HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Proto-Indo-Iranian, also Proto-Indo-Iranic is the reconstructed
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 unattes ...
of the Indo-Iranian/Indo-Iranic branch of
Indo-European 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 ...
. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are often connected with the Sintashta culture of the
Eurasian Steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also simply called the Great Steppe or the steppes, is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome. It stretches through Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Transnistr ...
and the early
Andronovo The Andronovo culture (russian: Андроновская культура, translit=Andronovskaya kul'tura) is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished  2000–1450 BC,Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021)"Andronovo ...
archaeological horizon. Proto-Indo-Iranian was a
satem language Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K", "G" and "Y" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An e ...
, likely removed less than a millennium from its ancestor, the late
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-E ...
, and in turn removed less than a millennium from the
Avestan Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
and Vedic Sanskrit of the
Rigveda The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts ('' śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only on ...
, its descendants. Proto-Indo-Iranian has been considered to form a subgroup along with Greek, Armenian and Phrygian on the basis of many striking similarities in the morphological structure. However, this issue remains unsettled.Fortson, p. 203 It is the ancestor of the
Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, P ...
, the
Iranian languages The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau. The Iranian languages are groupe ...
, and the
Nuristani languages The Nuristani languages, formerly known as Kafiri languages, are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They have approximately 130,000 speakers primarily in ea ...
.


Descriptive phonology

In addition to the vowels, , and could function as the syllabic core.


Two palatal series

Proto-Indo-Iranian is hypothesized to have contained two series of stops or affricates in the palatal to postalveolar region. The phonetic nature of this contrast is not clear, and hence they are usually referred to as the primary or first series (*ć *ȷ́ *ȷ́ʰ (also represented as *ĉ, *ĵ, *ĵʰ), continuing Proto-Indo-European palatovelar *ḱ *ǵ *ǵʰ) and the second or secondary series (*č *ǰ *ǰʰ, continuing Proto-Indo-European plain and labialized velars, *k, *g, *gʰ and *kʷ, *gʷ, *gʷʰ, in palatalizing contexts). The following table shows the most common reflexes of the two series ( Proto-Iranian is the hypothetical ancestor to the Iranian languages, including Avestan and Old Persian):


Laryngeal

Proto-Indo-European is usually hypothesized to have had three to four laryngeal consonants, each of which could occur in either syllabic or non-syllabic positions. In Proto-Indo-Iranian, the laryngeals merged as one phoneme /*H/. Beekes suggests that some instances of this /*H/ survived into Rigvedic Sanskrit and Avestan as unwritten
glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...
s as evidenced by metrics.


Accent

Like Proto-Indo-European and Vedic Sanskrit (and also Avestan, though it was not written down), Proto-Indo-Iranian had a
pitch accent A pitch-accent language, when spoken, has word accents in which one syllable in a word or morpheme is more prominent than the others, but the accentuated syllable is indicated by a contrasting pitch ( linguistic tone) rather than by loudness ...
system similar to present-day Japanese, conventionally indicated by an acute accent over the accented vowel.


Historical phonology

The most distinctive phonological change separating Proto-Indo-Iranian from Proto-Indo-European is the collapse of the ablauting vowels ''*e, *o'' into a single vowel, Proto-Indo-Iranian ''*a'' (but see
Brugmann's law Brugmann's law, named for Karl Brugmann, is a sound law stating that in the Indo-Iranian languages, the earlier Proto-Indo-European ' normally became in Proto-Indo-Iranian but in open syllables if it was followed by one consonant and another vow ...
). Grassmann's law,
Bartholomae's law Bartholomae's law (named after the German Indo-Europeanist Christian Bartholomae) is an early Indo-European (PIE) sound law affecting the Indo-Iranian family. It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents (stops or the sibilant ), any on ...
, and the Ruki sound law were also complete in Proto-Indo-Iranian. A fuller list of some of the hypothesized sound changes from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Indo-Iranian follows: * The Satem shift, consisting of two sets of related changes. The PIE palatals *ḱ *ǵ *ǵʰ are fronted or affricated, eventually resulting in PII *ć, *ȷ́, *ȷ́ʰ, while the PIE labiovelars *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ merge with the velars *k *g *gʰ. * The PIE liquids merge as .Fortson, p. 182 * The PIE syllabic nasals merge with . *
Bartholomae's law Bartholomae's law (named after the German Indo-Europeanist Christian Bartholomae) is an early Indo-European (PIE) sound law affecting the Indo-Iranian family. It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents (stops or the sibilant ), any on ...
: an aspirate immediately followed by a voiceless consonant becomes voiced stop + voiced aspirate. In addition, dʰ + t > dᶻdʰ.Fortson, p. 181 * The Ruki rule: *s is retracted to *š when immediately following a liquid (*r *r̥ *l *l̥), a high vowel (*i *u), a PIE velar (*ḱ *ǵ *ǵʰ *k *g *gʰ *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ) or the syllabic laryngeal *H̥. Its allophone *z likewise becomes *ž. * Before a dental occlusive, *ĉ becomes *š and *ĵ becomes *ž. *ĵʰ also becomes *ž, with aspiration of the occlusive. * The sequence *ĉš was simplified to *šš. * The "second palatalization" or "law of palatals": *k *g *gʰ develop palatal allophones *č *ǰ *ǰʰ before the front vowels *i, *e. through an intermediate *kʲ *gʲ *gʲʰ. *
Brugmann's law Brugmann's law, named for Karl Brugmann, is a sound law stating that in the Indo-Iranian languages, the earlier Proto-Indo-European ' normally became in Proto-Indo-Iranian but in open syllables if it was followed by one consonant and another vow ...
: *o in an open syllable lengthens to *ō.Fortson, p. 183 * The vowels *e *o merge with *a. Similarly, *ē, *ō merge with *ā. This has the effect of giving full phonemic status to the second palatal series *č *ǰ *ǰʰ. * In certain positions, laryngeals were vocalized to *i. This preceded the second palatalization. :* Following a consonant, and preceding a consonant cluster :* Following a consonant and word-final * The Indo-European laryngeals all merged into one phoneme *H, which may have been a glottal stop. This was probably contemporary with the merging of *e and *o with *a. * According to Lubotsky's Law, *H disappeared when followed by a voiced nonaspirated stop and another consonant:


Subsequent sound changes

Among the sound changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian to Indo-Aryan is the loss of the voiced sibilant ''*z;'' among those to Proto-Iranian is the de-aspiration of the PIE voiced aspirates.


Morphology

Proto-Indo-Iranian has preserved much of the morphology of Proto-Indo-European: thematic and athematic inflection in both nouns and verbs, all three numbers of singular, dual and plural, all the tense, mood and voice categories in the verb, and the cases in the noun. An important innovation in the noun is the creation of a genitive plural ending ''*-nām'' used with vowel stems. In verbs, the chief innovation is the creation of a passive conjugation with the suffix ''*-yá'', with middle inflection.Fortson p. 205


See also

*
Substratum in the Vedic language Vedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals, and morphologically, the formatio ...


References


Bibliography

* * * * *Alexander Lubotsky,
The Indo-Iranian substratum
in ''Early Contacts between Uralic and Indo-European'', ed. Carpelan et al., Helsinki (2001). *Asko Parpola, 'The formation of the Aryan branch of Indo-European', in Blench and Spriggs (eds), ''Archaeology and Language III'', London and New York (1999).


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Proto-Indo-Iranian Language Indo-Iranian Indo-Iranian languages Indo-Iranian