Proto-Indo-European

Abstract

This chapter is a grammatical sketch of Proto-Indo-European. It describes the phonology of the language, including the system of surface contrasts; peculiarities of subsystems and individual segments; syllabification of sonorants; ablaut; rules affecting obstruents (including laryngeals); the accent system; and Auslautgesetze. The inflectional morphology is described, including the system of inflectional categories and their formal expression; the complex inflection of the verb (organized around aspect stems and inflected also for mood, voice, the person and number of the subject, and—marginally—tense); and the inflection of the various classes of nominals, with emphasis on the accent and ablaut paradigms of nouns. Short sections on derivational morphology, syntax, and the lexicon are included.