Schleicher's fable
Encyclopedia
Schleicher's fable is an artificial text composed in the reconstructed language Proto-Indo-European
(PIE), published by August Schleicher
in 1868. Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a text in PIE. The fable is entitled Avis akvāsas ka ("The Sheep and the Horses"). At later dates, various scholars have published revised versions of Schleicher's fable, as the idea of what PIE should look like changed over time. The fable may serve as an illustration of the significant changes that the reconstructed language has gone through during the last 140 years of scholarly efforts.
The first revision of Schleicher's fable was made by Hermann Hirt
(published by Arntz in 1939).
A second revision was published by Winfred Lehmann
and Ladislav Zgusta
in 1979.
Another version by Douglas Q. Adams
appeared in the EIEC (1997:501).
In 2007 Frederik Kortlandt
published yet another version on his homepage.
and morphological
systems of PIE.
Schleicher's reconstruction assumed that the o/e vocalism was secondary, and his PIE is much more closely based on Sanskrit
than modern reconstructions.
Hirt introduced the o/e vocalism, syllabic resonants
, labiovelars and palatalized velars.
Lehmann and Zgusta introduced a few alternative lexemes (the relative pronoun ; the word 'man'), and made some first steps into the direction of accepting laryngeals. Their text features an h ( for what they seem to accept as a single laryngeal of PIE.
Adams was the first one to fully reflect the laryngeal theory
in his version of the fable. Judging from the text, he seems to assume four different laryngeal phoneme
s. Consequently, Adam's text does not show long ā any more.
Kortlandt's version is a radical deviation from the prior texts in a number of ways. First, he followed the glottalic theory
, writing glottalic plosives with a prefixed apostrophe (d) and omitting aspirated voiced plosives. Second, he substitutes the abstract laryngeal signs with their supposed phonetic values: = (glottal stop
), = (pharyngeal fricative), = (pharyngeal fricative with lip rounding). Third, he omits palatovelars, reducing the series of plosives to velars and labiovelars. Kortlandt also has a different opinion about ablaut grades in many verbal and nominal forms, compared to the other scholars.
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
(PIE), published by August Schleicher
August Schleicher
August Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language...
in 1868. Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a text in PIE. The fable is entitled Avis akvāsas ka ("The Sheep and the Horses"). At later dates, various scholars have published revised versions of Schleicher's fable, as the idea of what PIE should look like changed over time. The fable may serve as an illustration of the significant changes that the reconstructed language has gone through during the last 140 years of scholarly efforts.
The first revision of Schleicher's fable was made by Hermann Hirt
Hermann Hirt
Hermann Hirt was German philologist and Indo-Europeanist.- Biography :Hirt wrote on German metres , edited Schopenhauer's Parerga , and then devoting himself to Indo-Germanic philology made special studies on accent, writing Der indogermanische Accent and Der...
(published by Arntz in 1939).
A second revision was published by Winfred Lehmann
Winfred P. Lehmann
Winfred P. Lehmann was an American linguist noted for his work in historical linguistics, particularly Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic, as well as for pioneering work in machine translation.-Biography:After receiving B.A. in Humanities at the Northwestern College in Watertown in 1936, he...
and Ladislav Zgusta
Ladislav Zgusta
Ladislav Zgusta was a Czech–American historical linguist and lexicographer, who wrote one of the first textbooks on lexicography. He was a professor of linguistics and classics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dutch lexicographer Piet van Sterkenburg referred to Zgusta as...
in 1979.
Another version by Douglas Q. Adams
Douglas Q. Adams
Douglas Q. Adams is a professor of English at the University of Idaho and an Indo-European comparativist. Adams studied at the University of Chicago, taking his PhD in 1972. He is an expert on Tocharian and a contributor on this subject to the Encyclopædia Britannica.He has also co-authored two...
appeared in the EIEC (1997:501).
In 2007 Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Kortlandt
Frederik Herman Henri Kortlandt is a professor of descriptive and comparative linguistics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He is an expert on Baltic and Slavic languages, the Indo-European languages in general, and Proto-Indo-European, though he has also published studies of languages in...
published yet another version on his homepage.
Schleicher (1868)
- Avis, jasmin varnā na ā ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vāgham garum vaghantam, tam, bhāram magham, tam, manum āku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams ā vavakat: kard aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam. Akvāsas ā vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnām avisāms karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varnā na asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram ā bhugat.
Hirt (1939)
- Owis, jesmin wьlənā ne ēst, dedork’e ek’wons, tom, woghom gʷьrum weghontm̥, tom, bhorom megam, tom, gh’ьmonm̥ ōk’u bherontm̥. Owis ek’womos ewьwekʷet: k’ērd aghnutai moi widontei gh’ьmonm̥ ek’wons ag’ontm̥. Ek’wōses ewьwekʷont: kl’udhi, owei!, k’ērd aghnutai vidontmos: gh’ьmo, potis, wьlənām owjôm kʷr̥neuti sebhoi ghʷermom westrom; owimos-kʷe wьlənā ne esti. Tod k’ek’ruwos owis ag’rom ebhuget.
Lehmann and Zgusta (1979)
- Gʷərēi owis, kʷesjo wl̥hnā ne ēst, eḱwōns espeḱet, oinom ghe gʷr̥um woǵhom weǵhontm̥, oinomkʷe meǵam bhorom, oinomkʷe ǵhm̥enm̥ ōḱu bherontm̥. Owis nu eḱwobh(j)os (eḱwomos) ewewkʷet: "Ḱēr aghnutoi moi eḱwōns aǵontm̥ nerm̥ widn̥tei". Eḱwōs tu ewewkʷont: "Ḱludhi, owei, ḱēr ghe aghnutoi n̥smei widn̥tbh(j)os (widn̥tmos): nēr, potis, owiōm r̥ wl̥hnām sebhi gʷhermom westrom kʷrn̥euti. Neǵhi owiōm wl̥hnā esti". Tod ḱeḱluwōs owis aǵrom ebhuget.
Adams (1997)
- [Gʷr̥hxḗi] h2óu̯is, kʷési̯o u̯lh2néh4 ne (h1é) est, h1ék̂u̯ons spék̂et, h1oinom ghe gʷr̥hxúm u̯óĝhom u̯éĝhontm̥ h1oinom-kʷe ĝ méĝham bhórom, h1oinom-kʷe ĝhménm̥ hxṓk̂u bhérontm̥. h2óu̯is tu h1ek̂u̯oibh(i̯)os u̯eukʷét: 'k̂ḗr haeghnutór moi h1ék̂u̯ons haéĝontm̥ hanérm̥ u̯idn̥téi. h1ék̂u̯ōs tu u̯eukʷónt: 'k̂ludhí, h2óu̯ei, k̂ḗr ghe haeghnutór n̥sméi u̯idn̥tbh(i̯)ós. hanḗr, pótis, h2éu̯i̯om r̥ u̯l̥h2néham sebhi kʷr̥néuti nu gʷhérmom u̯éstrom néĝhi h2éu̯i̯om u̯l̥h2néha h1ésti.' Tód k̂ek̂luu̯ṓs h2óu̯is haéĝrom bhugét.
Kortlandt (2007)
- ʕʷeuis iosmi ʕuelʔn neʔst ʔekuns ʔe 'dērkt, tom 'gʷrʕeum uogom ugentm, tom m'geʕm borom, tom dgmenm ʔoʔku brentm. ʔe uēukʷt ʕʷeuis ʔkumus: kʷntske ʔmoi kērt ʕnerm ui'denti ʔekuns ʕ'gentm. ʔe ueukʷnt ʔkeus: kludi ʕʷuei, kʷntske nsmi kērt ui'dntsu: ʕnēr potis ʕʷuiom ʕulʔenm subi gʷormom uestrom kʷrneuti, ʕʷuimus kʷe ʕuelʔn neʔsti. To'd kekluus ʕʷeuis ʕe'grom ʔe bēu'gd.
Lühr (2008)
- h2ówis, (H)jésmin h2wlh2néh2 ne éh1est, dedork’e (h1)ék’wons, tóm, wóg’hom gwérh2um wég’hontm, tóm, bhórom még’oh2m, tóm, dhg’hémonm h2oHk’ú bhérontm. h2ówis (h1)ék’wobhos ewewkwe(t): k’ḗrd h2ghnutoj moj widntéj dhg’hmónm (h1)ék’wons h2ég’ontm. (h1)ék’wōs ewewkw: k’ludhí, h2ówi! k’ḗrd h2ghnutoj widntbhós: dhg’hémō(n), pótis, h2wlnéh2m h2ówjom kwnewti sébhoj gwhérmom wéstrom; h2éwibhoskwe h2wlh2néh2 né h1esti. Tód k’ek’luwṓs h2ówis h2ég’rom ebhuge(t).
English translation
The Sheep and the Horses- [On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses". The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool". Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.
Notable differences
Some of the differences between the texts are just varying spelling conventions: w and , for example, are only different ways to indicate the same sound, a consonantal u. However, many other differences are to be explained by widely diverging views on the phonologicalPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
systems of PIE.
Schleicher's reconstruction assumed that the o/e vocalism was secondary, and his PIE is much more closely based on Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
than modern reconstructions.
Hirt introduced the o/e vocalism, syllabic resonants
Syllabic consonant
A syllabic consonant is a consonant which either forms a syllable on its own, or is the nucleus of a syllable. The diacritic for this in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the under-stroke, ⟨⟩...
, labiovelars and palatalized velars.
Lehmann and Zgusta introduced a few alternative lexemes (the relative pronoun ; the word 'man'), and made some first steps into the direction of accepting laryngeals. Their text features an h ( for what they seem to accept as a single laryngeal of PIE.
Adams was the first one to fully reflect the laryngeal theory
Laryngeal theory
The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of historical linguistics which proposes the existence of one, or a set of three , consonant sounds termed "laryngeals" that appear in most current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language...
in his version of the fable. Judging from the text, he seems to assume four different laryngeal phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
s. Consequently, Adam's text does not show long ā any more.
Kortlandt's version is a radical deviation from the prior texts in a number of ways. First, he followed the glottalic theory
Glottalic theory
The glottalic theory holds that Proto-Indo-European had ejective stops, , but not the murmured ones, , of traditional Proto-Indo-European phonological reconstructions....
, writing glottalic plosives with a prefixed apostrophe (d) and omitting aspirated voiced plosives. Second, he substitutes the abstract laryngeal signs with their supposed phonetic values: = (glottal stop
Glottal stop
The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
), = (pharyngeal fricative), = (pharyngeal fricative with lip rounding). Third, he omits palatovelars, reducing the series of plosives to velars and labiovelars. Kortlandt also has a different opinion about ablaut grades in many verbal and nominal forms, compared to the other scholars.
See also
- Serbo-Croatian language for a rendering of the fable into varieties of Serbo-Croatian
- The king and the godThe king and the godThe king and the god is the title of a short dialogue composed in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. It is loosely based on the "king Harishcandra" episode of Aitareya Brahmana . S. K. Sen asked a number of Indo-Europeanists The king and the god is the title of a short dialogue...