 BC.

Judging by the vocabulary, techniques of weaving, plaiting, tying knots etc. were important and well-developed and used for textile production as well as for baskets, fences, walls etc. Weaving and binding also had a strong magical connotation, and magic is often expressed by such metaphors. The bodies of the deceased seem to have been literally tied to their graves to prevent their return.

Proto-Indo-European society depended on animal husbandry. Cattle (cṓus, stáuros) were the most important animals to them, and a man's wealth would be measured by the number of cows he owned. Sheep (ówis) and goats (gháidos) were also kept, presumably by the less wealthy. Agriculture and catching fish (pískos) were also practiced.

The domestication of the horse may have been an innovation of this people and is sometimes invoked as a factor contributing to their rapid expansion.

They practiced a polytheistic religion centered on sacrificial rites, probably administered by a class of priests or shamans.

Animals were slaughtered (chn̥tós) and dedicated to the gods (djḗus) in the hope of winning their favour. The king as the high priest would have been the central figure in establishing favourable relations with the other world.

The Kurgan hypothesis suggests burials in barrows or tomb chambers. Important leaders would have been buried with their belongings, and possibly also with members of their household or wives (human sacrifice, sati).

The use of two-word compound words for personal names, typically but not always ascribing some noble or heroic feat to their bearer, is so common in Indo-European languages that it seems certainly inherited. These names are often of the class of compound words that in Sanskrit are called bahuvrihis, already explained.

They are found in in Ger. Alf-red, “elf-counsel”, O.H.G. Hlude-rīch, “rich in glory”, O.Eng. God-gifu, “gift of God” (Eng. Godiva), Gaul. Orgeto-rix, “king who harms”, Gaul. Dumno-rix, “king of the world”, Gaul. Epo-pennus, “horse’s head”, O.Ir. Cin-néide (Eng. Kennedy) “ugly head”, O.Ind. Asva-ghosa, “tamer of horses”, O.Ind. Asvá-medhas, “who has done the horse sacrifice”, O.Pers. Xša-yāršā (Gk. Xérxēs) “ruler of heroes”, O.Pers. Arta-xšacā, “whose reign is through truth/law”, Gk. Sō-krátēs, “good ruler”, Gk. Mene-ptólemos, “who faces war”, Gk. Hipp-archus, “horse master”, Gk. Cleo-patra, “from famous lineage”, Gk. Arkhé-laos, “who governs the people”, O.Sla. Bogu-milŭ, “loved by god”, Sla. Vladi-mir, “peaceful ruler”, from volodi-mirom, “possess the world”.

Patronymics such as Germanic Gustafson, “son of Gustav”, Romance Gonzales, “(son) of Gonzalo”, Gaelic McCool, Slavic Mazurkiewicz, etc. are also frequently encountered in Indo-European languages.

 

Only small fragments of Proto-Indo-European poetry may be recovered. What survives of their poetry are stock phrases of two or three words, like undying fame and immortal gods, that are found in diverse ancient sources. These seem to have been standard building blocks for song lyrics.

Inferring chiefly from the Vedas, there would have been sacrificial hymns, creation myths, such as the common myths of a world tree, and hero tales, like the slaying of a serpent or a dragon (qr̥mis) by a heroic man or god.

Probably of the greatest importance to the Indo-Europeans themselves were songs extolling great deeds by heroic warriors. In addition to perpetuating their glory (kléwos), such songs would also temper the warriors' behavior, since each needed to consider whether his undying fame would be honorable or shameful.

 

Some words connected with PIE world-view:

·   ghosti-, concerned mutual obligations between people and between worshipers and gods, and from which guest and host are derived. Cf. also alieno-, foreigner and host, in Ind.-Ira. ‘arya-‘.

·   r̥-tu-, r̥-to-, “fitting, right, ordered”, also “right time, ritually correct”, related to the order of the world (Avestan asha, Vedic rta-, rtu-), cf. reg-tó-, as in Germanic right, Lat. (de-)rectus.

·   ap-, aqa- and wodr-, pawr- and egní-, reveal a diffrentiated concept of water as an inanimated substance and as an animated being.

The existence of similarities among the deities and religious practices of the Indo-European peoples allows glimpses of a common Proto-Indo-European religion and mythology. This hypothetical religion would have been the ancestor of the majority of the religions of pre-Christian Europe, of the Dharmic religions in India, and of Zoroastrianism in Iran.

Indications of the existence of this ancestral religion can be detected in commonalities between languages and religious customs of Indo-European peoples. To presuppose this ancestral religion did exist, though, any details must remain conjectural. While similar religious customs among Indo-European peoples can provide evidence for a shared religious heritage, a shared custom does not necessarily indicate a common source for such a custom; some of these practices may well have evolved in a process of parallel evolution. Archaeological evidence, where any can be found, is difficult to match to a specific culture. The best evidence is therefore the existence of cognate words and names in the Indo-European languages.

The main functionaries of the hypothetical Proto-Indo-European religion would have been maintained by a class of priests or shamans. There is evidence for sacral kingship, suggesting the tribal king at the same time assumed the role of high priest. This function would have survived as late as 11^th century Scandinavia, when kings could still be dethroned for refusing to serve as priests. Many Indo-European societies know a threefold division of a clerical class, a warrior class and a class of peasants or husbandmen. Such a division was suggested for the Proto-Indo-European society by Georges Dumézil.

Divination was performed by priests, e.g. from parts of slaughtered animals (for animal sacrifice, cf. Lat. haruspex). Birds also played a role in divination, as Lat. augur, language of the birds.

Examples of the descendants of this class in historical Indo-European societies would be the Celtic Druids, the Indian Brahmins, the Latin Flamines and the Persian Magi. Historical Indo-European religions also had priestesses, either hierodoules (temple prostitutes), dedicated virgins, or oracles, e.g. the Roman Vestal Virgins, the Greek Sibyls or the Germanic Völvas.

Linguists are able to reconstruct the names of some deities in Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) from names occurring in widely spread, old mythologies. Some of the proposed deities are more readily accepted among scholars than others.

The Proto-Indo-Europeans may have distinguished between different races of gods, like the Aesir, and Vanir of Norse mythology and the Titans and Olympians of Greek mythology. Possibly, these were the Djeus, literally “celestial, those of the sky/daylight” (cf. Deus, Zeus, Deva, Tiw) and the Ansu-, literally “spirits, those with vital force” (cf. Aesir, Asura, Ahura).

·   Djḗus Patḗr is believed to have been the original name of God of the Daylight Sky and the chief god of the Indo-European pantheon. He survives in Greek Zeus (genitive case Diòs), Latin Jupiter, Sanskrit Dyaus/Dyaus Pita, Baltic Dievas, Germanic Tiwaz (ON Tyr, OHG Ziu), Armenian Astwatz, and the Gaulish Dispater (c.f. also deus pater in the Vulgate, e. g. Jude 1:1).

·   Pltaw Mātḗr (Dhghōm) is believed to have been the name of an Earth Mother goddess, Skr. Prthivi. Another name of the Indo-European Mother-Earth would be Dhghōm Mātḗr, as in Albanian Dhe Motë, Avestan Zamyat, Slavic Mati Zemlja, Lithuanian Žemyna, Latvian Zemes Mate, maybe Greek Dēmēter.

·   A Thunder God, possibly associated with the oak, and in some traditions syncretized with Djḗus. A name Pérqunos root per-q- or per-g- is suggested by Balto-Slavic *Perkúnos, Norse Fjörgyn, Albanian Perëndi and Vedic Parjanya. An onomatopoeic root tar is continued in Gaulish Taranis and Hittite Tarhunt. A word for “thunder” itself was (s)tene-, continued in Germanic *Þunraz (thunder personified), and became Thor.

·   Áusōs is believed to have been the goddess of dawn, continued in Greek mythology as Eos, in Rome as Auror-a, in Vedic as Ushas, in Lithuanian mythology as Aušra or Auštaras, in Armenian as Astghik and possibly also in Germanic mythology as Eastre.

Additional gods may include:

·   Greek Poseidon was originally a chthonic god, either a god of the earth or the underworld, from poti daon “lord of Da”, cf. Demeter from Da mater “Mother Da”. Another etymology may be proposed, don referring to “the waters”, as the Vedic goddess of the rivers, Danu, who shares a name with the Celtic mother god. Poseidon being “the master of the waters”, more conform to the functions of a god of the sea (and possibly also the supposed celestial ocean or watery abyss).

·   Wélṇos, maybe a god of the night sky, or of the underworld, continued in Sanskrit Varuna, Greek Uranos (which is also a word for sky), Slavic Veles, Armenian Aray and Lithuanian Velnias.

·   Divine twins, brothers of the Sun Maiden or Dawn goddess, sons of the Sky god.

·   There may have been a sea-god, in Persian and Vedic known as Apam Napat, in Celtic as Nechtan, in Etruscan as Nethuns, in Germanic as Njord and in Latin as Neptune, possibly called Néptonos (originally from neq-t-?). This god may be related to the Germanic water spirit, the Nix.

·   The Sun, Swel, and the Moon Ménōts/Men- deities, possibly twin children of the supreme sky-god Djḗus, continued in Hindu religion as Surya and Mas, in Iranian religion as Hvar and Mah, in Greek as Helios and Selene (these were later pushed out by imported Anatolian deities Apollo and Artemis), in Latin mythology as Sol and Luna, in German mythology as Sol and Mani, in Baltic mythology as *Saulē and *Mēnō. The usual scheme is that one of these celestial deities is male and the other female, though the exact gender of the Sun or Moon tend to vary among subsequent Indo-European mythologies.

 

According to the Russian scholar Alex Fantalov, there are only five main archetypes for all gods and goddesses of all Indo-European mythologies. He also proposes that these five archetypes were possibly the original deities of the pre-PIE pantheon. These, according to Fantalov, are:

§  God of the Sky

§  God of Thunder

§  God of the Earth/Underworld

§  Cultural hero

§  Great goddess

The sky and thunder gods were heavenly deities, representing the ruling class of society, and in subsequent cultures they were often merged into a single supreme god. On the other hand, the Earth god and the Cultural Hero were earthly gods, tied to nature, agriculture and crafts, and in subsequent cultures they were often split into more deities as societies grew more complex. And while it seems there existed some enmity between the Thunderer and the God of the Earth (which may be echoed in myths about battle of various thunder gods and a serpentine enemy, v.i.), the Cultural Hero seems to be a sort of demigod son of either the sky god or the thunder god, and was considered to be the ancestor of the human race, and the psychopomp. Together with the character of Great goddess, who was a wife of the ruling sky god, the cultural hero thus balanced between the heavenly god of the sky/thunder and the more chthonic god of the earth/underworld.

There seems to have been a belief in a world tree, which in Germanic mythology was an ash tree (Norse Yggdrasil; Irminsul), in Hinduism a banyan tree, in Lithuanian mythology Jievaras, and an oak tree in Slavic mythology, and a hazel tree in Celtic mythology. In classical Greek mythology, the closest analogue of this concept is Mount Olympus; however, there is also a later folk tradition about the World Tree, which is being sawed by the Kallikantzaroi (Greek goblins), perhaps borrowed from other peoples.

One common myth which can be found among almost all Indo-European mythologies is a battle ending with the slaying of a serpent, usually a dragon of some sort: examples include Thor vs. Jörmungandr, Sigurd vs. Fafnir in Scandinavian mythology; Zeus vs. Typhon, Kronos vs. Ophion, Apollo vs. Python, Heracles vs. the Hydra and Ladon, Perseus vs. Ceto in Greek mythology; Indra vs. Vritra in the Vedas; Perun vs. Veles, Dobrynya Nikitich vs. Zmey in Slavic mythology; Teshub vs. Illuyanka of Hittite mythology; Θraētaona, and later Kərəsāspa, vs. Aži Dahāka in Zoroastrianism and Persian mythology.

There are also analogous stories in other neighbouring mythologies:

o  Anu or Marduk vs. Tiamat in Mesopotamian mythology;

o  Baal or El vs. Lotan or Yam-Nahar in Levantine mythology;

o  Yahweh or Gabriel vs. Leviathan or Rahab or Tannin in Jewish mythology;

o  Michael the Archangel and, Christ vs. Satan (in the form of a seven-headed dragon),

o  Virgin Mary crushing a serpent in Roman Catholic iconography,

o  Saint George vs. the dragon in Christian mythology.

The myth symbolized a clash between forces of order and chaos (represented by the serpent), and the god or hero would always win. It is therefore most probable that there existed some kind of dragon or serpent, possibly multi-headed (cf. Śeṣa, the hydra and Typhon) and likely linked with the god of underworld and/or waters, as serpentine aspects can be found in many chthonic and/or aquatic Indo-European deities, such as for example the many Greek aquatic deities, most notably Poseidon, Oceanus, Triton, Typhon (who carries many chthonic attributes while not specifically linked with the sea), Ophion, and also the Slavic Veles. Possibly called qr̥mis, or some name cognate with Welṇos or the root wel- (cf. Skr. Varuna, who is associated with the serpentine naga, Vala and Vṛtra, Sla. Veles, Bal. velnias), or “serpent” (Hittite Illuyanka, Skr. Ahis, Ira. azhi, Gk. ophis and Ophion, and Lat. anguis), or the root dheubh- (Greek Typhon and Python).

Related to the dragon-slaying myth is the “Sun in the rock” myth, of a heroic warrior deity splitting a rock where the Sun or Dawn was imprisoned. Such a myth is preserved in Rigvedic Vala, where Ushas and the cows, stolen by the Panis were imprisoned, connected with other myths of abductions into the netherworld such as the mysteries of Eleusis connected with Persephone, Dionysus and Triptolemus.

There may have been a sort of nature spirit or god akin to the Greek god Pan and the Satyrs, the Roman god Faunus and the Fauns, the Celtic god Cernunnos and the Dusii, Slavic Veles and the Leszi, Vedic Pashupati, Prajapati and Pushan, the Germanic Woodwose, elves and dwarves.

There may also have been a female cognate akin to the Greco-Roman nymphs, Slavic vilas, the Huldra of Germanic folklore, the Hindu Apsaras, the Persian Peri. A possibly similar type of spirit may be found in Jewish mythology, Azazel and the Se'irim, as well as in Arabic mythology, the Jinn.

There may have been a savage dog or wolf guarding the underworld, as Greek Kerberos, Norse Garm.

It is also likely that they had three fate goddesses, see the Norns in Norse mythology, Moirae in Greek mythology, Sudjenice of Slavic folklore and Deivės Valdytojos in Lithuanian mythology.

The first ancestor of men was called Mánus, cf. Germanic Mannus, Hindu Manu.

The Sun was represented as riding in a chariot.