Characteristic developments of Indo-European languages

Changes in phonology

Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Armenian, and Albanian agree in changing the palatal stops *ḱ, *ǵ, and *ǵh into spirants (s, ś, th, etc.) or affricates—e.g., Sanskrit aśri- ‘sharp edge,’ Old Church Slavonic ostrŭ ‘sharp,’ Armenian asełn ‘needle,’ Albanian athëtë ‘bitter’ beside Greek ákros ‘tip,’ Latin acidus ‘biting,’ all from a basic element *H₂eḱ- ‘sharp, pointed.’ (Spirants, also called fricatives, are sounds produced with audible friction as a result of the airstream passing through a narrow, but unstopped, passage in the mouth—e.g., English s, f, v. Affricates are sounds that begin as stops, with complete stoppage of the airstream, but are released as spirants, or fricatives—e.g., the ch in church, the j in jam.) The languages that change the palatal stops to spirants or affricates are known as “satem” languages, from the Avestan word satəm ‘hundred’ (Proto-Indo-European *kmtóm), which illustrates the change. The languages that preserve the palatal stops as k-like sounds are known as “centum” languages, from centum (/kentum/), the corresponding word in Latin. The satem languages are not geographically separated from one another by any recorded languages that preserve the palatals as stops; it is therefore inferred that the change to affricates (whence later spirants) occurred just once and spread over a cohesive dialect area of Proto-Indo-European.

Of the languages that share this change, however, Balto-Slavic shares with Germanic (including English) an m in certain case endings where other Indo-European languages, including Indo-Iranian, Armenian, and Albanian, have bh or a sound regularly developed from bh. Examples of the m ending include English the-m and Old Church Slavonic tě-mŭ ‘to those ones’; the bh and related sounds (ph, v, b) are illustrated in the following: Sanskrit té-bhyas ‘to those ones,’ Armenian noro-vkʿ ‘with new ones,’ Albanian male-ve ‘to mountains,’ Greek ókhes-phin ‘with chariots,’ Latin omni-bus ‘for all.’ Because Balto-Slavic and Germanic are neighbours, it is inferred that m replaced bh in these case endings just once in the parent language and that the area over which this innovation spread only partly overlapped the area that adopted affricated pronunciation of the palatals.

This pattern is general for changes dating from the time the parent language was breaking up into distinct languages. Each of the resulting languages shares some innovations with some of its neighbours, but only rarely do different innovations shared by two or more branches of Indo-European cover exactly the same territory.

Once the dialects had become differentiated enough to be distinct languages—certainly by 2500 bce in most cases—each largely went its own way, and agreements in developments since then are either due to borrowing across language boundaries (as in the notable convergences between Modern Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and the southernmost Slavic languages) or due to parallel but independent workings out of the same base material.

In phonology, the most striking changes have been loss or reduction in many languages of final or unaccented syllables, and loss in several languages of certain consonants between vowels, often followed by contraction of the resulting vowel sequence. Thus, words in modern Indo-European languages are often much shorter than their Proto-Indo-European ancestors—e.g., English ‘four,’ Armenian čʿorkʿ, colloquial Persian čar ‘four’ from *k^wetwóres; French vit (pronounced vi) ‘lives’ from *g^wíH₃weti; Russian dvestí ‘two hundred’ from *duwóyH₁ ḱm̥tóyH₁.

Changes in morphology

As a result of the fact that much of the marking of Proto-Indo-European inflectional categories was done in final syllables, loss and reduction of these syllables have often had serious grammatical consequences. In the noun, loss of endings has generally led to loss or great reduction of the case and gender systems, while ways have generally been found to salvage the distinction between singular and plural. In Modern Persian, for example, where all final syllables have been lost, the old case and gender distinctions have disappeared also, but plural number is still regularly marked, either with -an (originally the genitive plural ending of some nouns) or with -ha (of obscure origin).

In the verb, where more endings originally had two syllables, loss of final syllables has had less serious consequences for morphology. Even here, however, some languages, including English, have totally or almost totally given up the marking of subject by personal endings. Compare English “I, we, you, they love” and “he, she loves” with the Spanish conjugation for ‘love’—amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman—or the Russian version—ljubljú, ljúbish, ljúbit, ljúbim, ljúbite, ljúbjat.

Changes in noun inflection have generally involved simplification. Almost everywhere the dual number has been lost; in many languages the noun genders have been reduced from three to two (as in French, Swedish, Lithuanian, and Hindi) or lost entirely (as in English, Armenian, and Bengali). Only Slavic has complicated the gender system by imposing on the inherited distinctions contrasts of animate versus inanimate or of personal versus nonpersonal.

Everywhere except in the oldest Indo-Iranian languages the original eight Indo-European cases have suffered reduction. Proto-Germanic had only six cases, the functions of ablative (place from which) and locative (place in which) being taken over by constructions of preposition plus the dative case. In Modern English these are reduced to two cases in nouns, a general case that does duty for the vocative, nominative, dative, and accusative (“Henry, did Bill give John the letter?”) and a possessive case continuing the old genitive (“Bill’s letter”). In languages such as French and Welsh, nouns are no longer inflected for case at all. In some languages, to be sure, nouns have begun fusing with words placed directly after the nouns to create new case systems, coexisting with relics of the old. Thus, Old Lithuanian had in addition to seven inherited cases an illative (place into), made by adding -n(a) to the accusative (peklosna ‘into hell’), an allative (place to, toward), made by adding -p(i) to the genitive (Jesausp ‘to Jesus’), and an adessive (place at which), made by adding -p(i) to the locative (Joniep ‘in John’).

Changes in the verb have been more complex. Besides loss or merger of old categories, many new forms have been created and many old forms have acquired new values. In Ancient Greek the focus of the stative aspect (perfect) has largely shifted from the present state (“he is dead”) to the previous event that led to this state (“he has died”). As a result, the perfect came to mean the same as the perfective past (aorist), and it has therefore disappeared from Modern Greek. New forms created in Ancient Greek include future and future perfect tenses, based on the desiderative present forms (such as “he wants to walk”) of the parent language.

In Germanic the principal new creation was the weak past tense (ending in a t or d), such as English loved, thought, German liebte, dachte, made by combining the verb stem with a past tense of the Germanic verb for ‘do.’ (The strong past tense formed by vowel alternations, like “sing, sang,” “run, ran” comes from the Proto-Indo-European stative aspect.)

In some languages participles have come to function as finite verbs. Thus, in Hindi ādmī laṛkī-ko dekhtā ‘the man sees the girl,’ dekhtā ‘sees’ is etymologically a participle ‘seeing,’ agreeing in number and gender with the subject ādmī ‘man.’ In the past tense, ādmī-ne laṛkī dekhī ‘the man saw the girl,’ the verb dekhī is etymologically a past passive participle ‘seen,’ agreeing in gender and number with the object laṛkī ‘girl,’ and the subject is marked with an instrumental ending.