English as an

Indo-European Language

Maria Francisca Rojas Victoriano

Languages

Lexicon(Vocabulary)

Contain

Phonology(Sound)

Morphology(Word Structure)

Syntax(Grammar)

A Proto-System or Proto-Language is ‘the original

language’, from which the other languages developed and evolved

Proto-Germanic (PGmc)

Other Proto Languages

Germanic

English

Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

Languages

Indo European (IE)

West Germanic

45%

6%

4%

22%

5%

2% 6%

5% 2% 4%

World Languages by percentage of speakers

Indo-EuropeanNiger-CongoDravidianSino-TibetanAfro-AsiaticAustroasiaticAltaicAustronesianTai-KadaiOther

Languages share genes,

modern languages have inherited

features from Older languages

Some similarities of two language

families are shown in the next slideshow

Italian French Spanish Portuguese Latin

One Uno Un Uno Um Unus

Two Due Deux Dos Dois Duo

Three Tre Trois Tres Tres Tres

Numbers one, two and three in some Romance languages.

English Dutch German Swedish Yiddish

One One Een Eins En Eyns

Two Two Twee Zwei Två Tsvey

Three Three Drie Drei Tre Dray

Numbers one, two and three in some Germanic languages.

Romance languages share an ancestor language: LATIN.

Germanic language’s ancestor must be inferred, a case different from Latin, because Germanic was

never written.

English Dutch German Swedish Yiddish

Love Liefde Liebe Ljuv Libe

Mother Moeder Mutter Mo(de)r Muter

House Huis Haus Hus Hoyz

Some Germanic vocabulary words that express genetic relation

The Indo-European Language Family

A family of languages that where spoken by an important part of Europe

and Asia.

The IE family contains about 140 languages, which are classified into

11 subgroups.

Of the 11 subgroups, one of them is Germanic,

where English comes from.

The concept is linguistic; the

term is geographic

(easternmost: India and

westernmost: Europe)

Indo-European Language Family

Anatolian

Indo-Iranian

IndicIranian

Greek

Italic

Germanic

Celtic

Tocharian

Baltic

Slavic

Armenian

Albanian

Fragmentary Languages (languages that only survive in fragments, inscriptions, also classified as IE)

Ligurian Thracian

Messapic Phrygian

Sicel and Sicanian Illyrian

Venetic Others

Aspects of the structure of PIE

Phonology Morphology Syntax

Phonology

PIE Sanskrit Hittite Latin

p p p p

Kw k/c ku qu

Phonological correspondence among some PIE languages

Hittite Greek PIE

three teri- treîs *trei-

foot pata-x podós° *ped-

PIE reconstructions based on vocabulary from IE languages

X: The form is Hieroglyphic Luwian°: The genitive case reveals the stem

Morphology

‘PIE, considered a fusional language, is a language were nouns, adjectives, pronouns, indicate their grammatical

relationship to other words in a sentence and mark gender and

number agreement among words in phrases’

‘The protolanguage is

reconstructed with 8 or 9 cases

which indicate grammatical and

semantic distinction’

Cases: Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative, instrumental and

vocative.

In PIE and its descendants

Syntax

There is a variety of syntactic patterns

from different languages

Word order Case endings

Due to

Such as

Modern English

or French

Like in

Modern English

We usually

Grammatically fix elements in

a sentenceWhile in

PIE

As in

‘Strawberries, I like’

Word order is not a grammatical

device