The concept of the Indo-Europeans and Indo-European family of languages.

The Visigoths.(Aquitaine - kingdom)

SABO p. 22

49. The age of migrations: the Ostrogoths. (p. 22)

The GOTHS. I c. AD Settled in the mouth of Vistula river. Moved to the area north of the Black Sea (170). A split between large Gothic groups. (270)

SABO p.22

56. Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians: their original home and migration to the British Isles.

(p.25)

…C======= 30. The concept of the comparative method: reconstruction and asterisk. P 20.

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor.

The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask and Franz Bopp and the German scholar Jacob Grimm. The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language was August Schleicher

The common or hypothesised language that serves as a common ancestor is called a proto-language, or sometimes, a parent language. In this case the divergent continuations are frequently referred to as daughter languages. A parent language and its daughters constitute a language family.

The RECONSTRUCTION of the parent language is undertaken, when linguist run out of actually documented texts. It’s a hypothesis about the specific form of the proto-language that could have changed into the documented daughter launguages

The ASTERISK (*) is the sign that shows that a letter or a word was reconstructed

The ARCHETYPE is a reconstructed hypothetical form of the proto-language (but not documented)

The concept of the Indo-Europeans and Indo-European family of languages.

Around 5 thousand languages are spoken in the world today. They can be grouped in different language families on the basis of genealogical principle. It is assumed that the Indo-European family of languages , has developed out of some single language, which must have been spoken thousands of years ago by some comparatively small body of people in a relatively restricted geographical area. This original language is called Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The people, who spoke it or who spoke languages evolved from it, are called Indo-Europeans.

The comparative method was developed over the 19th century. Key contributions were made by the Danish scholars Rasmus Rask, Rasmus Rask and the German scholar Jacob Grimm. The first linguist to offer reconstructed forms from a proto-language was August Schleicher, in 1861. They established, with the help of their main method: the comparison, the definition of The language family: this is the language which is represented by a parent language and its daughters ( the divergent continuations of parent languages).

The traditional view has been that the Indo-Europeans were a nomadic (кочові) or semi-nomadic people, who invaded neighboring agricultural or urban areas, and imposed their languages on them. This mass migration began in about 7000 BC or according to the traditional point of view it dates back to 4000BC or later.

After 4000 BC, when the language had developed into a number of dialects, зущзду began to expand in various directions. In the course of their expansion, the Indo-Europeans overran countries which had reached a higher level of civilization than they had themselves.

There is one technical factor, which played a role in the expansion of Indo-Europeans. This was the use of horse-drawn vehicles, which was characteristic of Indo-European society. It is possible that Indo-Europeans were ahead of time, and it was their use of wheeled vehicles, especially the fast horse-drawn chariot, that enabled them to overrun such a large part of the Eurasian continent.

There Exist different hypotheses concerning prehistorical settlement of PIE as to the primeval motherland of PIE:

1) In Northern Europe - 6 millenium (Л. Кіліан, М. Звелбіл): Scandinavia, and the adjacent parts of Northern Germany, and it was often linked with a belief that the Germanic peoples were the ‘original’ Indo-Europeans;

2) In Central Europe – 3 millenium BC (Є. Прокош) – 2 large group of tribes – Forest (2 mill BC) and Steppe. Forest: northward – Germanic, southward - Celtic, Italic, Balkan, Greek; Steppe: northward – Baltic, southward - one Thracian and Illyrian; another Phrygian, Armenian; Indic, Iranian.

3) In the Balkans ( В.І. Грегорієв І.М.Дяконов)

4) South to the Caucasis ( forced by tribes), North to the Central Mesopotamia, Armenian hypothesis – 5 millenium ( Т.М Гамкрелідзе, Вячеслав Васильович Іванов)

Drawbacks: not explain how relacted similarities; two languages who have a less common in a one group are also in other group.