Dialectal variation of Proto-Indo-European in the light of accentological research [In Russian with English summary]
 
Vladimir Dybo (Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), vdybo@mail.ru)
 
Journal of Language Relationship, № 9, 2013 - p.93-108
 
Abstract: Advances in research on Indo-European accentology, made by the Moscow Accentological School in the last decades, allows us to formulate the following conclusion: the Indo-European community (with the possible exclusion of the Anatolian languages) appears to have initially been divided by the type of its accent systems in two large areas, the first one situated in the Northwest and the second one in the Southeast. The Northwestern accentological type seems to be more archaic, while the Southeastern system is apparently the result of an innovative reduction of the former. This conclusion may tentatively be linked to the hypothesis of the “secondary Balkan homeland”, assuming that such factors as the Greek-Aryan drift to the East and the transition of the speakers to the semi-nomadic lifestyle, as well as multilingual contacts, might have collectively caused this simplification of the formerly complex paradigmatic accent system.
 
Keywords: Indo-European accentology, Indo-European origins, Neolithic Europe, Chalcolithic Europe.
 
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