Proto-Indo-Iranian, also called Proto-Indo-Iranic or Proto-Aryan, 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 unatte ...

of the Indo-Iranian branch of

Indo-European The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

. Its speakers, the hypothetical

Proto-Indo-Iranians The Indo-Iranian peoples, also known as Ā́rya or Aryans from their self-designation, were a group of Indo-European speaking peoples who brought the Indo-Iranian languages to parts of Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia in waves from the fi ...

, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are often connected with the

Sintashta culture The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals, dated to the period 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex, –1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta ...

of the

Eurasian Steppe The Eurasian Steppe, also 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 Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan, Siberia, Europea ...

and the early Andronovo archaeological horizon. Proto-Indo-Iranian was a satem language, 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. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Eu ...

, and in turn removed less than a millennium from its descendants:

Vedic Sanskrit Vedic Sanskrit, also simply referred as the Vedic language, is the most ancient known precursor to Sanskrit, a language in the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is atteste ...

(of the

Rigveda The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' (, , from wikt:ऋच्, ऋच्, "praise" and wikt:वेद, वेद, "knowledge") is an ancient Indian Miscellany, collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canoni ...

) and

Old Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family and was originally spoken during the Old Iranian period ( – 400 BCE) by the Iranians living in the eastern po ...

(of the

Gathas The Gathas () are 17 hymns in the Avestan language from the Zoroastrian oral tradition of the Avesta. The oldest surviving text fragment dates from 1323 CE, but they are believed by scholars to have been composed before 1000 BCE and passed dow ...

). It is the ancestor of

Indo-Aryan languages The Indo-Aryan languages, or sometimes Indic languages, are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. As of 2024, there are more than 1.5 billion speakers, primarily concentrated east ...

, the

Iranian languages The Iranian languages, also called the 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 langu ...

, and the

Nuristani languages The Nuristani languages are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian languages, Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages, Iranian languages. They have approximately 214,000 speakers ...

, predominantly spoken in the

Southern Asian The United Nations geoscheme is a system that divides 248 countries and territories in the world into six continental regions, 22 geographical subregions, and two intermediary regions. It was devised by the United Nations Statistics Division ...

subregion of Eurasia.

Descriptive phonology

In addition to the vowels, , and could function as the syllabic core. In many reconstructions, instances of and occur instead of and .

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, 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 Proto-Iranian or Proto-Iranic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Iranian languages branch of Indo-European language family and thus the ancestor of the Iranian languages such as Persian, Pashto, Sogdian, Zazaki, Ossetian, Mazandara ...

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 stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

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 is a type of language that, when spoken, has certain syllables in words or morphemes that are prominent, as indicated by a distinct contrasting pitch (music), pitch (tone (linguistics), linguistic tone) rather than by vol ...

system similar to present-day

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, 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

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) 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 its relate ...

ing vowels ''*e, *o'' into a single vowel, Proto-Indo-Iranian ''*a'' (but see Brugmann's law).

Grassmann's law Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an Aspiration (phonetics), aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant ...

Bartholomae's law Bartholomae's law, sometimes referred to as the Buddha rule, is a Proto-Indo-European sound law affecting consonant clusters, most clearly in the Indo-Iranian languages. It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents ( stops or the sibi ...

, and the

ruki sound law The ruki sound law, also known as the ruki rule or iurk rule, is a historical sound change that took place in the satem branches of the Indo-European language family, namely in Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Indo-Iranian. According to this sound ...

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 . *

: 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, *ć becomes *š and *ȷ́ becomes *ž. *ȷ́ʰ also becomes *ž, with aspiration of the occlusive. * The sequence *ćš 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: *o or *ó in an open syllable lengthens to *ā.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:Beekes
pp. 88–89
/ref>

Subsequent sound changes

Among the sound changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian to Indo-Aryan is the loss of the voiced

sibilant Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...

s ''*z, *ẓ, *ź;'' among those to

is the de-aspiration of the PIE voiced aspirates.

Morphology and basic vocabulary

Proto-Indo-Iranian has preserved much of the morphology of

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

(PIE): thematic and athematic inflection in both nouns and verbs, all three numbers (singular, dual and plural), all the tense, mood and voice categories in the verb, and the cases in the noun.

Personal pronouns (nominative case)

Pronouns, nouns and adjectives are inflected into the eight cases of PIE: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, ablative, locative and instrumental (with also a comitative/sociative meaning).

Three examples of verbs

In verbs, the chief innovation is the creation of a passive conjugation with the suffix ''*-yá'', with middle inflection.Fortson p. 205 The following examples lack the dual plural and are conjugated in the present tense.

Examples of noun declension

Despite Proto-Indo-Iranian preserving much of the original morphology of Proto-Indo-European, an important innovation in the noun is the creation of a genitive plural ending ''*-nām'' used with vowel stems. The following examples lack the dual number.

Masculine noun

Feminine noun

Neuter noun

An example of adjectival declension

The morphology in adjectival declension is identical to the one in noun declension. The following example lacks the dual number.

Numerals

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-European languages Indo-Iranian languages Indo-Iranian Sintashta culture