1 - The Indo-European language family

Summary

Introduction

Indo-European (IE) is the best-studied language family in the world. For much of the past 200 years more scholars have worked on the comparative philology of IE than on all the other areas of linguistics put together. We know more about the history and relationships of the IE languages than about any other group of languages. For some branches of IE – Greek, Sanskrit and Indic, Latin and Romance, Germanic, Celtic – we are fortunate to have records extending over two or more millennia, and excellent scholarly resources such as grammars, dictionaries and text editions that surpass those available for nearly all non-IE languages. The reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and the historical developments of the IE languages have consequently provided the framework for much research on other language families and on historical linguistics in general. Some of the leading figures in modern linguistics, including Saussure, Bloomfield, Trubetzkoy and Jakobson, were Indo-Europeanists by training, as were many of those who taught in newly founded university departments of linguistics in the second half of the twentieth century. Despite this pedigree, IE studies are now marginalised within most university linguistics courses and departments. In most US and European institutions, Indo-Europeanists with university posts do not teach in linguistics departments but in classics, oriental studies, celtic studies or the like. Historical linguistics courses may include a section on PIE, or Saussure's work on laryngeals as an example of internal reconstruction, but few students will engage in any current work on IE in any depth.