Proto-Indo-European noun
Encyclopedia
The noun
s of the Proto-Indo-European language
(PIE), their morphology
and semantics
, have been reconstructed by modern linguists based on similarities found across all Indo-European languages
.
by adding an ending (E) to a stem. The stem is the carrier of the basic meaning, and is composed of a root
(R) and a suffix (S). The ending carries information about the case and number. Thus, the general morphological form of a noun is R+S+E.
Each PIE root has an inherent meaning, usually that of a verb. Suffixation yields different derived nouns with different meaning (e. g. "giver" and "gift", both with the verbal root "give").
Summing up, the suffix has the role of a derivational morpheme
, and the ending that of an inflectional morpheme.
to . The accent
is fixed on the same syllable throughout the inflection.
The stem of athematic nouns ends in a consonant. They have a complex system of accent and ablaut alterations between the root, the stem and the ending (see below). This type is generally held as more archaic.
In the 19th century, stems used to be classified by their last sound into vowel (i-, u-, a-, ya-, o-, yo-stems) and consonantic stems (the rest). However, since and have been explained as vocalic allophone
s of underlying consonants (the glides and , respectively), and what used to be reconstructed as and has been reduced to and in the modern laryngeal theory
, the only real vowel stems left are the o-stems, corresponding to what is now usually called the thematic stems. However, since syllabic allophones of the glides were phonemicized as real vowels in all daughter languages, and all the daughters except for the Anatolian
branch have completely lost the laryngeals, terms like i-stems, a-stems etc. still continue to be widely used to subclassify athematic nouns.
suffix or one without a phonetic body .
Verbal stems have corresponding morphological features, the root present
and the root aorist
.
A special kind of prefixation, called reduplication, uses the first part of the root plus a vowel as a prefix. For example, "turn" gives "wheel".
This type of derivation is also found in verbs, mainly to form the perfect.
, vocative, genitive, dative
, instrumental
, ablative, locative, and possibly a directive or allative. Three numbers
were distinguished: singular, dual and plural, with a distinction between a plural of collective and one of countable nouns.
The so-called strong cases are the nominative and the vocative for all numbers, and the accusative case for singular and dual (and possibly plural as well), and the rest are the weak cases. This classification is relevant for inflecting the athematic nouns of different accent classes (see below).
Late PIE had three genders
: masculine, feminine and neuter. Originally, there probably were only an animate (masculine/feminine) and an inanimate (neuter) gender. This view is supported by the existence of certain classes of Latin
and Ancient Greek
adjectives which inflect only for two sets of endings, one for masculine and feminine, the other for neuter. Further evidence comes from the Anatolian languages
which exhibit only the animate and the inanimate gender. However, this could also mean that Proto-Anatolian inherited a three-gender PIE system, and subsequently Hittite
and other Old Anatolian languages eliminated the feminine by merging it with the masculine. The typically feminine ā-stems are considered to originate from the same form as the neuter plural, originally an abstract/collective derivational suffix .
Fortson reconstructs the athematic and the thematic endings, but lacks the dual for the weak cases. The thematic forms in the following table include the thematic vowel, which is really part of the suffix, not the ending.
The thematic vowel ablauts to only in word-final position in the vocative singular, and before in the neuter nominative and accusative plural. The vocative singular is also the only case for which the thematic nouns show accent retraction, a leftward shift of the accent, denoted by .
†The dative, instrumental and ablative plural endings probably contained a but are of uncertain structure otherwise. They might also have been of post-PIE date.
§For athematic nouns, an endingless locative is reconstructed in addition to the ordinary locative singular in . In contrast to the other weak cases, it typically has full or lengthened grade of the stem.
There is an unexpected o-grade of the suffix in the strong cases of polysyllabic amphikinetic nouns. Another unusual property of this class is the locative singular having a stressed e-grade suffix.
The classification of the amphikinetic root nouns is disputed. Since these words have no suffix, they differ from the amphikinetic polysyllables in the strong cases (no o-grade) and in the locative singular (no e-grade suffix). Some scholars prefer to call these nouns amphikinetic and the corresponding polysyllables holokinetic (or holodynamic, from holos = whole).
Some also list mesostatic (meso = middle) and teleutostatic types, with the accent fixed on the suffix and the ending, respectively, but their existence in PIE is disputed. The classes can then be grouped into three static (acrostatic, mesostatic, teleutostatic) and three or four mobile (proterokinetic, hysterokinetic, amphikinetic, holokinetic) paradigms.
A possible l/n-stem is "sun", genitive or the like.
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s of the Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
(PIE), their morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
and semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
, have been reconstructed by modern linguists based on similarities found across all Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
Morphology
The nouns are, just like PIE verbs, inflectedInflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
by adding an ending (E) to a stem. The stem is the carrier of the basic meaning, and is composed of a root
Proto-Indo-European root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots always have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run", as opposed to nouns , adjectives , or other parts of speech. Roots never occur alone in the language...
(R) and a suffix (S). The ending carries information about the case and number. Thus, the general morphological form of a noun is R+S+E.
Each PIE root has an inherent meaning, usually that of a verb. Suffixation yields different derived nouns with different meaning (e. g. "giver" and "gift", both with the verbal root "give").
Summing up, the suffix has the role of a derivational morpheme
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
, and the ending that of an inflectional morpheme.
Athematic and thematic nouns
A fundamental distinction is made between thematic and athematic nouns. Thematic nouns have a stem ending in a thematic vowel, in almost all cases, sometimes ablautingIndo-European ablaut
In linguistics, ablaut is a system of apophony in Proto-Indo-European and its far-reaching consequences in all of the modern Indo-European languages...
to . The accent
Proto-Indo-European accent
Proto-Indo-European accent refers to the accentual system of Proto-Indo-European language.-Description:Proto-Indo-European is reconstructed to have a pitch accent system that is usually described as a free tonal accent...
is fixed on the same syllable throughout the inflection.
The stem of athematic nouns ends in a consonant. They have a complex system of accent and ablaut alterations between the root, the stem and the ending (see below). This type is generally held as more archaic.
In the 19th century, stems used to be classified by their last sound into vowel (i-, u-, a-, ya-, o-, yo-stems) and consonantic stems (the rest). However, since and have been explained as vocalic allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s of underlying consonants (the glides and , respectively), and what used to be reconstructed as and has been reduced to and in the modern laryngeal theory
Laryngeal theory
The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of one, or a set of three , consonant sounds termed "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
, the only real vowel stems left are the o-stems, corresponding to what is now usually called the thematic stems. However, since syllabic allophones of the glides were phonemicized as real vowels in all daughter languages, and all the daughters except for the Anatolian
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
branch have completely lost the laryngeals, terms like i-stems, a-stems etc. still continue to be widely used to subclassify athematic nouns.
Root nouns
PIE also had a class of monosyllabic athematic or so-called root nouns which lack the derivational suffix, the ending being directly added to the root (as in , derived from "build"). These nouns can also be interpreted as having a zeroNull morpheme
In morpheme-based morphology, a null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null affix . In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix. It is also called a zero morpheme; the process of adding a null morpheme is called null affixation, null derivation or zero...
suffix or one without a phonetic body .
Verbal stems have corresponding morphological features, the root present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
and the root aorist
Aorist
Aorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
.
Primary and secondary derivation
The first suffix added to a root is considered a primary derivation (as in ), and if additional suffixes are added, or if a suffix is added to a root noun, this makes a secondary derivation.Prefixes and reduplication
Some nouns were formed with prefixes. An example is "nest", derived from the verb "sit" by adding a local prefix and thus meaning "where [the bird] sits" or the like.A special kind of prefixation, called reduplication, uses the first part of the root plus a vowel as a prefix. For example, "turn" gives "wheel".
This type of derivation is also found in verbs, mainly to form the perfect.
Grammatical categories
PIE nouns, as well as adjectives and pronouns, are subject to the system of PIE nominal inflection, inflecting for eight or nine cases: nominative, accusativeAccusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
, vocative, genitive, dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
, instrumental
Instrumental case
The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action...
, ablative, locative, and possibly a directive or allative. Three numbers
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
were distinguished: singular, dual and plural, with a distinction between a plural of collective and one of countable nouns.
The so-called strong cases are the nominative and the vocative for all numbers, and the accusative case for singular and dual (and possibly plural as well), and the rest are the weak cases. This classification is relevant for inflecting the athematic nouns of different accent classes (see below).
Late PIE had three genders
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
: masculine, feminine and neuter. Originally, there probably were only an animate (masculine/feminine) and an inanimate (neuter) gender. This view is supported by the existence of certain classes of Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
adjectives which inflect only for two sets of endings, one for masculine and feminine, the other for neuter. Further evidence comes from the Anatolian languages
Anatolian languages
The Anatolian languages comprise a group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in Asia Minor, the best attested of them being the Hittite language.-Origins:...
which exhibit only the animate and the inanimate gender. However, this could also mean that Proto-Anatolian inherited a three-gender PIE system, and subsequently Hittite
Hittite language
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, a people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia...
and other Old Anatolian languages eliminated the feminine by merging it with the masculine. The typically feminine ā-stems are considered to originate from the same form as the neuter plural, originally an abstract/collective derivational suffix .
Case endings
Here are two typical reconstructions of the case endings. Beekes does not give separate tables for the thematic and athematic endings:| Singular | Dual | Plural | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | |
| Nominative Nominative case The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments... |
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| Accusative Accusative case The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions... |
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| Vocative Vocative case The vocative case is the case used for a noun identifying the person being addressed and/or occasionally the determiners of that noun. A vocative expression is an expression of direct address, wherein the identity of the party being spoken to is set forth expressly within a sentence... |
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| Genitive Genitive case In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun... |
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| Dative Dative case The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink".... |
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| Instrumental Instrumental case The instrumental case is a grammatical case used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action... |
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| Ablative Ablative case In linguistics, ablative case is a name given to cases in various languages whose common characteristic is that they mark motion away from something, though the details in each language may differ... |
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| Locative Locative case Locative is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by"... |
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Fortson reconstructs the athematic and the thematic endings, but lacks the dual for the weak cases. The thematic forms in the following table include the thematic vowel, which is really part of the suffix, not the ending.
The thematic vowel ablauts to only in word-final position in the vocative singular, and before in the neuter nominative and accusative plural. The vocative singular is also the only case for which the thematic nouns show accent retraction, a leftward shift of the accent, denoted by .
| Singular | | Dual | | Plural | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athematic | | Thematic | | Athematic | | Thematic | | Athematic | | Thematic | |||||||
| Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | Animate | Neuter | |
| Nominative | ||||||||||||
| Accusative | ||||||||||||
| Vocative | ||||||||||||
| Genitive | ||||||||||||
| Dative | ||||||||||||
| Instrumental | ||||||||||||
| Ablative | ||||||||||||
| Locative | ||||||||||||
†The dative, instrumental and ablative plural endings probably contained a but are of uncertain structure otherwise. They might also have been of post-PIE date.
§For athematic nouns, an endingless locative is reconstructed in addition to the ordinary locative singular in . In contrast to the other weak cases, it typically has full or lengthened grade of the stem.
Athematic accent/ablaut classes
Polysyllabic athematic nouns (type R+S+E) exhibit four characteristic patterns that include accent and ablaut alternations throughout the paradigm between the root, the stem and the ending. Root nouns (type R+E) show similar behaviour, but with only two patterns. A distinction can be made between "kinetic" types (Ancient Greek kinetikos = moving) and "static" types (Ancient Greek statikos = holding still).| Type | Case | R | S | E | Example | Translation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Polysyllabic nouns | ||||||
| acrostatic (or acrodynamic) (akros = beginning) |
strong | ó/ḗ | Ø | Ø | nom. sg. | "night" |
| weak | é | Ø | Ø | gen. sg. | ||
| proterokinetic (or proterodynamic) (proteros = before) |
strong | é | Ø | Ø | nom. sg. | "thought" |
| weak | Ø | é | Ø | gen. sg. | ||
| hysterokinetic (or hysterodynamic) (hystera = womb, presumably "inside" here) |
strong | Ø | é | Ø | nom. sg. | "father" |
| weak | Ø | Ø | é | gen. sg. | ||
| amphikinetic (or amphidynamic) (amphis = on both sides) |
strong | é | o | Ø | nom. sg. | "path" |
| weak | Ø | Ø | é | gen. sg. | ||
| Root nouns | ||||||
| acrostatic | strong | ó/ḗ | Ø | nom. sg. | "house" | |
| weak | é | Ø | gen. sg. | |||
| amphikinetic (?) | strong | é/ḗ | Ø | nom. sg. | "heaven, god of heaven or day Dyeus *Dyēus is the reconstructed chief deity of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon. He was the god of the daylight sky, and his position may have mirrored the position of the patriarch or monarch in society.... " |
|
| weak | Ø | é | gen. sg. | |||
There is an unexpected o-grade of the suffix in the strong cases of polysyllabic amphikinetic nouns. Another unusual property of this class is the locative singular having a stressed e-grade suffix.
The classification of the amphikinetic root nouns is disputed. Since these words have no suffix, they differ from the amphikinetic polysyllables in the strong cases (no o-grade) and in the locative singular (no e-grade suffix). Some scholars prefer to call these nouns amphikinetic and the corresponding polysyllables holokinetic (or holodynamic, from holos = whole).
Some also list mesostatic (meso = middle) and teleutostatic types, with the accent fixed on the suffix and the ending, respectively, but their existence in PIE is disputed. The classes can then be grouped into three static (acrostatic, mesostatic, teleutostatic) and three or four mobile (proterokinetic, hysterokinetic, amphikinetic, holokinetic) paradigms.
Heteroclitic stems
Some athematic noun stems have different final consonants in different cases; these are termed heteroclitic stems. Most of these stems end in in the nominative and accusative singular, and in in the other cases. Examples of such r/n-stems include the acrostatic neuter "water", genitive ; and "fire", genitive or similar.A possible l/n-stem is "sun", genitive or the like.
Examples
The following are example declensions of a number of different types of nouns, based on the reconstruction of Ringe (2006).| acrostatic root noun | acrostatic lengthened root noun | amphikinetic (?) root noun | hysterokinetic r-stem | amphikinetic n-stem | hysterokinetic n-stem | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gloss Gloss A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different.... |
night (f.) | moon (m.) | foot (m.) | father (m.) | lake (m.) | bull (m.) | |
| sing. | nom. | ||||||
| voc. | |||||||
| acc. | |||||||
| inst. | |||||||
| dat. | |||||||
| abl. | |||||||
| gen. | |||||||
| loc. | |||||||
| dual | nom.-voc.-acc. | ||||||
| plur. | n.-v. | ||||||
| acc. | |||||||
| inst. | |||||||
| dat.-abl. | |||||||
| gen. | |||||||
| loc. | |||||||
| proterokinetic neuter r/n-stem | amphikinetic collective neuter r/n-stem | amphikinetic m-stem | proterokinetic ti-stem | proterokinetic tu-stem | proterokinetic neuter u-stem | ||
| gloss | water (n.) | water(s) (n.) | earth (f.) | thought (f.) | taste (m.) | tree (n.) | |
| sing. | nom. | ||||||
| voc. | |||||||
| acc. | |||||||
| inst. | |||||||
| dat. | |||||||
| abl. | |||||||
| gen. | |||||||
| loc. | |||||||
| dual | nom.-voc.-acc. | ||||||
| plur. | n.-v. | ||||||
| acc. | |||||||
| inst. | |||||||
| dat.-abl. | |||||||
| gen. | |||||||
| loc. | |||||||
| neuter s-stem | proterokinetic h₂-stem | hysterokinetic h₂-stem | eh₂-stem (ā-stem) | o-stem | neuter o-stem | ||
| gloss | cloud (n.) | woman (f.) | tongue (f.) | grain (f.) | nest (m.) | work (n.) | |
| sing. | nom. | ||||||
| voc. | |||||||
| acc. | |||||||
| inst. | |||||||
| dat. | |||||||
| abl. | |||||||
| gen. | |||||||
| loc. | |||||||
| dual | nom.-voc.-acc. | ? | |||||
| plur. | n.-v. | ||||||
| acc. | |||||||
| inst. | |||||||
| dat.-abl. | |||||||
| gen. | |||||||
| loc. | |||||||
Derivation
New words are formed in several ways, namely:- by ablaut alternations (the root consonantism is intact, but vocalization changes), e.g. "horned" from "horn, roe". Many PIE adjectives formed this way were subsequently nominalized in daughter languages.
- by alternating accent (i.e. switching to another accent/ablaut class), e.g. "burden", but "carrier"
- by derivational suffixes (possibly coupled with changes 1 and 2)
- by reduplicationReduplicationReduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
- by combining lexical morphemes themselves (compoundingCompound (linguistics)In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
); e.g. PIE "tear", literally "eye-bitter"