ABSTRACT

Today the most widespread language group in the world. The following branches make up Indo-European: Indo-Iranian, Tocharian, Armenian, Anatolian, Albanian, Greek, Italic (and its modern offshoots, the Romance languages), Slavic, Baltic (the latter possibly form a genetic unity Balto-Slavic), Germanic, and Celtic. Two of these, Anatolian and Tocharian, are now extinct. Numerous older languages are attested merely in fragments or through other languages (e.g. in names, glosses), e.g. Venetic, Messapic, Phrygian, etc., and their affiliation to the above-listed branches is not always clearly determinable due to their fragmentary documentation. The relative position of the branches to one another is still unclear; it has been suggested that they were spoken as dialects of a proto-language, the exact area and time of existence of which, however, still remains under debate (the area north of the Black Sea around 3000 BC has been suggested, but other regions and times equally have been discussed, cf. Lehmann 1990). As yet, it has not been possible to identify the Indo-Europeans for certain with any archeologically attested culture. Many older stages of the language groups are documented, and these form the main subject of Indo-European studies.