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Indo-European Sound Laws
As the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) broke up, its sound system diverged as well, as evidenced in various sound laws associated with the daughter Indo-European languages. Especially notable is the palatalization that produced the satem languages, along with the associated ruki sound law. Other notable changes include: * Grimm's law and Verner's law in Proto-Germanic * an independent change similar to Grimm's law in Armenian * loss of prevocalic ''*p-'' in Proto-Celtic * Brugmann's law in Proto-Indo-Iranian * Winter's law and Hirt's law in Balto-Slavic * merging of voiced and breathy-voiced stops, and /a/ and /o/, in various "northern" languages Bartholomae's law in Indo-Iranian, and Sievers's law in Proto-Germanic and (to some extent) various other branches, may or may not have been common Indo-European features. A number of innovations, both phonological and morphological, represent areal features common to the Italic and Celtic languages; among them the develo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proto-Indo-European Language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE or its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result. PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from 4500 BC to 2500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the proto-Indo-European homeland, original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bartholomae's Law
Bartholomae's law (named after the German Indo-Europeanist Christian Bartholomae) is an early Indo-European (PIE) sound law affecting the Indo-Iranian family. It states that in a cluster of two or more obstruents (stops or the sibilant ), any one of which is a voiced aspirated stop anywhere in the sequence, the whole cluster becomes voiced and aspirated. Thus to the PIE root "learn, become aware of" the participle "enlightened" loses the aspiration of the first stop ( Grassmann's law) and with the application of Bartholomae's law and regular vowel changes gives Sanskrit '' buddha'' "enlightened". Further developments In both the Indic and the Iranian subgroups, further developments partially obscured the operation of the law: Thanks to the falling together of plain voiced and voiced aspirated stops in Iranian, Bartholomae's law appears synchronically as progressive voicing assimilation after roots that originally ended in voiced aspirates, for example Old Avestan ''aogda'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflex (linguistics)
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of an unattested ancestor language of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction: * Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language – that is, it is based on evidence from that language alone. * Comparative reconstruction, usually referred to just as reconstruction, establishes features of the ancestor of two or more related languages, belonging to the same language family, by means of the comparative method. A language reconstructed in this way is often referred to as a proto-language (the common ancestor of all the languages in a given family); examples include Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Dravidian. Texts discussing linguistic reconstruction commonly preface reconstructed forms with an asterisk (*) to distinguish them from attested forms. An attested word from which a root in the proto-language is reconstruct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Q-Celtic
The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages. During the 1st millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx. All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is an official language in Wales and Irish is an official language of Ireland and of the European Union. Wel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
P-Celtic
The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a subdivision of the Celtic languages of Ancient Gaul (both '' celtica'' and '' belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share certain features. Besides common linguistic innovations, speakers of these languages shared cultural features and history. The cultural aspects are commonality of art styles and worship of similar gods. Coinage just prior to the British Roman period was also similar. In Julius Caesar's time, the Atrebates held land on both sides of the English Channel. Linguistics The hypothesis that the languages spoken in Gaul and Great Britain ( Gaulish and the Brittonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. ...) descended from a common ancestor, separate from the Celtic langu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labial Consonants
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the upper lip against the lower teeth (the reverse of labiodental), normally only found in pathological speech. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes, they behave as labial consonants. The most common distribution between bilabials and labiodentals is the English one, in which the nasal and the stops, , , and , are bilabial and the fricatives, , and , are labiodental. The voiceless bilabial fricative, voiced bilabial fricative, and the bilabial approximant do not exist as the primary realizations of any sounds in English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labialized Velar Consonant
A labialized velar or labiovelar is a velar consonant that is labialized, with a -like secondary articulation. Common examples are , which are pronounced like a , with rounded lips, such as the labialized voiceless velar plosive and labialized voiced velar plosive . Such sounds occur across Africa and the Americas, in the Caucasus, etc. Labialized velar approximants The most common labiovelar consonant is the voiced approximant . It is normally a labialized velar, as is its vocalic cousin . (Labialization is called rounding in vowels, and a velar place is called back.) and its voiceless equivalent are the only labialized velars with dedicated IPA symbols: * 1 - In dialects that distinguish between ''which'' and ''witch''. The voiceless approximant is traditionally called a "voiceless labial–velar fricative", but true doubly articulated fricatives are not known to be used in any language, as they are quite difficult to pronounce and even more difficult to distinguish. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Celtic Languages
The Celtic languages (usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages. During the 1st millennium BC, Celtic languages were spoken across much of Europe and central Anatolia. Today, they are restricted to the northwestern fringe of Europe and a few diaspora communities. There are six living languages: the four continuously living languages Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, and the two revived languages Cornish and Manx. All are minority languages in their respective countries, though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is an official language in Wales and Irish is an official language of Ireland and of the European Unio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italic Languages
The Italic languages form a branch of the Indo-European language family, whose earliest known members were spoken on the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium BC. The most important of the ancient languages was Latin, the official language of ancient Rome, which conquered the other Italic peoples before the common era. The other Italic languages became extinct in the first centuries AD as their speakers were assimilated into the Roman Empire and shifted to some form of Latin. Between the third and eighth centuries AD, Vulgar Latin (perhaps influenced by language shift from the other Italic languages) diversified into the Romance languages, which are the only Italic languages natively spoken today, while Literary Latin also survived. Besides Latin, the known ancient Italic languages are Faliscan (the closest to Latin), Umbrian and Oscan (or Osco-Umbrian), and South Picene. Other Indo-European languages once spoken in the peninsula whose inclusion in the Italic branch is d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Areal Feature
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to lingual-genealogically determined similarity within the same language family. Features may diffuse from one dominant language to neighbouring languages (see "sprachbund"). Genetic relationships are represented in the family tree model of language change, and areal relationships are represented in the wave model. Characteristics Resemblances between two or more languages (whether in typology or in vocabulary) have been observed to result from several mechanisms, including lingual genealogical relation (descent from a common ancestor language, not principally related to biological genetics) ; borrowing between languages ; retention of features when a population adopts a new language ; and chance coincidence. When little or no direct d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology () is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology also looks at parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can change a word's pronunciation and meaning. Morphology differs from morphological typology, which is the classification of languages based on their use of words, and lexicology, which is the study of words and how they make up a language's vocabulary. While words, along with clitics, are generally accepted as being the smallest units of syntax, in most languages, if not all, many words can be related to other words by rules that collectively describe the grammar for that language. For example, English speakers recognize that the words ''dog'' and ''dogs'' are closely related, differentiated only by the plurality morpheme "-s", only found bound to noun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
