An attempt at reconstructing the practice of bird-divination for the speakers of Proto-Indo-European by comparing the terminology for this practice in Greek, Latin and Hittite texts.
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
The question of the genealogical proximity of Italic and Celtic has been an issue in Indo-European linguistics for a long time. Whereas most previous studies have looked at the innovations possibly...Show moreThe question of the genealogical proximity of Italic and Celtic has been an issue in Indo-European linguistics for a long time. Whereas most previous studies have looked at the innovations possibly shared by Italic and Celtic from a Proto-Indo-European perspective, this work takes a more bottom-up approach by attempting to reconstruct (parts of) the Proto-Italo-Celtic language on the basis of the attested linguistic data in both branches’ daughter languages. The areas under focus are Italo-Celtic phonology and verbal morphology. As the Italo-Celtic reconstructions of both of these sub-systems of the language are substantially different for the systems traditionally reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European, I will argue that there is good reason to posit Italo-Celtic as a genetic unit that must have lasted for a substantial amount of time.Show less
This papers aims to evaluate the sound changes that took place between the Proto-Indo-European stage and the Proto-Celtic stage, that is to say before this proto-language started to be divided into...Show moreThis papers aims to evaluate the sound changes that took place between the Proto-Indo-European stage and the Proto-Celtic stage, that is to say before this proto-language started to be divided into several dialects giving birth to Old Irish, Old Welsh, Old Breton, Old Cornish, Gaulish, Celtiberian, and Lepontic, and to propose a relative chronologic order of those changes.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Although most ancient Indo-European languages share the same grammatical three-gender system of masculine, feminine and neuter gender, the lack of a feminine gender in the archaic Anatolian branch...Show moreAlthough most ancient Indo-European languages share the same grammatical three-gender system of masculine, feminine and neuter gender, the lack of a feminine gender in the archaic Anatolian branch suggests that development of this gender is a relatively recent development in "Core PIE". This thesis investigates how such a development may have come about. I analyse the attested functions of the suffixes often connected to the rise of the feminine gender: *-eh2, *-ih2 and *-sor. Moreover, I consider the emergence of the PIE feminine from a typological perspective and compare it to gender developments in other language families. On the basis of morphological and typological considerations, I suggest that not the traditional feminine suffix *-eh2, but rather the "secondary" suffix *-ih2 played a crucial role in the emergence of the PIE feminine gender.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
It has been observed that pre-PIE *d sometimes turns into PIE *h₁, also referred to as the Kortlandt effect, but much is still unclear about the occurrence and nature of this change. In this thesis...Show moreIt has been observed that pre-PIE *d sometimes turns into PIE *h₁, also referred to as the Kortlandt effect, but much is still unclear about the occurrence and nature of this change. In this thesis, I provide an elaborate discussion aimed at establishing the conditions and a phonetic explanation for the development. All words that have thus far been proposed as instances of the *d > *h₁ change will be investigated more closely, leading to the conclusion that the Kortlandt effect is a type of debuccalisation due to dental dissimilation when *d is followed by a consonant. Typological parallels for this type of change, as well as evidence from IE daughter languages, enable us to identify it as a shift from pre-glottalised voiceless stop to glottal stop.Show less
