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Indo-European studies is a field of
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
and an interdisciplinary field of study dealing with
Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
, both current and extinct. The goal of those engaged in these studies is to amass information about the hypothetical
proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...
from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
(PIE), and its speakers, the
Proto-Indo-Europeans The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric population of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancestor of the Indo-European languages according to linguistic reconstruction. Knowledge of them comes chiefly from ...
, including their
society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soc ...
and
Proto-Indo-European mythology Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested ...
. The studies cover where the language originated and how it spread. This article also lists Indo-European scholars, centres, journals and book series.


Naming

The term ''Indo-European'' itself now current in English literature, was coined in 1813 by the British scholar Sir Thomas Young, although at that time, there was no consensus as to the naming of the recently discovered language family. However, he seems to have used it as a geographical term, to indicate the newly proposed language family in
Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...
spanning from the
Indian subcontinent The Indian subcontinent is a physiographical region in Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian Ocean from the Himalayas. Geopolitically, it includes the countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, Ind ...
till the
European subcontinent Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
. Among the other names suggested were: * (C. Malte-Brun, 1810) *''Indoeuropean'' (Th. Young, 1813) * ( Rasmus C. Rask, 1815) * (F. Schmitthenner, 1826) * (
Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt (, also , ; ; 22 June 1767 – 8 April 1835) was a Prussian philosopher, linguist, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the Humboldt University of Berlin, which was named afte ...
, 1827) * (A. F. Pott, 1840) * (G. I. Ascoli, 1854) *''Aryan'' ( F. M. Müller, 1861) * (H. Chavée, 1867). Rask's ''japetisk'' or "Japhetic languages", after the old notion of "
Japhetites The term Japhetites (in adjective form Japhethitic or Japhetic) refers to the descendents of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible. The term has been adopted in ethnological and linguistic writing from the 18th to the 20th century ...
" and ultimately
Japheth Japheth ( he, יֶפֶת ''Yép̄eṯ'', in pausa ''Yā́p̄eṯ''; el, Ἰάφεθ '; la, Iafeth, Iapheth, Iaphethus, Iapetus) is one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis, in which he plays a role in the story of Noah's drunk ...
, son of the Biblical
Noah Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible ( Book of Genesis, chapters 5� ...
, parallels the term Semitic, from Noah's son
Shem Shem (; he, שֵׁם ''Šēm''; ar, سَام, Sām) ''Sḗm''; Ge'ez: ሴም, ''Sēm'' was one of the sons of Noah in the book of Genesis and in the book of Chronicles, and the Quran. The children of Shem were Elam, Ashur, Arphaxad, Lud ...
, and
Hamitic Hamites is the name formerly used for some Northern and Horn of Africa peoples in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism and slavery. ...
, from Noah's son
Ham Ham is pork from a leg cut that has been preserved by wet or dry curing, with or without smoking."Bacon: Bacon and Ham Curing" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 2, p. 39. As a processed meat, the term " ...
. Japhetic and Hamitic are both obsolete, apart from occasional dated use of term "Hamito-Semitic" for the
Afro-Asiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic s ...
. In English, ''Indo-German'' was used by J. C. Prichard in 1826 although he preferred ''Indo-European''. In French, use of was established by A. Pictet (1836). In German literature, was used by
Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the political disarray in the Republic of M ...
since 1835, while the term had already been introduced by
Julius von Klapproth The gens Julia (''gēns Iūlia'', ) was one of the most prominent patrician families in ancient Rome. Members of the gens attained the highest dignities of the state in the earliest times of the Republic. The first of the family to obtain the ...
in 1823, intending to include the northernmost and the southernmost of the family's branches, as it were as an abbreviation of the full listing of involved languages that had been common in earlier literature. ''Indo-Germanisch'' became established by the works of
August Friedrich Pott August Friedrich Pott (14 November 1802 in Nettelrede, Hanover5 July 1887 in Halle) was a German pioneer in linguistics. Pott was a theology student at the University of Göttingen, where he became interested in philology. He became a schoolm ...
, who understood it to include the easternmost and the westernmost branches, opening the doors to ensuing fruitless discussions whether it should not be ''Indo-Celtic'', or even ''Tocharo-Celtic''. Today, ''Indo-European'', is well established in English and French literature, while remains current in German literature, but alongside a growing number of uses of . Similarly, has now largely replaced the still occasionally encountered in Dutch scientific literature.
Indo-Hittite In Indo-European linguistics, the term Indo-Hittite (also Indo-Anatolian) refers to Edgar Howard Sturtevant's 1926 hypothesis that the Anatolian languages may have split off a Pre-Proto-Indo-European language considerably earlier than the separati ...
is sometimes used for the wider family including Anatolian by those who consider that IE and Anatolian are comparable separate branches.


Study methods

The
comparative method In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor and then extrapolating backwards ...
was formally developed in the 19th century and applied first to Indo-European languages. The existence of the Proto-Indo-Europeans had been inferred by
comparative linguistics Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. Genetic relatedness i ...
as early as 1640, while attempts at an Indo-European proto-language reconstruction date back as far as 1713. However, by the 19th century, still no consensus had been reached about the internal groups of the IE family. The method of
internal reconstruction Internal reconstruction is a method of reconstructing an earlier state in a language's history using only language-internal evidence of the language in question. The comparative method compares variations between languages, such as in sets of co ...
is used to compare patterns within one
dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is ...
, without comparison with other dialects and languages, to try to arrive at an understanding of regularities operating at an earlier stage in that dialect. It has also been used to infer information about earlier stages of PIE than can be reached by the comparative method. The IE languages are sometimes hypothesized to be part of super-families such as
Nostratic Nostratic is a controversial hypothetical macrofamily, which includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, although its exact composition and structure vary among proponents. It typically comprises Kartvelian, Indo-European and ...
or Eurasiatic.


History


Preliminary work

The ancient Greeks were aware that their language had changed since the time of
Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the '' Iliad'' and the '' Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of ...
(about 730BC).
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
(about 330BC) identified four types of linguistic change: insertion, deletion, transposition and substitution. In the 1st century BC, the Romans were aware of the similarities between Greek and Latin. In the
post-classical In world history, post-classical history refers to the period from about 500 AD to 1500, roughly corresponding to the European Middle Ages. The period is characterized by the expansion of civilizations geographically and development of trade ...
West, with the influence of
Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism, monotheistic religion based on the Life of Jesus in the New Testament, life and Teachings of Jesus, teachings of Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth. It is the Major religious groups, world's ...
, language studies were undermined by the naïve attempt to derive all languages from Hebrew since the time of
Saint Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
. Prior studies classified the European languages as Japhetic. One of the first scholars to challenge the idea of a Hebrew root to the languages of Europe was
Joseph Scaliger Joseph Justus Scaliger (; 5 August 1540 – 21 January 1609) was a French Calvinist religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish a ...
(1540–1609). He identified Greek, Germanic, Romance and Slavic language groups by comparing the word for "God" in various European languages. In 1710, Leibniz applied ideas of
gradualism Gradualism, from the Latin ''gradus'' ("step"), is a hypothesis, a theory or a tenet assuming that change comes about gradually or that variation is gradual in nature and happens over time as opposed to in large steps. Uniformitarianism, incrementa ...
and
uniformitarianism Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in ...
to linguistics in a short essay. Like Scaliger, he rejected a Hebrew root, but also rejected the idea of unrelated language groups and considered them all to have a common source. Around the 12th century, similarities between European languages became recognised. In Iceland, scholars noted the resemblances between Icelandic and English.
Gerald of Wales Gerald of Wales ( la, Giraldus Cambrensis; cy, Gerallt Gymro; french: Gerald de Barri; ) was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taugh ...
claimed that Welsh, Cornish, and Breton were descendants of a common source. A study of the
Insular Celtic Insular Celtic languages are the group of Celtic languages of Brittany, Great Britain, Ireland, and the Isle of Man. All surviving Celtic languages are in the Insular group, including Breton, which is spoken on continental Europe in Brittany, ...
languages was carried out by
George Buchanan George Buchanan ( gd, Seòras Bochanan; February 1506 – 28 September 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. According to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth century Scotland produced." ...
in the 16th century and the first field study was by Edward Llwyd around 1700. He published his work in 1707, shortly after translating a study by
Paul-Yves Pezron Paul-Yves Pezron (1639, Hennebont, – 9 October 1706, Brie) was a seventeenth-century Cistercian brother from Brittany, best known for his 1703 publication of a study on the common origin of the Bretons and the Welsh, ''Antiquité de la nation, et ...
on Breton. Grammars of European languages other than Latin and Classical Greek began to be published at the end of the 15th century. This led to comparison between the various languages. In the 16th century, visitors to India became aware of similarities between Indian and European languages. For example, Filippo Sassetti reported striking resemblances between Sanskrit and Italian.


Early Indo-European studies

In his 1647 essay, Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn proposed the existence of a primitive common language he called "Scythian". He included in its descendants
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People ...
, German,
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
,
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, and
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, and his posthumously published ''Originum Gallicarum liber'' of 1654 added Slavic, Celtic and Baltic. The 1647 essay discusses, as a first, the methodological issues in assigning languages to genetic groups. For example, he observed that loanwords should be eliminated in comparative studies, and also correctly put great emphasis on common morphological systems and irregularity as indicators of relationship.Roger Blench,
Archaeology and Language: methods and issues
, ''A Companion to Archaeology'', ed. J. Bintliff (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 52–74.
A few years earlier, the Silesian physician Johann Elichmann (1601/1602–1639) already used the expression ''ex eadem origine'' (from a common source) in a study published posthumously in 1640.Johann Elichmann, ''Tabula Cebetis Graece, Arabice, Latine. Item aurea carmina Pythagorae'' (Lugduni Batavorum: Typis Iohannis Maire, 1640). He related European languages to
Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian languages (also Indo-Iranic languages or Aryan languages) constitute the largest and southeasternmost extant branch of the Indo-European language family (with over 400 languages), predominantly spoken in the geographical subre ...
(which include
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the la ...
). The idea that the first language was Hebrew continued to be advanced for some time: Pierre Besnier (1648–1705) in 1674 published a book which was translated into English the following year: ''A philosophical essay for the reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by the mastery of one''.Pierre Besnier, ''La reunion des langues, ou L'art de les apprendre toutes par une seule''. 1674. Leibniz in 1710 proposed the concept of the so-called Japhetic language group, consisting of languages now known as Indo-European, which he contrasted with the so-called
Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
languages (now generally known as Semitic). The concept of actually reconstructing an Indo-European proto-language was suggested by William Wotton in 1713, while showing, among others, that Icelandic ("Teutonic"), the Romance languages and Greek were related. In 1741 Gottfried Hensel (1687–1767) published a language map of the world in his '' Synopsis Universae Philologiae''. He still believed that all languages were derived from Hebrew.
Mikhail Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (; russian: Михаил (Михайло) Васильевич Ломоносов, p=mʲɪxɐˈil vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ , a=Ru-Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov.ogg; – ) was a Russian polymath, scientist and wr ...
compared numbers and other linguistic features in different languages of the world including Slavic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Iranian ("
Medic A medic is a person involved in medicine such as a medical doctor, medical student, paramedic or an emergency medical responder. Among physicians in the UK, the term "medic" indicates someone who has followed a "medical" career path in postgr ...
"), Finnish, Chinese,
Khoekhoe Khoekhoen (singular Khoekhoe) (or Khoikhoi in the former orthography; formerly also '' Hottentots''"Hottentot, n. and adj." ''OED Online'', Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. ...
("Hottentot") and others. He emphatically expressed the antiquity of the linguistic stages accessible to comparative method in the drafts for his ''Russian Grammar'' published in 1755:M. V. Lomonosov. In: Complete Edition, Moscow, 1952, vol. 7, pp 652-659
Представимъ долготу времени, которою сіи языки раздѣлились. ... Польской и россійской языкъ коль давно раздѣлились! Подумай же, когда курляндской! Подумай же, когда латинской, греч., нѣм., росс. О глубокая древность!
Imagine the depth of time when these languages separated! ... Polish and Russian separated so long ago! Now think how long ago his happened toKurlandic! Think when his happened toLatin, Greek, German, and Russian! Oh, great antiquity!
Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux (1691–1779) sent a ''Mémoire'' to the French '' Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres'' in 1767 in which he demonstrated the similarity between the Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, German and Russian languages. Despite the above, the discovery of the genetic relationship of the whole family of Indo-European languages is often attributed to Sir William Jones, a British judge in
India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...
who in a 1786 lecture (published 1788) observed that
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
In his 1786 ''The Sanskrit Language'', Jones postulated a
proto-language In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unatte ...
uniting six branches: Sanskrit (i.e. Indo-Aryan), Persian (i.e. Iranian), Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic. In many ways his work was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
in the Indo-European languages, while omitting
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
. In 1814 the young Dane Rasmus Christian Rask submitted an entry to an essay contest on Icelandic history, in which he concluded that the Germanic languages were (as we would put it) in the same language family as Greek, Latin, Slavic, and Lithuanian. He was in doubt about Old Irish, eventually concluding that it did not belong with the others (he later changed his mind), and further decided that Finnish and Hungarian were related but in a different family, and that "Greenlandic" ( Kalaallisut) represented yet a third. He was unfamiliar with Sanskrit at the time. Later, however, he learned Sanskrit, and published some of the earliest Western work on ancient Iranian languages.
August Schleicher August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages'' in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European languag ...
was the first scholar to compose a tentative reconstructed text in the extinct ''common source'' that Van Boxhorn and later scholars had predicted (''see:''
Schleicher's fable Schleicher's fable is a text composed in a reconstructed version of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, published by August Schleicher in 1868. Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a text in PIE. The fable is entitled ("The Sheep weand ...
). The reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo- ...
(PIE) represents, by definition, the common language of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. This early phase culminates in
Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the political disarray in the Republic of M ...
's ''Comparative Grammar'' of 1833.


Later Indo-European studies

The classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from Bopp to
August Schleicher August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages'' in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European languag ...
's 1861 ''Compendium'' and up to Karl Brugmann's 5-volume '' Grundriss'' (outline of Indo-European languages) published from 1886 to 1893. Brugmann's
Neogrammarian The Neogrammarians (German: ''Junggrammatiker'', 'young grammarians') were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. ...
re-evaluation of the field and
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
's proposal of the concept of "consonantal schwa" (which later evolved into the
laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that: * The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, the ...
) may be considered the beginning of "contemporary" Indo-European studies. The Indo-European proto-language as described in the early 1900s in its main aspects is still accepted today, and the work done in the 20th century has been cleaning up and systematizing, as well as the incorporation of new language material, notably the Anatolian and Tocharian branches unknown in the 19th century, into the Indo-European framework. Notably, the
laryngeal theory The laryngeal theory is a theory in the historical linguistics of the Indo-European languages positing that: * The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of phonemes beyond those reconstructable by the comparative method. That is, the ...
, in its early forms barely noticed except as a clever analysis, became mainstream after the 1927 discovery by Jerzy Kuryłowicz of the survival of at least some of these hypothetical phonemes in Anatolian.
Julius Pokorny Julius Pokorny (12 June 1887 – 8 April 1970) was an Austrian-Czech linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities. Early life ...
in 1959 published his ''
Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch The ''Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch'' (''IEW''; "Indo-European Etymological Dictionary") was published in 1959 by the Austrian-German comparative linguist and Celtic languages expert Julius Pokorny. It is an updated and slimmed-down ...
'', an updated and slimmed-down reworking of the three-volume ''Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen'' of Alois Walde and Julius Pokorny (1927–32). Both of these works aim to provide an overview of the lexical knowledge accumulated until the early 20th century, but with only stray comments on the structure of individual forms; in Pokorny 1959, then-recent trends of morphology and phonology (e.g., the laryngeal theory), go unacknowledged, and he largely ignores Anatolian and Tocharian data. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century, such as Oswald Szemerényi, Calvert Watkins,
Warren Cowgill Warren Cowgill (; December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics. Cowgill was unusual among Indo-Europea ...
, Jochem Schindler,
Helmut Rix Helmut Rix (4 July 1926, in Amberg – 3 December 2004, in Colmar) was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany. He is best known for his research into Indo-Eur ...
, developed a better understanding of morphology and, in the wake of Kuryłowicz's 1956 ''L'apophonie en indo-européen'',
ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut (, from German '' Ablaut'' ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and i ...
. Rix's ''
Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben The ''Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben'' (''LIV'', ''"Lexicon of the Indo-European Verbs"'') is an etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) verb. The first edition appeared in 1998, edited by Helmut Rix. A second edition follow ...
'' appeared in 1997 as a first step towards a modernization of Pokorny's dictionary; corresponding tomes addressing the noun, '' Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon'', appeared in 2008, and pronouns and particles, '' Lexikon der indogermanischen Partikeln und Pronominalstämme'', in 2014. Current efforts are focused on a better understanding of the relative chronology within the proto-language, aiming at distinctions of "early", "middle" and "late", or "inner" and "outer" PIE dialects, but a general consensus has yet to form. From the 1960s, knowledge of Anatolian began to be of a certainty sufficient stage to allow it to influence the image of the proto-language (see also
Indo-Hittite In Indo-European linguistics, the term Indo-Hittite (also Indo-Anatolian) refers to Edgar Howard Sturtevant's 1926 hypothesis that the Anatolian languages may have split off a Pre-Proto-Indo-European language considerably earlier than the separati ...
). Such attempts at recovering a sense of historical depth in PIE have been combined with efforts towards linking the history of the language with archaeology, notably with the
Kurgan hypothesis The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory, Kurgan model, or steppe theory) is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and par ...
. J. P. Mallory's 1989 ''In Search of the Indo-Europeans'' and 1997 ''
Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
'' gives an overview of this. Purely linguistic research was bolstered by attempts to reconstruct the culture and mythology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans by scholars such as Georges Dumézil, as well as by archaeology (e. g.
Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, ...
, Colin Renfrew) and genetics (e. g.
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (; 25 January 1922 – 31 August 2018) was an Italian geneticist. He was a population geneticist who taught at the University of Parma, the University of Pavia and then at Stanford University. Works Schooling and ...
). These speculations about the '' realia'' of Proto-Indo-European culture are however not part of the field of comparative linguistics, but rather a sister-discipline.


Criticism

Marxists such as
Bruce Lincoln Bruce Lincoln (born 1948) is Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where he also holds positions in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Com ...
(himself an Indo-Europeanist) have criticized aspects of Indo-European studies believed to be overly
reactionary In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the '' status quo ante'', the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics abs ...
.. "Another issue is Bruce Lincoln’s overtly Marxist point of view. Marxism has traditionally criticized the neo-traditionalist and reactionary aspects of the Indo-European discourse and has been criticized by it in turn." In the 1980s, Georges Dumézil and Indo-European studies in general came under fire from historian
Arnaldo Momigliano Arnaldo Dante Momigliano (5 September 1908 – 1 September 1987) was an Italian historian of classical antiquity, known for his work in historiography, and characterised by Donald Kagan as "the world's leading student of the writing of history ...
, who accused Indo-European studies of being created by fascists bent on combating "
Judeo-Christian The term Judeo-Christian is used to group Christianity and Judaism together, either in reference to Christianity's derivation from Judaism, Christianity's borrowing of Jewish Scripture to constitute the "Old Testament" of the Christian Bible, o ...
" society. Momigliano was himself a veteran member of the
National Fascist Party The National Fascist Party ( it, Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF) was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian Fascism and as a reorganization of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The p ...
, but was not open about this. Edgar C. Polomé, an Indo-Europeanist and former member of the
Belgian Resistance The Belgian Resistance (french: Résistance belge, nl, Belgisch verzet) collectively refers to the resistance movements opposed to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Within Belgium, resistance was fragmented between many sep ...
, described Momigliano and Lincoln's criticism as "unfair and vicious", and connected criticism of Indo-European studies with Marxism and
political correctness ''Political correctness'' (adjectivally: ''politically correct''; commonly abbreviated ''PC'') is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in socie ...
. More recently, the Swedish Marxist historian Stefan Arvidsson has followed up on Momigliano's criticism of Indo-European studies. Arvidsson considers Indo-European studies to be a
pseudoscientific Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable clai ...
field, and has described
Indo-European mythology Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested � ...
as "the most sinister mythology of modern times". In his works, Arvidsson has sought to expose what he considers to be fascist political sympathies of Indo-Europeanists, and suggested that such an exposure may result in the abolition ("
Ragnarök In Norse mythology, (; non, Ragnarǫk) is a series of events, including a great battle, foretelling the death of numerous great figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdallr, and Loki), natural disasters, and the submers ...
") of the concept of Indo-European mythology.


List of Indo-European scholars

(historical; see below for contemporary IE studies) *
Friedrich Schlegel Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (after 1814: von) Schlegel (; ; 10 March 1772 – 12 January 1829) was a German poet, literary critic, philosopher, philologist, and Indologist. With his older brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, he was one of the main figure ...
(1772–1829) *
Jakob Grimm Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (4 January 1785 – 20 September 1863), also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German author, linguist, philologist, jurist, and folklorist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law of linguistics, the co-author of the ...
(1785–1863) * Rasmus Rask (1787–1832) *
Franz Bopp Franz Bopp (; 14 September 1791 – 23 October 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive and pioneering comparative work on Indo-European languages. Early life Bopp was born in Mainz, but the political disarray in the Republic of M ...
(1791–1867) *
August Friedrich Pott August Friedrich Pott (14 November 1802 in Nettelrede, Hanover5 July 1887 in Halle) was a German pioneer in linguistics. Pott was a theology student at the University of Göttingen, where he became interested in philology. He became a schoolm ...
(1802–1887) *
Theodor Benfey :''This is about the German philologist. For Theodor Benfey (born 1925) who developed a spiral periodic table of the elements in 1964, see Otto Theodor Benfey.'' Theodor Benfey (; 28 January 1809, in Nörten near Göttingen26 June 1881, in Götti ...
(1809–1881) *
Hermann Grassmann Hermann Günther Grassmann (german: link=no, Graßmann, ; 15 April 1809 – 26 September 1877) was a German polymath known in his day as a linguist and now also as a mathematician. He was also a physicist, general scholar, and publisher. His m ...
(1809–1877) * Otto von Böhtlingk (1815–1904) * Rudolf von Raumer (1815–1876) *
Georg Curtius Georg Curtius (April 16, 1820August 12, 1885) was a German philologist and distinguished comparativist. Biography Curtius was born in Lübeck, and was the brother of the historian and archeologist Ernst Curtius. After an education at Bonn and B ...
(1820–1885) *
August Schleicher August Schleicher (; 19 February 1821 – 6 December 1868) was a German linguist. His great work was ''A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages'' in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European languag ...
(1821–1868) *
Max Müller Friedrich Max Müller (; 6 December 1823 – 28 October 1900) was a German-born philologist and Orientalist, who lived and studied in Britain for most of his life. He was one of the founders of the western academic disciplines of India ...
(1823–1900) *
William Dwight Whitney William Dwight Whitney (February 9, 1827June 7, 1894) was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer known for his work on Sanskrit grammar and Vedic philology as well as his influential view of language as a social institution. He was ...
(1827–1894) *
August Fick Friedrich Conrad August Fick (May 5, 1833, in Petershagen, Germany – March 24, 1916, in Hildesheim or Breslau) was a German philologist. He spent his life chiefly at Göttingen, where he first studied philology under Theodor Benfey; became a ...
(1833–1916) *
August Leskien August Leskien (; 8 July 1840 – 20 September 1916) was a German linguist active in the field of comparative linguistics, particularly relating to the Baltic and Slavic languages. Biography Leskien was born in Kiel. He studied philology at t ...
(1840–1916) * Franz Kielhorn (1840–1908) *
Wilhelm Scherer Wilhelm Scherer (26 April 18416 August 1886) was a German philologist and historian of literature. He was known as a positivist because he based much of his work on "hypotheses on detailed historical research, and rooted every literary phenomeno ...
(1841–1886) *
Berthold Delbrück Berthold Gustav Gottlieb Delbrück (; 26 July 1842 – 3 January 1922) was a German linguist who devoted himself to the study of the comparative syntax of the Indo-European languages. Early life Delbrück was born in Putbus. He studied at the un ...
(1842–1922) *
Vilhelm Thomsen Vilhelm Ludwig Peter Thomsen (25 January 1842 – 12 May 1927) was a Danish linguist and Turkologist. He successfully deciphered the Orkhon inscriptions which were discovered during the expedition of Nikolai Yadrintsev in 1889. Early life and ...
(1842–1927) * Johannes Schmidt (1843–1901) *
Ernst Windisch Ernst Wilhelm Oskar Windisch (4 September 1844, Dresden30 October 1918, Leipzig) was a German classical philologist and comparative linguist who specialised in Sanskrit, Celtic and Indo-European studies. In his student days at the University of ...
(1844–1918) * K. A. Verner (1846–1896) *
Hermann Osthoff Hermann Osthoff (18 April 1847, Billmerich – 7 May 1909, Heidelberg) was a German linguist. He was involved in Indo-European studies and the Neogrammarian school. He is known for formulating Osthoff's law, and published widely on Indo-Eur ...
(1846–1909) * Karl Brugmann (1849–1919) *
Hermann Möller Hermann Möller (13 January 1850, in Hjerpsted, Denmark – 5 October 1923, in Copenhagen) was a Danish linguist noted for his work in favor of a genetic relationship between the Indo-European and Semitic language families and his version of ...
(1850–1923) * Jakob Wackernagel (1853–1938) * Otto Schrader (1855–1919) *
Ferdinand de Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (; ; 26 November 1857 – 22 February 1913) was a Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher. His ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in both linguistics and semiotics in the 20th century. He is widel ...
(1857–1913) * Wilhelm August Streitberg (1864–1925) *
Hermann Hirt Hermann Hirt (19 December 1865 in Magdeburg – 12 September 1936 in Gießen) was a German philologist and Indo-Europeanist. Biography Hirt wrote on German metres (''Untersuchungen zur westgermanischen Verskunst'', 1889), edited Schopenhauer's ...
(1865–1936) * Antoine Meillet (1866–1936) * Holger Pedersen (1867–1953) *
Alois Walde Alois Walde (November 30, 1869 – October 3, 1924) was an Austrian linguist. Alois Walde studied classical philology and comparative linguistics at the University of Innsbruck where he was awarded a PhD in 1894. The year after, he became a state ...
(1869–1924) * Eduard Schwyzer (1874–1943) *
Ferdinand Sommer Ferdinand Sommer (4 May 1875, in Trier – 3 April 1962, in Munich) was a German classical and Indo-European philologist. From 1893 he studied at the universities of Marburg and Freiberg, where he was a pupil of Rudolf Thurneysen. In 1899 he o ...
(1875–1962) * Bedřich Hrozný (1879–1952) *
Franklin Edgerton Franklin Edgerton (July 24, 1885 – December 7, 1963) was an American linguistic scholar. He was Salisbury Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at Yale University (1926) and visiting professor at Benares Hindu University (195 ...
(1885–1963) *
Julius Pokorny Julius Pokorny (12 June 1887 – 8 April 1970) was an Austrian-Czech linguist and scholar of the Celtic languages, particularly Irish, and a supporter of Irish nationalism. He held academic posts in Austrian and German universities. Early life ...
(1887–1970) * Manu Leumann (1889–1977) * Milan Budimir (1891–1975) * Jerzy Kuryłowicz (1895–1978) *
Roman Jakobson Roman Osipovich Jakobson (russian: Рома́н О́сипович Якобсо́н; October 11, 1896Kucera, Henry. 1983. "Roman Jakobson." ''Language: Journal of the Linguistic Society of America'' 59(4): 871–883. – July 18,Giacomo Devoto Giacomo Devoto (19 July 1897 – 25 December 1974) was an Italian historical linguist and one of the greatest exponents of the twentieth century of the discipline. He was born in Genoa and died in Florence. Career In 1939 he founded with Bruno Mig ...
(1897-1974) * Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) * Christian Stang (1900–1977) * Émile Benveniste (1902–1976) * Ernst Risch (1911–1988) * Oswald Szemerényi (1913–1996) * Karl Hoffmann (1915–1996) * Georg Renatus Solta (1915–2005) * Winfred P. Lehmann (1916–2007) * Edgar Charles Polomé (1920–2000) *
Marija Gimbutas Marija Gimbutas ( lt, Marija Gimbutienė, ; January 23, 1921 – February 2, 1994) was a Lithuanian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of " Old Europe" and for her Kurgan hypothesis, ...
(1921–1994) *
Ladislav Zgusta Ladislav Zgusta (20 March 1924 in Libochovice – 27 April 2007 in Urbana, Illinois) was a Czech-American historical linguist and lexicographer, who wrote one of the first textbooks on lexicography. He was a professor of linguistics and classics ...
(1924–2007) *
Manfred Mayrhofer Manfred Mayrhofer (26 September 1926 – 31 October 2011) was an Austrian Indo-Europeanist who specialized in Indo-Iranian languages. Mayrhofer served as professor emeritus at the University of Vienna. He is noted for his etymological dictionary ...
(1926–2011) *
Helmut Rix Helmut Rix (4 July 1926, in Amberg – 3 December 2004, in Colmar) was a German linguist and professor of the Sprachwissenschaftliches Seminar of Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg, Germany. He is best known for his research into Indo-Eur ...
(1926–2004) *
Warren Cowgill Warren Cowgill (; December 19, 1929 – June 20, 1985) was an American linguist. He was a professor of linguistics at Yale University and the Encyclopædia Britannica's authority on Indo-European linguistics. Cowgill was unusual among Indo-Europea ...
(1929–1985) * Johanna Narten (1930-2019) * Calvert Watkins (1933–2013) *
Anna Morpurgo Davies Anna Elbina Morpurgo Davies, (21 June 1937 – 27 September 2014) was an Italian philologist who specialised in comparative Indo-European linguistics. She spent her career at Oxford University, where she was the Professor of Comparative Philolo ...
(1937-2014) *
Jens Elmegård Rasmussen Jens Elmegård Rasmussen (15 March 1944 – 15 May 2013) was associate professor of Indo-European Studies and head of the Roots of Europe research center at the University of Copenhagen from its initiation in 2008 until his death. He was an exper ...
(1944–2013) * Jochem Schindler (1944–1994)


Contemporary IE study centres

The following universities have institutes or faculties devoted to IE studies:


Academic publications


Journals

*''Kuhn's Zeitschrift'' KZ since 1852, in 1988 renamed to ''
Historische Sprachforschung ''Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics'' is an annual peer-reviewed academic journal covering Indo-European historical linguistics. It is the second oldest linguistics journal still in publication. The current editors-in-chief are ...
'' HS *'' Indogermanische Forschungen'' IF since 1892 *'' Glotta'' since 1909 *'' Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris'' BSL *'' Die Sprache'' since 1949 *'' Münchner Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft'' MSS 1952– *''
Journal of Indo-European Studies The ''Journal of Indo-European Studies'' (JIES) is a peer-reviewed academic journal of Indo-European studies. The journal publishes papers in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, mythology and linguistics relating to the cultural histor ...
'' JIES since 1973 *''
Tocharian and Indo-European Studies ''Tocharian and Indo-European Studies'' (''TIES'') is a scholarly journal on Tocharian in the Indo-European context, established in 1987 by the Icelandic linguist Jörundur Garðar Hilmarsson. The journal initially appeared in Reykjavík, Icela ...
'' since 1987 *'' Studia indo-europaea'' since 2001 *'' International Journal of Diachronic Linguistics and Linguistic Reconstruction'' IJDL
Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and H ...
since 2004


Book series

*'' Leiden Studies in Indo-European'', founded 1991 *'' Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European'', founded 1999 *
Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series
', founded 2005


See also

* Historical linguistics


References


Sources

* * *


External links


TITUS gallery of Indo-Europeanists
* ttps://indogermanistik.org The web site of the Indogermanische Gesellschaft, the Society for Indo-European studies
glottothèque - Ancient Indo-European Grammars online
an online collection of introductory videos to Ancient Indo-European languages produced by the University of Göttingen {{Authority control
Studies Study or studies may refer to: General * Education **Higher education * Clinical trial * Experiment * Observational study * Research * Study skills, abilities and approaches applied to learning Other * Study (art), a drawing or series of drawin ...