Indo-European studies () is an interdisciplinary field that examines the Indo-European languages and related cultural history through historical linguistics, comparative philology, archaeology, and genetics.
The discipline coalesced in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe as comparative linguists including Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Franz Bopp, and August Schleicher refined methods for reconstructing a shared ancestry among the languages. Research centers on rebuilding the Proto-Indo-European language, homeland, and society by combining comparative analysis with archaeological, mythological, and genetic evidence to test models such as the Kurgan hypothesis. Dedicated programs, research centers, journals, and book series sustain Indo-European studies across Europe and North America.
History Naming The term Indo-European was coined in 1813 by British scholar Sir Thomas Young to describe a newly discovered family of languages. Young used it as a geographical term to refer to languages spanning from the Indian subcontinent to Europe. At the time, there was no consensus on what to call this language family, and scholars proposed various alternative names:
(M. Z. van Boxhorn, 1637) (C. Malte-Brun, 1810) Indoeuropean (Th. Young, 1813) (Rasmus C. Rask, 1815) (F. Schmitthenner, 1826) (Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1827) (Christian Lassen, 1830) (A. F. Pott, 1840) (G. I. Ascoli, 1854) aryan (F. M. Müller, 1861) (H. Chavée, 1867).
Rask's term japetisk ("Japhetic languages") derived from Japheth, son of the Biblical Noah. This naming paralleled Semitic (from Noah's son Shem) and Hamitic (from Ham). Both Japhetic and Hamitic are now obsolete terms, though "Hamito-Semitic" occasionally appears as a dated name for the Afro-Asiatic languages.
The term Indo-German entered English usage through J.C. Prichard in 1826, though he favored Indo-European. In French, A. Pictet established in 1836. The German term was introduced by Julius von Klapproth in 1823 to encompass both northern and southern branches of the language family. Franz Bopp used from 1835 onward. August Friedrich Pott's work later popularized Indo-Germanisch, interpreting it to span from the easternmost to westernmost branches. This led to unproductive debates about whether Indo-Celtic or Tocharo-Celtic might be more appropriate names.
In modern usage, Indo-European and dominate English and French academic writing. German scholarship primarily uses , though is gaining prominence. Dutch academic writing has largely transitioned from to .
Indo-Hittite or Indo-Anatolian are sometimes used by those who accept the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.
Preliminary work The ancient Greeks were aware that their language had changed since the time of Homer (about 730BC). Aristotle (about 330BC) identified four types of linguistic change: insertion, deletion, transposition and substitution. In the 1st century BC, the Romans were aware of the similarities between Greek and Latin.
In the post-classical West, with the influence of Christianity, language studies were undermined by the attempt to derive all languages from Hebrew since the time of Saint Augustine. Prior studies classified the European languages as Japhetic. One of the first scholars to challenge the idea of a Hebrew root to the languages of Europe was Joseph Scaliger (1540 – 1609). He identified Greek, Germanic, Romance and Slavic language groups by comparing the word for "God" in various European languages. In 1710, Leibniz applied ideas of gradualism and uniformitarianism to linguistics in a short essay.Gottfried Leibniz, "Brevis designatio meditationum de originibus gentium, ductis potissimum ex indicio linguarum", Miscellanea Berolinensia. 1710. Like Scaliger, he rejected a Hebrew root, but also rejected the idea of unrelated language groups and considered them all to have a common source.Henry Hoenigswald, "Descent, Perfection and the Comparative Method since Leibniz", Leibniz, Humboldt, and the Origins of Comparativism, eds. Tullio De Mauro & Lia Formigari (Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990), 119–134.
Around the 12th century, similarities between European languages became recognised. In Iceland, scholars noted the resemblances between Icelandic and English. Gerald of Wales claimed that Welsh, Cornish, and Breton were descendants of a common source. A study of the Insular Celtic languages was carried out by George Buchanan in the 16th century and the first field study was by Edward Lhuyd around 1700. He published his work in 1707,Edward Lhuyd, Archaeologia Britannica: an Account of the Languages, Histories and Customs of Great Britain, from Travels through Wales, Cornwall, Bas-Bretagne, Ireland and Scotland, vol. 1, 1707. shortly after translating a study by Paul-Yves PezronPaul-Yves Pezron, Antiquité de la Nation et de la langue celtes autrement appelez Gaulois (Paris: Jean Boudot, 1703). on Breton.Daniel Le Bris, "Les études linguistiques d'Edward Lhuyd en Bretagne en 1701", La Bretagne linguistique 14 (2009).
Grammars of European languages other than Latin and Classical Greek began to be published at the end of the 15th century. This led to comparison between the various languages.
In the 16th century, visitors to India became aware of similarities between Indian and European languages. For example, Filippo Sassetti reported striking resemblances between Sanskrit and Italian.Nunziatella Alessandrini, "Images of India through the eyes of Filippo Sassetti, a Florentine Humanist merchant in the 16th century", Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World, ed. Mary N. Harris (Pisa: PLUS-Pisa University Press, 2007), 43–58.
Early Indo-European studies
In his 1647 essay,Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Antwoord van Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn gegeven op de Vraaghen, hem voorgestelt over de Bediedinge van de afgodinne Nehalennia, onlancx uytghegeven, in welcke de ghemeine herkomste van der Griecken, Romeinen ende Duytschen tale uyt den Scythen duydelijck bewesen, ende verscheiden oudheden van des volckeren grondelijck ontdeckt ende verklaert worden. (Leiden: Willem Christiaens vander Boxe, 1647). Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn proposed the existence of a primitive common language he called "Scythian". He included in its descendants Dutch, German, Latin, Greek, and Persian, and his posthumously published Originum Gallicarum liberMarcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Originum Gallicarum liber. In quo veteris et nobilissimae Gallorum gentis origines, antiquitates, mores, lingua et alia eruuntur et illustrantur. Cui accedit antiquae linguae Britannicae lexicon Britannico-Latinum, cum adiectis et insertis eiusdem authoris Adagiis Britannicis sapientiae veterum Druidum reliquiis et aliis antiquitatis Britannicae Gallicaeque nonnullis monumentis (Amsterdam: apud Ioannem Ianssonium, 1654). of 1654 added Slavic, Celtic and Baltic.Daniel Droixhe, La Linguistique et l'appel de l'histoire (1600-1800): rationalisme et révolutions positivistes (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 93-99. The 1647 essay discusses, as a first, the methodological issues in assigning languages to genetic groups. For example, he observed that loanwords should be eliminated in comparative studies, and also correctly put great emphasis on common morphological systems and irregularity as indicators of relationship.Roger Blench, "Archaeology and Language: methods and issues", A Companion to Archaeology, ed. J. Bintliff (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 52–74. A few years earlier, the Silesian physician Johann Elichmann (1601/02 – 1639) already used the expression ex eadem origine (from a common source) in a study published posthumously in 1640.Johann Elichmann, Tabula Cebetis Graece, Arabice, Latine. Item aurea carmina Pythagorae (Lugduni Batavorum: Typis Iohannis Maire, 1640). He related European languages to Indo-Iranian languages (which include Sanskrit).
The idea that the first language was Hebrew continued to be advanced for some time: Pierre Besnier (1648 – 1705) in 1674 published a book which was translated into English the following year: A philosophical essay for the reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by the mastery of one.Pierre Besnier, La reunion des langues, ou L'art de les apprendre toutes par une seule. 1674.
Leibniz in 1710 proposed the concept of the so-called Japhetic language group, consisting of languages now known as Indo-European, which he contrasted with the so-called Aramaic languages (now generally known as Semitic).
The concept of actually reconstructing an Indo-European proto-language was suggested by William Wotton in 1713, while showing, among others, that Icelandic ("Teutonic"), the Romance languages and Greek were related.
In 1741 Gottfried Hensel (1687 – 1767) published a language map of the world in his Synopsis Universae Philologiae. He still believed that all languages were derived from Hebrew.
Mikhail Lomonosov compared numbers and other linguistic features in different languages of the world including Slavic, Baltic ("Kurlandic"), Iranian ("Medic"), Finnish, Chinese, Khoekhoe ("Hottentot") and others. He emphatically expressed the antiquity of the linguistic stages accessible to comparative method in the drafts for his Russian Grammar published in 1755:M. V. Lomonosov. In: Complete Edition, Moscow, 1952, vol. 7, pp 652-659: Представимъ долготу времени, которою сіи языки раздѣлились. ... Польской и россійской языкъ коль давно раздѣлились! Подумай же, когда курляндской! Подумай же, когда латинской, греч., нѣм., росс. О глубокая древность!
Imagine the depth of time when these languages separated! ... Polish and Russian separated so long ago! Now think how long ago Kurlandic! Think when Latin, Greek, German, and Russian! Oh, great antiquity!
Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux (1691 – 1779) sent a Mémoire to the French Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres in 1767 in which he demonstrated the similarity between the Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, German and Russian languages.Gaston-Laurent Cœurdoux, “Mémoire” [Letter addressed to Abbé Barthélémy, dated 1767], Memoires de littérature de [. . .] l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 49 (Paris: Anquetil Duperron, 1784–93), 647–67.
Despite the above, the discovery of the genetic relationship of the whole family of Indo-European languages is often attributed to Sir William Jones, a British judge in India, who, in a 1786 lecture (published 1788) remarked:
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.http://www.billposer.org/Papers/iephm.pdf, cited on page 14–15.
In his 1786 The Sanskrit Language, Jones postulated a proto-language uniting six branches: Sanskrit (i.e. Indo-Aryan), Persian (i.e. Iranian), Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic. In many ways his work was less accurate than his predecessors', as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi.