7/11/2017 Wiktionary:About Proto-Indo-European - Wiktionary

Wiktionary:About Proto-Indo-European
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
This is a Wiktionary policy, guideline or common practices page. This is a draft proposal. It is
unofficial, and it is unknown whether it is widely accepted by Wiktionary editors.
Policies: CFI - ELE - BLOCK - REDIR - BOTS - QUOTE - DELETE - NPOV - AXX

These are guidelines for Proto-Indo-European entries. Note that since Proto-Indo-European is a reconstructed
language, all entries should be subpages in the Reconstruction namespace.

Contents
1 Phonology and transcription
2 Linking and entry names
3 Creating Proto-Indo-European entries
3.1 Nouns
3.2 Sorting
3.3 Derived terms and descendants
4 See also

Phonology and transcription

The following scheme is the canonical transcription for PIE words and forms on Wiktionary, which is used within
entries as well as the names of entries themselves (but see below on category sorting). Other spellings are
permitted, but should redirect to the canonical spelling.

Obstruents are never syllabic, and therefore can't form syllables on their own.

Voiceless stops: *p *t * *k *k (not k or k)

Voiced stops: *b *d * *g *g (not or g)
Aspirated stops: *b *d * *g *g (not bh, dh, h/g'h/h/gh, gh, gh etc.)
Fricatives: *s *h *h *h (unknown laryngeal: *H)

Sonorants are sometimes syllabic, and form pairs depending on whether they are considered a 'syllable nucleus'
(simply said, 'vowels') or not. The general rule is that sonorants are non-syllabic when they are next to a syllabic (a
vowel or another syllabic sonorant), and syllabic when they stand in between non-syllabics.

Non-syllabic sonorants: *y *w *l *r *m *n (not i u)

Syllabic sonorants: *i *u *l *r *m *n

Vowels are always syllabic. Roots that show ablaut (the vast majority) are normally cited in the e-grade, or full
grade. A few roots seem to have other underlying vowels, usually a, but also occasionally i or u that never seem to
alternate with their non-syllabic counterparts. Underlying long vowels are likewise rare, and long high vowels even
moreso.

Short vowels: *e *o *a *i *u
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Long vowels: * * * * *

Diphthongs are sequences of a vowel followed by a nonsyllabic sonorant, and are written as such:

*ey *oy *ew *ow etc. (not ei oi eu ou)

Every fully-formed verb, noun or adjective form (with an inflectional ending) has at least one accented syllable.
The accented syllable of such words is indicated with an acute accent (), and always specified in entry names as
well as within entries themselves. Current practice is to include it as well on single-syllable words, because there
was probably a distinction between presence and lack of an accent. In particular, many clitics and adverbs seem to
have been inherently accentless in at least some circumstances.

Accented short vowels: * * * * *

Accented long vowels: * * * * *
Accented syllabic sonorants: * * * * * *

Linking and entry names

In principle, the spelling guidelines outlined above apply to entry names as well. If you see an entry with a name
that doesn't conform to the scheme above, feel free to move it and correct any links to it so that they point to the
proper name.

Use "Early PIE" (laryngealist) forms by default (*steh-, not *stah- or *st-; *hwos, not *wos).
Doubtful laryngeal qualities can be expressed as simple 'H'.
Surface (phonetic) forms of reconstructions should generally be used, and not the underlying (phonological)
forms with or without separated constituent morphemes, unless it is the universal practice to do so (e.g.
ignoring the "laryngeal coloring" effects for vowels). This means application of the synchronic PIE
phonological rules. E.g. *w and not *wn (Szemernyis law), *krewys and not *krewhys (Pinault's
law, from *krewh-).
Roots are to be cited in the e-grade, entries should not be created for the other grades. Redirects are ok, but
fixing the links is better!
Cite roots and stems (forms that are not fully inflected words) with a hyphen: *pe-.
Words should not be broken up into pieces. Write a word as one whole, without hyphens separating the
parts: *wstus (not *ws-tu-s). Separating hyphens can be used in the displayed form of links to clarify the
formation, as long as it's not used in the page name itself.
Nouns and adjectives always have an accented syllable, as do verb forms (when shown in inflection tables).
Roots do not have an inherent accent, but verb aspect stems (for example *ddeh-) do. You may add a word
without an accent if you don't know where the accent should be placed, but when the accent placement
becomes known the entry should be moved/renamed to reflect this.
The language code for Proto-Indo-European is ine-pro. Use this code with the {{der}} and {{inh}}
templates for references in etymologies. When linking to Proto-Indo-European reconstructions, you must
add * before the word (to indicate that it's reconstructed) or an error message will be displayed.

Example: {{der|en|ine-pro|*brug-||to make use of, to have enjoyment of}}

Produces: Proto-Indo-European *brug- (to make use of, to have enjoyment of)

Creating Proto-Indo-European entries

Entries should normally begin with {{reconstructed}} to alert readers to the reconstructed nature of the entry and
the meaning of the asterisk. Following that, in principle, PIE entries are laid out the same as other entries in the
main namespace. So they have a language header, properly nested part-of-speech headers, and possibly also
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declension and conjugation tables, derived and related terms and other subheadings. You should try to keep to
WT:ELE in general, but you can deviate from it a little bit if it's necessary. If you're not sure how to format an
entry, you can look at existing entries.

Nouns

The following template can be used for nouns:

{{reconstructed}}
==Proto-Indo-European==

===Etymology===

===Noun===
{{ine-noun|}}

# [[]]

====Declension====
{{rfinfl|ine-pro|noun}}

====Descendants====

The template {{ine-noun}} takes one positional parameter: gender. Wiktionary uses Post-Anatolian stage of Proto-
Indo-European as is usual, which had masculine, feminine and neuter genders which can be specified as m, f, n
respectively.

Inflection can be either requested using the template {{rfinfl}} as shown above, or can be specified either
manually, using the {{ine-decl-noun-table}} template, or simply using templates for some simple cases (thematic
stems): see Category:Proto-Indo-European noun inflection-table templates. You should also add the entry to
Category:Proto-Indo-European thematic nouns, Category:Proto-Indo-European athematic nouns or one of the
latter's subcategories, depending on how much is known about the inflection type.

User is advised to specify declensional pattern, as well as oblique case forms, in case full inflection is not
provided.

Sorting

Indo-European entries should normally be sorted with a sort key, because of the many special characters that are
present in the language. The default sorting order is as follows:

Subscripts are replaced with base characters: > 1 2 3

Superscripts are replaced with base characters preceded by a lone macron: > h w (so that e.g. g always
sorts after g rather than between ge and gi)
Acute accents, macrons and rings below are removed: > a e i o u, = a e i o u, r l m n > r l m
n
The acute for palatovelars becomes a following apostrophe: > g' k'

All of the standard templates such as {{head}} as well as all the Proto-Indo-European specific templates apply this
sorting by default, so you do not need to do anything for those templates.

Derived terms and descendants

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Every entry must have either a derived terms or a descendants section, as this is important for being able to judge
the validity of the reconstruction. After all, if something is reconstructed but nothing came from it, why was it
reconstructed?

Because of the many languages that descend from Proto-Indo-European, managing the list of descendants can be a
significant task. In general, descendants are listed as an unordered list, with each language that descends from an
older stage being indented one step further. Terms listed in a bulleted list, like descendants, should be linked using
{{l}}, not with {{m}}!

To make things a little easier to read, the descendants are normally split into branches (Celtic, Germanic, Italic,
Indo-Iranian etc.). Each of those branches is considered a direct descendant of PIE itself without other intervening
stages. If there are several languages in such a branch, it normally has a proto-language of some kind which forms
the common ancestor of all languages in that branch.

For root entries, no descendants section should be present, as roots have no descendants (unless one of the
descendants is a root itself). Instead, there should be a derived terms section that groups descendants according to
the various formations derived from the root.

For derived terms, especially of roots, the following ordering of formations is used:

Verb formations first, then nominals and other formations.

Derivations are listed in alphabetical order by the suffix. The grade of the root and suffixes are ignored (i.e.
assume zero grade for ordering). Simple thematic nominal derivations are ordered as "o". Thus, *sth-ts
comes between *sth-tis ~ *sth-ty-s and *sth-tus ~ *sth-tw-s.
If there are two derivations with identical suffixes but different root grades, order by root grade: e, o, zero.
Root verbs are listed before all other verbs, root nominals before all other nominals.
More derived formations after basic formations. Thus, a verb derived from a noun comes after that noun.

See also
Wiktionary:Transliteration
Wiktionary:Reconstructed terms
Wiktionary:Etymology
Category:Proto-Indo-European language

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