what happened to my PIE?
uncovering proto-indo-european sound shifts
You, the reader, most likely speak or understand some Indo-European language: well you have to, considering you’re reading this in English, an Indo-European language itself.
Of all the language families of the world, Indo-European is by far the most widespread of them all, ranging languages as different as English, French, or Hindi.
However, this gargantuan family also had its humble beginnings, theorized to have started with the Yamnaya culture that lived on the Eastern European steppes. As this group moved across the continent, the language itself, named Proto-Indo-European (PIE) by linguists, underwent a series of regular sound shifts depending on the area; this in turn led to the large number of Indo-European languages we see today.
Let’s unpack some of the major sound changes of the Indo-European languages!
Grimm’s Law
Grimm’s law, formulated by Jacob Grimm (notably one of the Brothers Grimm), describes a series of different sound shifts regarding the stops of PIE. This law specifically refers to the phonological changes that occured as PIE transformed into Proto-Germanic (PG; ancestor of English, German, Dutch, Swedish, etc).
Voiceless Stops to Fricatives:
In PG, all PIE voiceless stops turned into the fricatives, as shown below:
PIE *p > G. f
PIE *t > G. θ
PIE *ḱ > G. h
PIE *kʷ > G. hʷ
An example of this is English foot, which stems from the PIE root *ped-, with the same meaning. Another is English wheel (original pronounced with a voiceless /w/), stemming from the PIE root *kʷel.
Voiced Stops to Voiceless Stops:
With the voiceless stops of PIE turning into fricatives, the voiced stops stepped up and took their place.
PIE *b > G. p
PIE *d > G. t
PIE *ǵ > G. k
PIE *gʷ > G. kʷ
Compare English lip with Latin labium, which both stem from the PIE root *leb. Additionally, the PIE root *gʷḗn, meaning woman, turned into English queen.
Loss of Aspiration
Once again, the shift prior left a vacuum in the phonetics of Proto-Germanic, this time leaving no voiced stops. However, PIE had aspirated voiced stops, which filled in the void left behind.
PIE *bʰ > G. b
PIE *dʰ > G. d
PIE *ǵʰ > G. g
PIE *gʷʰ > G. b/g/w
A good example of this is English brother, where Sanskrit sees bʰrā́tṛ (from PIE *bʰrater). Another is PIE *dʰwer, which transformed into English door.
Verner’s Law
Verner’s law, formulated by Danish linguist Karl Verner, is sort of an exceptions list to Grimm’s law: this law helps explain why certain voiceless fricatives, such as /f/ and /θ/ alternated with their voiced equivalents (/v/ and /ð/ in this case). This change accounts for situations like the following:
PIE *ph₂tḗr > G. *faðēr
Technically, in this scenario, the it would’ve been expected for the *t in PIE to turn into voiceless *θ; however, due to Verner’s law, it turned into voiced *ð instead.
Grassmann’s Law
Grassmann’s Law applied to Ancient Greek and Sanskrit rather than the Germanic languages. This law states that, in PIE, if an aspirated consonant is follows another aspirated consonant in the previous syllable, the first aspirated consonant loses its aspiration in Greek and and Sanskrit. This is often seen in reduplicated roots as well, used to indicate the perfect tense in Sanskrit and Greek.
Some examples of Grassmann’s Law include:
PIE *bʰudʰ- > Sk. budʰ-
G. pʰu… > G. pe-pʰu…
Although originally for Greek and Sanskrit, this phenomenon can also be seen in unrelated languages as well, such as Meitei (of the Tibeto-Burman family)
Laryngeal Theory
If you’ve seen reconstructions of PIE, you’ve definitely seen the h’s with numbers below them (*h₁, *h₂, *h₃).
These h’s, known as the laryngeals of PIE, are essential in understanding vowel changes, consonant changes, and so much more when it comes to the daughter languages of Proto-Indo-European.
This theory came about when Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that the vowels of PIE previously written as ē and ō were actually the short vowel equivalent (e and o) with an additional coefficient sonantique, as Saussure called them.
After Hittite, the oldest recorded Indo-European language, was deciphered, it was soon theorized that the laryngeal present in it is actually one of these coefficients sonantiques that Saussure was talking about.
With this in mind, it was easier to explain a variety of previously unknown PIE rules, like why verbs with only a consonant and vowel always had a long vowel. For example, the previous reconstruction for “to give” (*dō-) was re-reconstructed into *deh₃-, which explained the long vowel.
The laryngeals also changed the preceding vowel depending on the language. Take the following combination from before: *eh₃
PIE *eh₃ > Gr. ō
PIE *eh₃ > Sk. ā
PIE *eh₃ > La. ō
In Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, the combination turned into two separate long vowels: ā and ō. Obviously, there are more laryngeal-vowel combinations, so I recommend that you check out the Wikipedia page linked below for more information!
These are just some of the the most prominent rules among what allows linguists to reconstruct a language like Proto-Indo-European. Hopefully this short list provides some insight into why it’s reconstructed in that manner and allows you the understand why the Indo-European languages turned out in the way they are today. Good luck!
