The
particles of the
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 ...
(PIE) have been reconstructed by modern linguists based on similarities found across all
Indo-European languages.
Adverbs
Adverbs used as adpositions
Many particles could be used both as
adverbs and
postpositions. This is similar to modern languages; compare English ''He is above in the attic'' (adverb) and ''The bird is above the house'' (preposition). The postpositions became prepositions in the daughter languages except
Anatolian,
Indo-Iranian and
Sabellic
The Osco-Umbrian, Sabellic or Sabellian languages are an extinct group of Italic languages, the Indo-European languages that were spoken in Central and Southern Italy by the Osco-Umbrians before being replaced by Latin, as the power of Ancient ...
; some of the other branches such as
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 ...
and
Greek preserve postpositions vestigially.
Reflexes, or descendants of the PIE reconstructed forms in its daughter languages, include the following.
Untranslated reflexes have the same meaning as the PIE word.
In the following languages, two reflexes separated by a slash mean:
*English:
Old English /
Modern English
*German:
Old High German /
New High German
*Irish:
Old Irish /
Modern Irish
*Persian:
Old Persian /
Modern Persian
*Tocharian:
Tocharian A /
Tocharian B
Negating prefixes (privatives)
Two
privatives can be reconstructed, and , the latter only used for negative
commands. The privative prefix is likely the
zero grade of .
Adverbs derived from adjectives
Adverbs derived from adjectives (like English ''bold-ly'', ''beautiful-ly'') arguably cannot be classified as particles. In Proto-Indo-European, these are simply case forms of adjectives and thus better classified as
nouns. An example is "greatly", a nominative-accusative singular.
Conjunctions
The following
conjunctions can be reconstructed:
Placed after the joined word, as in Latin ("Senate and people of Rome"), joining and .
Interjections
There is only one PIE
interjection that can be securely reconstructed; the second is uncertain.
Notes
References
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Proto-Indo-European Particle
Particle
Parts of speech