Indo-Uralic and Altaic

Elsewhere I have argued that the Indo-European verbal system can be understood in terms of its Indo-Uralic origins because the reconstructed Indo-European endings can be derived from combinations of Indo-Uralic morphemes by a series of well-motivated phonetic and analogic developments (2002). Moreover, I have claimed (2004b) that the Proto-Uralic consonant gradation accounts for the peculiar correlations between Indo-European root structure and accentuation discovered by Lubotsky (1988)

Hittite ammuk 'me'

In the Indo-European department of Leiden University, Alwin Kloekhorst has initiated a discussion on Hittite ammuk ‘me’. The central question is: where did the geminate come from? This has led me to reconsider the origin of the Indo-European personal pronouns against the background of my reconstruction of Indo-Uralic (2002: 221-225). For the historical data I may refer to Schmidt (1978)

Report on a conference about the use of computers in comparative linguistics : held at the University of Bamberg, June 12 - 14, 1992

The here reported conference consisted of the following sections: a) Questions of encoding, norming and transfer of data across system boundaries b) Problems of text processing in Indo-European studies c) Discussion of principles and methods concerning an Indo-European text data base. ..

Nivkh as a Uralo-Siberian language

In his magnificent book on the language relations across Bering Strait (1998), Michael Fortescue does not consider Nivkh (Gilyak) to be a Uralo-Siberian language. Elsewhere I have argued that the Indo-European verbal system can be understood in terms of its Indo-Uralic origins (2001). All of these languages belong to Joseph Greenberg’s Eurasiatic macro-family (2000). In the following I intend to reconsider the grammatical evidence for including Nivkh into the Uralo-Siberian language family. The Indo-Uralic evidence is of particular importance because it guarantees a time depth which cannot otherwise be attained

Indo-Uralic consonant gradation

Koivulehto and Vennemann have recently (1996) revived Posti’s theory (1953) which attributed Finnic consonant gradation to Germanic influence, in particular to the influence of Verner’s law. This theory disregards the major differences between Finnic and Saami gradation (cf. Sammallahti 1998: 3) and ignores the similar gradation in Nganasan and Selkup (cf. Kallio 2000: 92)

Grammaticalization of a reciprocal pronoun in a diachronic typological perspective: evidence from Vedic and Indo-European

Historische fonologie en morfologie van het Indo-Europee

An Etruscan solution to a Celtic problem

It is argued that what used to be called "P-Celtic" arose because Etruscans could not pronounce properly the Indo-European languages which they encountered in and around Italy. Etruscan influence can neatly explain not only the phenomenon of P-Celtic but also the corresponding phonological transition in Oscan and Umbrian. This scenario tends to support a relatively short timescale for the dissemination and diversification of the Western Indo-European languages

Between the historical languages and the reconstructed language : an alternative approach to the Gerundive + “Dative of Agent” construction in Indo-European

It is argued by Hettrich (1990) that the “dative of agent” construction in the Indo-European languages most likely continues a construction inherited from Proto-Indo-European. In two recent proposals (Danesi 2013, Luraghi 2016), it is argued that the “dative of agent” contains no agent at all, although the two proposals differ with regard to the reconstructability of the “dative of agent” construction. Luraghi argues that it is an independent secondary development from an original beneficiary function (cf. Hettrich 1990), while Danesi maintains that the construction is reconstructable for an earlier proto-stage. Elaborating on Danesi’s approach, we analyze gerundives with the “dative of agent” in six different Indo-European languages that bridge the east–west divide, namely, Sanskrit, Avestan, Ancient Greek, Latin, Tocharian, and Lithuanian. Scrutiny of the data reveals similarities at a morphosyntactic level, a semantic level (i.e. modal meaning and low degree of transitivity), and also, to some extent, at an etymological level. An analysis involving a modal reading of the predicate, with a dative subject and a nominative object, is better equipped to account for the particulars of the “gerundive + nominative + dative” construction than the traditional agentive/passive analysis. The proposal is couched within the theoretical framework of Construction Grammar, in which the basic unit of language is the Construction, i.e. a form–function correspondence, and no principled distinction between lexical items and complex syntactic structures is assumed. As these structures are by definition units of comparanda, required by the Comparative Method, they can be successfully utilized in the reconstruction of a proto-construction for Proto-Indo-European

An outline of Proto-Indo-European

Indo-European is a branch of Indo-Uralic which was radically transformed under the influence of a North Caucasian substratum when its speakers moved from the area north of the Caspian Sea to the area north of the Black Sea (cf. Kortlandt 2007b). As a result, Indo-European developed a minimal vowel system combined with a very large consonant inventory including glottalized stops, also grammatical gender and adjectival agreement, an ergative construction which was lost again but has left its traces in the grammatical system, especially in the nominal inflection, a construction with a dative subject which was partly preserved in the historical languages and is reflected in the verbal morphology and syntax, where it gave rise to new categories, and a heterogeneous lexicon. The Indo-Uralic elements of Indo-European include pronouns, case endings, verbal endings, participles and derivational suffixes. In the following I shall give an overview of the grammar of Proto-Indo-European as it may have been spoken around 4000 BC in the eastern Ukraine, shortly after the ancestors of the Anatolians left for the Balkans (for more recent developments I refer to Beekes 1995)