The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread's Sequel

[Zju]

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century.

[keenir]

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century.

umm...the recent publication of Proto has some good summaries, history, and general info. other than that, theres Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language which I recently donated to my local library.

[Zju]

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century.

umm...the recent publication of Proto has some good summaries, history, and general info. other than that, theres Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language which I recently donated to my local library.

Just "Proto" is vague - do you mean "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global Hardcover – May 13, 2025" by Laura Spinney?

[keenir]

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century.

umm...the recent publication of Proto has some good summaries, history, and general info. other than that, theres Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language which I recently donated to my local library.

Just "Proto" is vague - do you mean "Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global Hardcover – May 13, 2025" by Laura Spinney?

yes, but sadly i couldn't remember the full title and wasn't sure if i was remembering the wrong Spinny.

[WeepingElf]

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century.

umm...the recent publication of Proto has some good summaries, history, and general info. other than that, theres Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language which I recently donated to my local library.

These two books discuss where and when PIE was probably spoken (Anthony predating the ancient DNA revolution, Spinney post-dating it), and how it spread (though Anthony only for Indo-Iranian); but they offer hardly anything about the language itself (I mean such things as phonology, morphology etc., which seem to me to be what Zju was asking for). For that, Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV (second edition 2010) is IMHO the best source, which also sums up the major developments for each branch. For lexicon, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World by J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, despite of all shortcomings (it is almost 20 years old, gives only roots for verbs, etc.) is still the most handy book I can think of. It is these two books which I use for my Hesperic project.

[zompist]

FWIW I like Winfred Lehmann's Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics. It's oldish by now (1993), but as Lehmann himself discusses, the basic data for PIE are and remain the handbooks published in the 19th century. (Maybe this has changed, but so far as I know the basic procedure is still "take the 19th century handbooks and apply a bunch of revisions.") Lehmann does not provide a lexicon, but he gives the phonological charts and morphological charts and, perhaps more importantly, explains in detail how they are produced. He also has chapters on syntax and lexicon.

Lehmann believes that Greek + Sanskrit are way too overemphasized in reconstruction, and that PIE was far simpler than either. This is consistent with modern understanding of grammaticalization, but a lot of people are very attached to the eight cases and three moods etc. of the Neo-Grammarians.

[hwhatting]

I meant tokens, not types. LIV sometimes reconstructs a laryngeal where M&A have none, e.g. *HReC- where M&A just have *ReC-.

I understood that, I just wanted to remark on the double meaning of "more laryngeals"

But as I said, I am not trying to reconstruct the language of the Bell Beaker people in a scholarly way (that is an endeavour which I deem impossible, at least at the current state of knowledge); I am only trying to re-create it - I am building a conlang that portrays, certainly very imprecisely, that language. And for that, it suffices to avoid obvious blunders - it need not be entirely correct.

That's close to the approach I use for Tautisca, and anyway, it's not like LIV is an infallible source of truth; it's just a convenient collection of material.

As for not using a Hittite dictionary in order to avoid Near Eastern loans, you could of course cross-check the etymologies with Kloekhorst to exclude that. But OTOH, Hittite is not Proto-Anatolian, and even Proto-Anatolian has it's own developments and wouldn't be identical to a common ancestor with your Hesperic. In any case, it's your artistic freedom.

[WeepingElf]

I meant tokens, not types. LIV sometimes reconstructs a laryngeal where M&A have none, e.g. *HReC- where M&A just have *ReC-.

I understood that, I just wanted to remark on the double meaning of "more laryngeals"

But as I said, I am not trying to reconstruct the language of the Bell Beaker people in a scholarly way (that is an endeavour which I deem impossible, at least at the current state of knowledge); I am only trying to re-create it - I am building a conlang that portrays, certainly very imprecisely, that language. And for that, it suffices to avoid obvious blunders - it need not be entirely correct.

That's close to the approach I use for Tautisca, and anyway, it's not like LIV is an infallible source of truth; it's just a convenient collection of material.

As for not using a Hittite dictionary in order to avoid Near Eastern loans, you could of course cross-check the etymologies with Kloekhorst to exclude that. But OTOH, Hittite is not Proto-Anatolian, and even Proto-Anatolian has it's own developments and wouldn't be identical to a common ancestor with your Hesperic. In any case, it's your artistic freedom.

All valid points. The forms in the LIV are mostly part of the tripartite verb aspect system shown most clearly in Greek and Indo-Iranian, and I have Hesperic diverge before that unwieldy system emerged (I plan to have a functionally similar system in Old Albic, but it will be an innovation with a simpler morphology based on a single stem for all forms for each verb); also, many are limited to particular branches and are thus probably even younger than that and should not show up in a branch diverging that early. So I have decided to drop the effort to counter-check my verbs against the LIV. There are much easier ways of building reasonable-looking verb stems from the roots found in M&A.

This question reminds me of the discussion of a conlang project called "Britainese" in the CONLANG mailing list. Britainese is the creation of Ray Brown; it is a response on Andrew Smith's Brithenig taking a different approach. Ray does not apply Welsh sound changes to Latin as Andrew did, but extrapolates the well-known Romance dialect continuum northward, going at great lengths to make his creation as plausible as possible. And he is in his 80s, so he is worried that he may pass away before finishing his project (even if he is still in good health for his age). I feel that he is a bit too perfectionist about his conlang, trying a reconstruction where a re-creation would do. After all, who can tell what, in an alternative history where British Latin survived for whichever reason, a British Romance language would really look like? All we know is that it did not survive, probably because Britain, with its cool and wet climate where you had to import such commodities as important to the Mediterranean lifestyle as wine or olive oil from more southerly regions, just wasn't attractive enough for Roman settlers used to a sunnier climate.

Now, I am in my 50s, so my remaining lifetime will likely suffice to finish my project (unless something really bad happened to me), but I want to get Proto-Hesperic done such that I can go on deriving Old Albic from it within this year, so I shouldn't set the bar too high.

[Zju]

Thanks for all the sources listed.

I mean such things as phonology, morphology etc., which seem to me to be what Zju was asking for

Indeed, that's what I was asking for.

but as Lehmann himself discusses, the basic data for PIE are and remain the handbooks published in the 19th century. (Maybe this has changed, but so far as I know the basic procedure is still "take the 19th century handbooks and apply a bunch of revisions.")

Fair point. What I'm hoping for is to get an up-to-date consensus of the most adequate revisions without having to read a few dozen papers.

Now, I am in my 50s, so my remaining lifetime will likely suffice to finish my project (unless something really bad happened to me), but I want to get Proto-Hesperic done such that I can go on deriving Old Albic from it within this year, so I shouldn't set the bar too high.

Best of luck with that!

[WeepingElf]

Thanks for all the sources listed.

I mean such things as phonology, morphology etc., which seem to me to be what Zju was asking for

Indeed, that's what I was asking for.

So I hope I could be helpful.

but as Lehmann himself discusses, the basic data for PIE are and remain the handbooks published in the 19th century. (Maybe this has changed, but so far as I know the basic procedure is still "take the 19th century handbooks and apply a bunch of revisions.")

Fair point. What I'm hoping for is to get an up-to-date consensus of the most adequate revisions without having to read a few dozen papers.

Well, IE historical linguistics isn't nearly as fast-moving as archaeogenetics, so a book from 2006 can be considered reasonably up to date (at least for conlanging purposes ), and it is certainly better than Pokorny's etymological dictionary, which is from 1959 and uses an utterly outdated reconstruction (voiceless aspirates, no laryngeals).

Now, I am in my 50s, so my remaining lifetime will likely suffice to finish my project (unless something really bad happened to me), but I want to get Proto-Hesperic done such that I can go on deriving Old Albic from it within this year, so I shouldn't set the bar too high.

Best of luck with that!

Thank you!

[WeepingElf]

This idea may be utter bullfrogs, but: Is is possible that the Italic and Celtic genitive singulars in *-î have anything to do with the PIE appurtenance suffix *-ih₂ (perhaps borrowed from another, lost IE language of Western Europe)?

[hwhatting]

This idea may be utter bullfrogs, but: Is is possible that the Italic and Celtic genitive singulars in *-î have anything to do with the PIE appurtenance suffix *-ih₂ (perhaps borrowed from another, lost IE language of Western Europe)?

That's actually an explanation that I have seen presented by serious scholars. But why should it be a loan?

[WeepingElf]

This idea may be utter bullfrogs, but: Is is possible that the Italic and Celtic genitive singulars in *-î have anything to do with the PIE appurtenance suffix *-ih₂ (perhaps borrowed from another, lost IE language of Western Europe)?

That's actually an explanation that I have seen presented by serious scholars. But why should it be a loan?

Indeed, why should it? That was only a hedge for the case that direct inheritance was impossible

[Lērisama]

This idea may be utter bullfrogs, but: Is is possible that the Italic and Celtic genitive singulars in *-î have anything to do with the PIE appurtenance suffix *-ih₂ (perhaps borrowed from another, lost IE language of Western Europe)?

That's actually an explanation that I have seen presented by serious scholars. But why should it be a loan?

Indeed, why should it? That was only a hedge for the case that direct inheritance was impossible

*-ī is the expected outcome of *-ih₂ in both Italic and Celtic, I think. It's only Greek and Tocharian (I think) that do the -ia thing.

[hwhatting]

It has been proposed that the feminine suffix -ix, -icis goes back to -ih₂-, with so-called laryngeal hardening. That's not a generally accepted proposal (laryngeal hardening isn't a generally accepted phenomenon), but it's not outside the range of ideas taken serious by IE scholars.

[WeepingElf]

The replacement of inherited *-osyo by *-î was einzelsprachlich within Italo-Celtic: Faliscan still had -osio, and both Oscan -eis and Umbrian -er are probably derived from it (or in any case not from *-î); Celtiberian had -o, either shorted from *-osyo or from the ablative *-od. Thus, Proto-Italo-Celtic, if that's a thing at all (I am pro-Italo-Celtic, but it hasn't been proved yet), still had the thematic gen.sg. *-osyo, and besides that a form with a different but related function in *-î < PIE *-ih₂ which ousted *-osyo in those Italo-Celtic languages (such as Latin and Old Irish) that show a thematic gen.sg. in *-î. This teaches us a lesson how much one can err if one only looks at the major, well-attested languages of a group and neglects the minor ones.

[abahot]

It has been proposed that the feminine suffix -ix, -icis goes back to -ih₂-, with so-called laryngeal hardening. That's not a generally accepted proposal (laryngeal hardening isn't a generally accepted phenomenon), but it's not outside the range of ideas taken serious by IE scholars.

I thought it was accepted for Proto-Germanic, c.f. the 1st person dual pronouns? Or do you mean for all of IE?

[hwhatting]

(laryngeal hardening isn't a generally accepted phenomenon), but it's not outside the range of ideas taken serious by IE scholars.

I thought it was accepted for Proto-Germanic, c.f. the 1st person dual pronouns? Or do you mean for all of IE?

I meant for all IE, but it's news to me that it's accepted for Germanic - what's your source for that?

[abahot]

I meant for all IE, but it's news to me that it's accepted for Germanic - what's your source for that?

I was talking about Cowgill's Law. (Reading the Wikipedia page for it again, it is apparently "controversial but increasingly accepted" so take that as you will.)

Then again, reading theories on this forum + reading Wiki* makes up approximately 95% of my IE knowledge, so if someone with more such knowledge would like to weigh in then please do.

[hwhatting]

Then again, reading theories on this forum + reading Wiki* makes up approximately 95% of my IE knowledge, so if someone with more such knowledge would like to weigh in then please do.

Well, the last time I saw the inside of a Historical Linguistics department is over 30 years ago. While I'm trying to keep up by reading articles, it's totally possible that a development has passed me by. Regarding Cowgill's law, the status I know is still "controversial", but it may indeed be "increasingly accepted".