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The Indo-European languages comprise a Family of several hundred related Language s and Dialect s 449 according to the 2005 SIL estimate, about half (219) belonging to the Indo-Aryan sub-branch., including most of the major languages of Europe , the northern Indian Subcontinent ( South Asia ), the Iranian Plateau ( Southwest Asia ), and much of Central Asia . Indo-European (''Indo'' refers to the Indian subcontinent) has the largest numbers of speakers of the recognised families of languages in the world today, with its languages spoken by approximately three billion native speakers.the Sino-Tibetan family of tongues has the second-largest number of speakers. Of the , English , Hindi , Portuguese , Bengali , Russian , German , Marathi , French , Italian , Punjabi and Urdu , accounting for over 1.6 billion native speakers. The Indo-Iranian Languages form the largest sub-branch of Indo-European in terms of the number of native speakers as well as in terms of the number of individual languages.308 languages according to SIL; more than one billion speakers (see List Of Languages By Number Of Native Speakers ). Historically, also in terms of geographical spread (stretching from the Caucasus to South Asia ; c.f. Scythia ) CLASSIFICATION
The various subgroups of the Indo-European language family include (in historical order of their first attestation):
In addition to the classical ten branches listed above, several extinct and little-known languages have existed:
No doubt other Indo-European languages once existed which have now vanished without leaving a trace. A large majority of Auxiliary Languages can be considered Indo-European, at least in content. Examples include Membership of languages in the same language family is determined by the presence of shared retentions, i.e., features of the proto-language (or reflexes of such features) that cannot be explained better by chance or borrowing (convergence). Membership in a branch/group/subgroup '''within''' a language family is determined by '''shared innovations''' which are presumed to have taken place in a common ancestor. For example, what makes Germanic languages "Germanic" is that large parts of the structures of all the languages so designated can be stated just once for all of them. In other words, they can be treated as an innovation that took place in Proto-Germanic, the source of all the Germanic languages.
Satem and Centum languages / Abashevo / Srubna cultures).]] Many scholars classify the Indo-European sub-branches into a among the multitudes that criss-cross Indo-European linguistic geography. (Together with the recognition that the Centum Languages are no subgroup: as mentioned above, subgroups are defined by shared innovations, which the Satem languages definitely have, but the only thing that the "Centum Languages" have in common is staying put.) Suggested superfamilies Some linguists propose that Indo-European languages form part of a hypothetical Nostratic Language superfamily, and attempt to relate Indo-European to other language families, such as South Caucasian Languages , Altaic Languages , Uralic Languages , Dravidian Languages , and Afro-Asiatic Languages . This theory remains controversial, like the similar Eurasiatic theory of Joseph Greenberg , and the Proto-Pontic postulation of John Colarusso . There are no possible theoretical objections to the existence of such superfamilies; the difficulty comes in finding concrete evidence that transcends chance resemblance and wishful thinking. The main problem for all of them is that in historical linguistics the noise-to-signal ratio steadily worsens over time, and at great enough time-depths it becomes open to reasonable doubt that it can even be possible to tell what is signal and what is noise. HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF INDO-EUROPEAN See Also: Indo-European studies The first proposal of the possibility of common origin for some of these languages came from the Dutch linguist and scholar Marcus Zuerius Van Boxhorn in 1647 . He discovered the similarity among Indo-European Language s, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called "'' Scythian ''". He included in his hypothesis Dutch , Greek , Latin , Persian , and German , later adding Slavic , Celtic and Baltic Languages . However, the suggestions of van Boxhorn did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research. The hypothesis re-appeared in 1786 when , Greek , Sanskrit , and Persian . Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by Franz Bopp supported this theory, and Bopp's ''Comparative Grammar'', appearing between 1833 and 1852 counts as the starting-point of Indo-European Studies as an academic discipline. HISTORICAL EVOLUTION Sound changes
Indo-European expansion The earliest attestations of Indo-European languages date to the early 2nd millennium BC. At that time, the languages were already diversified and widely distributed, so that "loss of contact" between the individual dialects is accepted to have taken place before 2500 BC. Oswald Szemerényi , ''Comparative Linguistics. Current Trends of Linguistics'', Den Haag (1972). Competing scenarios for the early history of Indo-European are thus largely compatible for times after 2500 BC, even if they are incommensurable for the 4th millennium BC and earlier. The following timeline inserts the scenario suggested by the mainstream Kurgan Hypothesis for the mid 5th to mid 3rd millennia (see below for competing hypotheses). in the Kurgan framework]]
distribution]]
distribution]] ]] and Migrations Period distribution]]
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN See Also: Proto-Indo-European language Location hypotheses Scholars have dubbed the common ancestral (reconstructed) language Proto-Indo-European (PIE). They disagree as to the original Geographic location (the so-called " Urheimat " or "original homeland") from where it originated. Mainstream opinion locates PIE in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe in the Chalcolithic (from ca. 4000 BC; see Kurgan Hypothesis ). The main competitor of this is the Anatolian Hypothesis advanced by Colin Renfrew , dating PIE to several millennia earlier, associating the spread of Indo-European languages with the Neolithic spread of farming (see Indo-Hittite ). A rapid divergence of the Romance, Celtic and Balto-Slavic languages around 6,500 years agoGray and Atkinson (2003) ''Nature'' vol 426, pp436-438 makes the two hypotheses compatible.Balter (2004) ''Science'' 303, pp1323-1326. It should be noted that theories of the origin of Indo-European languages are not based on purely linguistic concepts. These theories are highly dependent on extra-linguistic factors, particularly interpretations of archaeological findings and the unattested meaning of words dating back as much as 3500 years or more before writing. The reference above to "mainstream" opinion concerning origins in the Pontic-Caspian steppes relies on such extra-linguistic conclusions. Since there is no direct way of knowing what language was spoken by a particular archaeological culture or how the meaning of words changed over thousands of years, theories about the location of the origin of Indo-European languages remain largely conjectural. Kurgan hypothesis The Kurgan hypothesis was introduced by Marija Gimbutas in 1956 in order to combine Archaeology with Linguistics in locating the origins of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the set of cultures in question " Kurgan " after the Russian term for their distinctive Burial Mound s and traced their diffusion into Europe . This hypothesis has had a significant impact on Indo-European Research . Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a ''Kurgan'' or '' Pit Grave Culture '' as reflecting an early Proto-Indo-European Ethnic ity which existed in the Pontic Steppe and Southeastern Europe from the Fifth to Third millennia BC. While Gimbutas pointed primarily at the kurgan-ridden Pit Grave- or Yamna Culture to be at the origin of all Indo-European migrations and Indo-Europeanization, recently there exists a tendency to push the date of origin further back in time. In a revised Kurgan hypothesis rather the kurgan-less Sredny Stog Culture has been proposed to be ancestral to all Indo-European languages instead, and the subsequently evolving Yamna culture to be related to the later satemization processFrederik Kortlandt-The spread of the Indo-Europeans, 2002, {Link without Title} . Anatolian hypothesis Colin Renfrew in 1987 suggested 1 an association between the spread of Indo-European and the Neolithic Revolution , spreading peacefully into Europe from Asia Minor (Anatolia) from around 7000 BC with the advance of farming (''wave of advance''). Accordingly, all the inhabitants of Neolithic Europe would have spoken Indo-European tongues, and the Kurgan migrations would at best have replaced Indo-European dialects with other Indo-European dialects. According to Renfrew 2 , the spread of Indo-European proceeded from "Pre-Proto-Indo-European" in 6500 to Archaic PIE in 5000 BC, with the historical Indo-European families developing from 3000 BC from "Balkan PIE". The main strength of the farming hypothesis lies in its linking of the spread of Indo-European languages with an archeologically known event that likely involved major population shifts: the spread of farming (though the validity of basing a linguistics theory on archeological evidence remains disputed). While the Anatolian theory enjoyed brief support when first proposed, the linguistic community in general now rejects it. While the spread of farming undisputedly constituted an important event, most see no case to connect it with Indo-Europeans in particular, since terms for animal husbandry tend to have much better reconstructions than terms related to agriculture. The timeframe of the Anatolian hypothesis has received support from a 2003 computer analysis in Glottochronology Gray, R. D. and Atkinson, Q. D. (2003) Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin. Nature, 426(6965), 435-439. The rate of change calculated in the analysis results in an original Indo-Hittite division at 6700 BCE, and a Graeco-Aryan division at 5300 BCE, about two millennia too early for a Kurgan timeframe. Other hypotheses The Armenian Hypothesis of Tamaz Gamq'relidze and Vyacheslav V. Ivanov in 1984 placed the Indo-European homeland on Lake Urmia 3 , suggesting that Armenian stayed in the Indo-European cradle while other Indo-European languages left the homeland and migrated on a route that led them along the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to the steppe north of the Black Sea. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov also originated the Glottalic Theory . An Out Of India Theory is sometimes advanced, mostly by Indian authors, who see the Indus Valley Civilization as the location of either Proto-Indo-European or of Proto-Indo-Iranian . Various nationalistic European groups in the 19th and early 20th centuries espoused other theories, typically locating Proto-Indo-European in the respective authors' own countries. For example, a suggested location of the proto-language in Northern Europe became involved in justifying the view of the German people as " Aryan ". Some people have pointed to the , with the people living on the land now beneath the Sea of Azov as possible pre-Proto-Indo-Europeans. A recent version of the hypothesis of European origin of PIE is the " Paleolithic Continuity Theory " proposed by Italian theorists, which derives Indo-European languages from the Proto-Indo-European Paleolithic cultures, arguing for linguistic continuity from genetic continuity. Recent linguistic studies present strong evidence that the Indo-European language group originates in Anatolia . A History of Armenia by Vahan M. Kurkjian REFERENCES Bibliography
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