Indo-European Key Terms

These terms and dates form part of the discussion of the readings for this section, and you should become familiar with them. You can find them defined separately in the Glossary in the back of our textbook, as well as the online glossary on this site. Some of these terms may also come from our lectures, supplementary readings, and workbook exercises for the unit. You may find it helpful to continually refer back to this list as you progress through the material and lectures of this unit.

Indo-European
genetic classification
inflected language
satem and centum languages
cognate words
inflection
cases
personal verb endings
number
tense
gender
strong and weak verbs
Germanic Consonant Shift: Grimm's Law and Verner's Law
Rasmus Rask
Karl Verner

6th century BCE: Germanic Consonant shift
1786 William Jones
1822 Jacob Grimm, German Grammar, 2nd ed.
1915 Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics