Section 7 Flashcards
a hypothetical prehistoric population of Eurasia
Indo-European(s)
a British judge who lived in India and in 1786 was the first person to suggest the possibility of Indo-European civilization
William Jones
Jones’ hypothesis opened a new door to the past and sparked the modern science of
Historical Linguistics
Parallels in vocabulary and grammar quickly emerged among foreign languages, particularly in what were then the oldest preserved tongues: Latin, Greek and
Sanskrit
an ancient body of writings from India
The Vedas
from the same linguistic origin as
Cognate
the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
Proto-Indo-European
pushed aside at least two previous groups of Indo-European invaders and precipitated so much chaos that a centuries-long dark age ensued
Dorian Invasion
an offshoot of the Proto-Indo-European language, a linguistic variant
Common Germanic
including Welsh, Scots Gaelic
Celtic
including German, English, Dutch, Yiddish
Germanic
including Swedish, Danish, Norwegian
Scandinavian
studied early German literature, seeking rare words unchanged over time, archaic vocabulary which might elucidate the history of the German language.
Jacob Grimm
a fascinating body of folklore which he and his brother Wilhelm published
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
a pattern in the evolution of Common Germanic as it was developing out of Proto-Indo-European, a change that he deduced had to have taken place long ago
Great Consonant Shift
p, t, k
Unvoiced
ph, th, kh
Aspirate
even if a Germanic word and one from a different branch of Indo-European didn’t look alike on the surface, in many cases they could be shown to be cognate with each other if one assumed that certain consonants had followed a predictable course of change
Grimm’s Law
by looking at how different its daughter languages are from one another, it may be possible to get a sense of the extent of time it took to create that number of variations in grammar and vocabulary evidenced in Indo-European languages.
Glossochronology
Where they lived is no less difficult to assess. Called the
Homeland Problem
Their chief god was probably an entity whom they called
“Sky-Father”
the Romans whose principal deity was known as
Jupiter
the Greeks whose god
Zeus
The Indo-Europeans must also have favored _________ (“division into threes
Tripartition
