Proto-Indo-European language
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The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The existence of such a language has been accepted by linguists for over a century, and there have been many attempts at reconstruction. Nevertheless, many disagreements and uncertainties remain.
Sample texts
As PIE was conjectured to be spoken by a prehistoric society, no genuine sample texts are available, but since the 19th century modern scholars have made various attempts to compose example texts for purposes of illustration. These texts are educated guesses at best; Calvert Watkins in 1969 observes that in spite of its 150 years' history, comparative linguistics is not in the position to reconstruct a single well-formed sentence in PIE. Because of this and other similar objections based on Pratishakyas, such texts are of limited use in getting an impression of what a coherent utterance in PIE might have sounded like.
Published PIE sample texts:
- Schleicher's fable (Template:Unicode) by August Schleicher (1868), modernized by Hermann Hirt (1939) and Winfred Lehmann and Ladislav Zgusta (1979)
- The king and the god (Template:Unicode) by S. K. Sen, E. P. Hamp et al. (1994)
See also
- Pie
- Indo-European languages
- Proto-Indo-European root
- Indo-European vocabulary
- Laryngeal theory
- Schleicher's fable
