Editing Indo-European languages (section)

== History of Indo-European linguistics ==
{{See also|Indo-European studies#History}}
During the 16th century, European visitors to the [[Indian subcontinent]] began to notice similarities among [[Indo-Aryan languages|Indo-Aryan]], [[Iranian languages|Iranian]], and [[languages of Europe|European]] languages. In 1583, English [[Jesuit]] missionary and [[Konkani language|Konkani]] scholar [[Thomas Stephens (Jesuit)|Thomas Stephens]] wrote a letter from [[Goa]] to his brother (not published until the 20th century){{sfn|Auroux|2000|p=1156}} in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and [[Greek language|Greek]] and [[Latin]].

Another account was made by [[Filippo Sassetti]], a merchant born in [[Florence]] in 1540, who travelled to the Indian subcontinent. Writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between [[Sanskrit]] and Italian (these included ''devaḥ''/''dio'' 'God', ''sarpaḥ''/''serpe'' 'serpent', ''sapta''/''sette'' 'seven', ''aṣṭa''/''otto'' 'eight', and ''nava''/''nove'' 'nine').{{sfn|Auroux|2000|p=1156}} However, neither Stephens' nor Sassetti's observations led to further scholarly inquiry.{{sfn|Auroux|2000|p=1156}}

In 1647, [[Dutch people|Dutch]] linguist and scholar [[Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn]] noted the similarity among certain Asian and European languages and theorized that they were derived from a primitive common language that he called Scythian.{{sfn|Beekes|2011|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=W-HXnIG75PYC&pg=PA12 12] }} He included in his hypothesis [[Dutch language|Dutch]], [[Albanian language|Albanian]], [[Greek language|Greek]], [[Latin]], [[Persian language|Persian]], and [[German language|German]], later adding [[Slavic languages|Slavic]], [[Celtic languages|Celtic]], and [[Baltic languages]]. However, Van Boxhorn's suggestions did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.

Ottoman Turkish traveller [[Evliya Çelebi]] visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission and noted a few similarities between words in German and in Persian.
[[Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux|Gaston Coeurdoux]] and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a thorough comparison of Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek [[grammatical conjugation|conjugations]] in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Meanwhile, [[Mikhail Lomonosov]] compared different language groups, including Slavic, Baltic ("[[Courland|Kurlandic]]"), Iranian ("[[Median language|Medic]]"), [[Finnish language|Finnish]], [[Chinese language|Chinese]], "Hottentot" ([[Khoekhoe language|Khoekhoe]]), and others, noting that related languages (including Latin, Greek, German, and Russian) must have separated in antiquity from common ancestors.<ref name=Lomonosov>[http://feb-web.ru/feb/lomonos/texts/lo0/lo7/lo7-5952.htm M. V. Lomonosov (drafts for ''Russian Grammar'', published 1755). In: Complete Edition, Moscow, 1952, vol. 7, pp. 652–659] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801211720/http://feb-web.ru/feb/lomonos/texts/lo0/lo7/lo7-5952.htm |date=1 August 2020 }}:
Представимъ долготу времени, которою сіи языки раздѣлились. ... Польской и россійской языкъ коль давно раздѣлились! Подумай же, когда курляндской! Подумай же, когда латинской, греч., нѣм., росс. О глубокая древность! [Imagine the depth of time when these languages separated! ... Polish and Russian separated so long ago! Now think how long ago [this happened to] Kurlandic! Think when [this happened to] Latin, Greek, German, and Russian! Oh, great antiquity!]</ref>

The hypothesis reappeared in 1786 when [[Sir William Jones]] first lectured on the striking similarities among three of the oldest languages known in his time: [[Latin]], [[Greek language|Greek]], and [[Sanskrit]], to which he tentatively added [[Gothic language|Gothic]], [[Celtic languages|Celtic]], and [[Persian language|Persian]],<ref>{{cite book |last1=Poser |first1=William J. |last2=Campbell |first2=Lyle |date=1992 |chapter=Indo-European Practice and Historical Methodology |title=Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on The Place of Morphology in a Grammar |volume=18 |issue=1 |publisher=Berkeley Linguistics Society |pages=227–228 |doi=10.3765/bls.v18i1.1574 |access-date=7 December 2022 |url=http://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/BLS/article/view/1574}}</ref> though his classification contained some inaccuracies and omissions.<ref>{{cite book |first=Roger |last=Blench |date=2004 |chapter=Archaeology and Language: methods and issues |editor=John Bintliff |title=A Companion To Archaeology |location=Oxford |publisher=Blackwell |pages=52–74 |chapter-url=http://www.rogerblench.info/Archaeology%20data/CH4-BLENCH.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060517091902/http://www.rogerblench.info/Archaeology%20data/CH4-BLENCH.pdf |archive-date=17 May 2006 |access-date=29 May 2010}} Blench erroneously included [[Egyptian language|Egyptian]], [[Japanese language|Japanese]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] in the Indo-European languages, while omitting [[Hindi]].</ref> In one of the most famous quotations in linguistics, Jones made the following prescient statement in a lecture to the [[Asiatic Society of Bengal]] in 1786, conjecturing the existence of an earlier ancestor language, which he called "a common source" but did not name:
{{Blockquote
 |text=The Sanscrit {{sic}} language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no [[Philology|philologer]] could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.{{notetag|The sentence goes on to say, equally correctly as it turned out: "...here is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."}}
 |author=Sir William Jones
 |title=Third Anniversary Discourse delivered 2 February 1786
 |source=ELIOHS<ref name=Jones-1807>{{cite web |title=The Third Anniversary Discourse |last1=Jones |first1=William |url=http://www.eliohs.unifi.it/testi/700/jones/Jones_Discourse_3.html |date=2 February 1786 |website=Electronic Library of Historiography |publisher=Universita degli Studi Firenze |postscript=,}} taken from: {{cite book |title=The Works of Sir William Jones. With a Life of the Author |last1=Shore |first1=John |date=1807 |volume=III |publisher=John Stockdale and John Walker |pages=24–46 |oclc=899731310}}</ref>
}}

[[Thomas Young (scientist)|Thomas Young]] first used the term ''Indo-European'' in 1813, deriving it from the geographical extremes of the language family: from [[Western Europe]] to [[North India]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Robinson |first=Andrew |title=The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Genius who Proved Newton Wrong and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, among Other Surprising Feats |publisher=Penguin |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-13-134304-7 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/lastmanwhoknewev00robi}}</ref><ref>In ''London Quarterly Review'' X/2 1813.; cf. {{harvnb|Szemerényi|Jones|Jones|1999|loc=p. 12 footnote 6.}}</ref> A synonym is '''Indo-Germanic''' (''Idg.'' or ''IdG.''), specifying the family's southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches. This first appeared in French (''indo-germanique'') in 1810 in the work of [[Conrad Malte-Brun]]; in most languages this term is now dated or less common than ''Indo-European'', although in German ''indogermanisch'' remains the standard scientific term. A [[Indo-European studies#Naming|number of other synonymous terms]] have also been used.

[[File:Franz Bopp (2).jpg|left|thumb|upright=0.75|[[Franz Bopp]] was a pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies.]]
[[Franz Bopp]] wrote in 1816 ''On the conjugational system of the Sanskrit language compared with that of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic''<ref>{{cite book |title=Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache: in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache |first=Franz |last=Bopp |location=Hildesheim |publisher=Olms |date=2010 |edition=2nd |series=Documenta Semiotica: Serie 1, Linguistik |orig-year=1816 |language=de}}</ref> and between 1833 and 1852 he wrote ''Comparative Grammar''. This marks the beginning of [[Indo-European studies]] as an academic discipline. The classical phase of Indo-European [[comparative linguistics]] leads from this work to [[August Schleicher]]'s 1861 ''Compendium'' and up to [[Karl Brugmann]]'s ''[[Grundriss]]'', published in the 1880s. Brugmann's [[neogrammarian]] reevaluation of the field and [[Ferdinand de Saussure]]'s development of the [[laryngeal theory]] may be considered the beginning of "modern" Indo-European studies. The generation of Indo-Europeanists active in the last third of the 20th century (such as [[Calvert Watkins]], [[Jochem Schindler]], and [[Helmut Rix]]) developed a better understanding of morphology and of [[ablaut]] in the wake of [[Jerzy Kuryłowicz|Kuryłowicz]]'s 1956 ''Apophony in Indo-European'', who in 1927 pointed out the existence of the [[Hittite phonology|Hittite consonant]] ḫ.<ref>{{Cite book |chapter=ə indo-européen et ḫ hittite |editor1-last=Taszycki |editor1-first=W. |editor2-last=Doroszewski |editor2-first=W. |title=Symbolae grammaticae in honorem Ioannis Rozwadowski |last=Kurylowicz |first=Jerzy |date=1927 |volume=1 |pages=95–104}}</ref> Kuryłowicz's discovery supported Ferdinand de Saussure's 1879 proposal of the existence of {{lang|fr|coefficients sonantiques}}, elements de Saussure reconstructed to account for vowel length alternations in Indo-European languages. This led to the so-called [[laryngeal theory]], a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics and a confirmation of de Saussure's theory.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}}