The authors introduce Proto-Indo-European describing its construction and revealing the people who spoke it between 5,500 and 8,000 years ago. Using archaeological evidence and natural history they reconstruct the lives, passions, culture, society and mythology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans.

The Bases for Reconstructing Pre-IEFrom Pie to Pre-IeResidues in Pie that Prompt its Identification as a Reflex of an Active Languagelexical StructureSyntaxDerivational MorphologyInflectional MorphologyPhonologyThe Culture of the Pre-Indo-European SpeakersPre-IE and Possible Related Languages

This book presents the theory that the linguistic and cultural landscape of Europe north of the Alps and the Pyrenees was shaped in prehistoric times by the interaction of Indo-European speakers with speakers of languages related to Basque and to Semitic. These influences on the lexicon, grammar, and toponymy of the West Indo-European languages (with special focus on Germanic) are demonstrated in German and English research papers, provided here with summaries, commentaries, and a new introduction in English, and with general and etymological indexes.

Recent developments in aDNA has reshaped our understanding of later European prehistory, and at the same time also opened up for more fruitful collaborations between archaeologists and historical linguists. Two revolutionary genetic studies, published independently in Nature, 2015, showed that prehistoric Europe underwent two successive waves of migration, one from Anatolia consistent with the introduction of agriculture, and a later influx from the Pontic-Caspian steppes which without any reasonable doubt pinpoints the archaeological Yamnaya complex as the cradle of (Core-)Indo-European languages. Now, for the first time, when the preliminaries are clear, it is possible for the fields of genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics to cooperate in a constructive fashion to refine our knowledge of the Indo-European homeland, migrations, society and language. For the historical-comparative linguists, this opens up a wealth of exciting perspectives and new working fields in the intersections between linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, for the archaeologists and geneticists, on the other hand, the linguistic contributions help to endow the material findings with a voice from the past. The present selection of papers illustrate the importance of an open interdisciplinary discussion which will gradually help us in our quest of Tracing the Indo-Europeans.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. It starts with a presentation of the languages of the family (from English and the other Germanic languages, the Celtic and Slavic languages, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit through Armenian and Albanian) and a discussion of the culture and origin of the Indo-Europeans, the speakers of the Indo-European proto-language.The reader is introduced into the nature of language change and the methods of reconstruction of older language stages, with many examples (from the Indo-European languages). A full description is given of the sound changes, which makes it possible to follow the origin of the different Indo-European languages step by step. This is followed by a discussion of the development of all the morphological categories of Proto-Indo-European. The book presents the latest in scholarly insights, like the laryngeal and glottalic theory, the accentuation, the ablaut patterns, and these are systematically integrated into the treatment. The text of this second edition has been corrected and updated by Michiel de Vaan. Sixty-six new exercises enable the student to practice the reconstruction of PIE phonology and morphology.

Through a combination of the linguistics of a reconstructed language, archaeology, and comparative mythology, Deep Ancestors breathes life into the ancient Proto-Indo-European culture and religion. Ceisiwr states "This book must be considered a report on a work in progress. As time goes by, new research will be done, new ideas and data presented, and old texts and archaeology reinterpreted. This will require changes in the beliefs and practices of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion. Consider this a process of progressive revelation, except that instead of coming from the gods it comes from scholars."

A Grammar of Modern Indo-European is a complete reference guide to a living Indo-European language. It contains a comprehensive description of Proto-Indo-European grammar, and offers an analysis of the complexities of the prehistoric language and its reconstruction from its descendant languages. Written in a fresh and accessible style, and illustrated with maps, figures and tables, this book focusses on the real patterns of use of Late Indo-European. The book is well organised and is filled with full, clear explanations of areas of confusion and difficulty. It also contains an extensive English - Indo-European, Indo-European - English vocabulary, as well as detailed etymological notes, designed to provide readers with an easy access to the information they require.An essential reference source for the student of Indo-European as a learned and living language, this work will appeal to students of languages, classics, and the ancient world, as well as to general readers interested in the history of language, and in speaking the direct ancestor of the world's largest language family.

This book presents a new reconstruction of Proto-Basque, the mother language of modern Basque varieties, historical Basque, and Aquitanian, grounded in traditional methods of historical linguistics. Building on a long tradition of Basque scholarship, the comparative method and internal reconstruction, informed by the phonetic bases of sound change and phonological typology, are used to explain previously underappreciated alternations and asymmetries in Basque sound patterns, resulting in a radically new view of the proto-language. The comparative method is then used to compare this new Proto-Basque with Proto-Indo-European, revealing regular sound correspondences in basic vocabulary and grammatical formatives. Evaluation of these results supports a distant genetic relationship between Proto-Basque and Proto-Indo-European, and offers new insights into specific linguistic properties of these two ancient languages. This comprehensive volume, which includes a detailed appendix including Proto-Basque/Proto-Indo-European cognate sets, will be of general interest to linguists, archeologists, historians, and geneticists, and of particular interest to scholars in historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology, language change, and Basque and Indo-European studies. Errata for the book can be found at: https://julietteblevins.ws.gc.cuny.edu/proto-basque/

This book challenges media-celebrated evolutionary studies linking Indo-European languages to Neolithic Anatolia, instead defending traditional practices in historical linguistics.