Indo-European linguistics today

Abstract

Examination from a typological viewpoint of the linguistic data available in the early IE dialects has provided possibilities for explaining problems left unsolved by our predecessors. Much attention has been devoted to the phonological system, where the positing of laryngeals has led to clarification of the vocalic system, including ablaut, and to reassessment of the obstruent system. But the most significant advances have been achieved by viewing the entire linguistic system in keeping with the understanding of language provided by ‘contentive’ typology. Reconstructing an early stage of Proto-Indo-European as an active language has, for example, clarified the long-standing difficulty of the relationship of the middle and the perfect. It permits us to account for the various expressions for ‘have’ in early dialects. It lets us account for the twofold lexical expressions for ‘water’, ‘lie’, and so on.

Moreover, examining languages, including proto-languages, for their overall system, and for their sub-systems, provides more secure evidence for aligning linguistic findings with those of archeologists and scientists interpreting their findings than has the piecemeal attention of earlier Indo-Europeanists. For example, scrutiny of the numeral system rules out use of tokens by early speakers of Proto-Indo-European, and accordingly a ‘homeland’ in the Middle East, where tokens were in use from about 8500 B.C. More important than such individual conclusions is the impetus provided by our deeper understanding of the proto-language to compare our findings with those of other scientists of prehistoric peoples, as in correlating strata in the developing linguistic system with datable artifacts of the third and earlier millennia.