Proto-Indo-European

Study Questions and Exercises

  1. What is Proto-Indo-European? Who spoke it? Draw a diagram showing its relationship to English. What are some other Indo-European languages?
  2. Look up the first three English words in the list below in The American Heritage College Dictionary: Using the etymology of each word, identify its Indo-European root. Explain the relationship between these words and their counterparts in Latin. Why are the words different? Using this limited body of evidence and what you have learned about the comparative method, hypothesize an Indo-European root for the last word. Should you place an asterisk before it? Why or why not?
    1. foot (English)/ped- (Latin stem)
    2. tooth (English)/dent- (Latin stem)
    3. three (English)/tres (Latin)
    4. father (English)/pater (Latin)
  3. Which features of Proto-Indo-European morphology and lexicon have been preserved in English? Illustrate your points with examples.

Bibliography

  • The American Heritage College Dictionary.
  • Watkins, Calvert. "Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans." The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Terms

  • Proto-Indo-European
  • Germanic
  • West Germanic
  • cognate
  • comparative method
  • Grimm's Law
  • protolanguage

Chronology

c. 5000 B.C.: Indo-Europeans exist

Written by Mark Canada, Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Pembroke

© Mark Canada, 1999

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