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About half of the world's population speaks an Indo-European language. Now spread all over the globe, this language family has developed from a single pre-historic language spoken before the invention of writing.

Historical Indo-European Linguistics (also called Comparative Philology) studies the Indo-European daughter languages and reconstructs their common ancestor, called Proto-Indo-European (PIE), in various aspects (phonological system, morphology, syntax, lexicon). At the same time, many linguistic features of the individual daughter languages can be explained on the basis of PIE and its subsequent developments into the Germanic languages, Italic (including Romance), Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Celtic languages, Greek, Anatolian (Hittite, etc.), Albanian, and Tocharian. All this is possible because linguistic change is not arbitrary, but based on general principles best visible in phonology and morphology.

The philological treatment of Indo-European languages also leads to insights into the cultural background of the respective language community (history, social structure, religion, philosophy, poetry, etc.).

Indo-European Linguistics is an interdisciplinary subject, dealing with an area ranging from Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Ancient Anatolia and Mesopotamiato India and West China and with language records going back as far as the 2nd millenium BC. As a branch of linguistics, it applies linguistic theory/theories to ancient, medieval and early modern language data and provides a wealth of information for theories of language change and language typology. In Würzburg, Indo-European Linguistics participates in the Master's program "General and Applied Linguistics" and collaborates closely with other philological disciplines.

Department

The Department of Ancient Studies and its chairs:

Chair of Egyptology

Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Studies

Chair of Classical Archaeology

Chair of pre- and early archaeology

Further links

Würzburg Centre of Ancient Studies (Würzburger Altertumswissenschaftliches Zentrum)

Society for Indo-European Studies

Opening hours

Office

Mon – Thu	13:30 to 16:30
Friday	11:30 to 13:30

Library

Monday	13:30 to 16:30
Tuesday	13:30 to 16:30
Wednesday	13:30 to 16:30
Thursday	13:30 to 16:30
Friday	11:30 to 13:30

In accordance with the infection protection concept of the University of Würzburg, there is no obligation to wear a medical face mask in the library, either on meeting and traffic areas or at the seat or workplace, provided that a minimum distance of 1.5 m from other persons can be reliably maintained at all times.

Address

Institut für Altertumswissenschaften
Lehrstuhl für Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg
Oswald-Külpe-Weg 84
97074 Würzburg
Phone: +49 (0)931 31 82826
Mail: vgsp@uni-wuerzburg.de

Term information

Class schedule for summer term 2022

News

29. Juni 2022 --- Research

The results of Dr. Jeong-Soo Kim's research project Atharvavedasaṃhitā der Śaunakaśākhā : Eine neue Edition unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Parallelstellen der Paippalādasaṃhitā (2022) which were previously only available on our homepage, have now been published on the server of the Würzburg University Library and thus made permanently accessible.

09. May 2022 --- Lecture

The lecture given by Prof. Dr. Kölligan on April 12, 2022 at the Bundeskongress des Deutschen Altphilologenverbands is now available on Youtube: Iuppiter, Zeus und irreguläre Verben.

27. April 2022 --- Research

Some presentations held at the workshop The Lexicon-Grammar Interface in the Synchrony and Diachrony of Armenian, which took place on April 04–05, 2022, are now available online.

03. March 2022 --- Research

Heinrich Hettrich's Materialien zu einer Kasussyntax des R̥gveda (2007), which were previously only available on our homepage, have now been published on the server of the Würzburg University Library and thus made permanently accessible.

Recent publications

Kölligan, Daniel. „Ein griechisches Verbaldvandva“. In Miscellanea di studi in onore di Diego Poli, herausgegeben von Francesca Chiusaroli, 1:739–51. Rom: Il Calamo.

Malhadas, Daisi, Maria Celeste C. Dezotti and Maria Helena de Souza Neves (eds.). 2022. Dicionário grego-português. 2. ed. edited by Maria Celeste C. Dezotti, Edvanda B. da Rosa, Alex Mazzanti Jr., Caio Geraldes, Felipe Campos, Pedro Barbieri, Rafael de Almeida Semedo and Thiago Venturott. Araçoiaba da Serra/SP: Editora Mnēma; Cotia/SP: Ateliê Editorial.

Dieu, Éric. 2022. Traité d'accentuation grecque. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2022. Predicates to particles - Greek μάν, μήν, μέν. In: Sommer, Florian, Karin Stüber, Paul Widmer & Yoko Yamazaki (Hrsgg.): Indogermanische Morphologie in erweiterter Sicht. Grenzfälle und Übergänge. Beiträge zu einer 2020 in Zürich geplanten, aber nicht stattgefundenen Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 65-82.

Frotscher, Michael, Eugel Hill & Kölligan, Daniel. 2022. Clitics in morphology - morphology of clitics. In: Sommer, Florian, Karin Stüber, Paul Widmer & Yoko Yamazaki (Hrsgg.): Indogermanische Morphologie in erweiterter Sicht. Grenzfälle und Übergänge. Beiträge zu einer 2020 in Zürich geplanten, aber nicht stattgefundenen Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 185-234.

West, Martin L. 2022. Poesia e Mito Indo-Europeus. Ins Portugiesische übersetzt von Pedro Barbieri, Felipe Campos, Caio Geraldes, Alex Mazzanti Jr. und Thiago Venturott. Araçoiaba da Serra/SP: Editora Mnēma.

Maria Kazanskaya, Petr Kocharov, Andrey Shatskov (eds.), Colloquia Classica et Indogermanica VII. Miscellanea in honorem Nikolai N. Kazansky septuagenarii. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana 18/1 (2022).

Kölligan, Daniel. 2022. Full and calm - Notes on Greek ἥσυχος and Latin tranquillus. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Vol. 18.1. Colloquia Classica et Indogermanica VII. Miscellanea in honorem Nikolai N. Kazansky septuagenarii. pp. 165–186.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2022[2021]. "Multiverb constructions in Classical Armenian", in: M. L. Aliffi et al. (eds.), Perspectives on language and linguistics - Essays in honour of Lucio Melazzo. Palermo University Press: Palermo, 235-60.

Kozintseva, Natalia A. 2022. Le parfait en arménien. Text prepared by P. Kocharov and A. Bajanbur. St. Petersburg: Institute for Linguistic Studies. Russian Academy of Sciences.

Glotta 98 (2022), ed. by Jan Felix Gaertner, Daniel Kölligan & Andreas Willi.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2021[2022]. Armeniaca Iranica: vi(r)h “gulf, pit, abyss,” apahov “safety,” zawak “child”. Revue des Études Arméniennes 40, 1–18. DOI: 10.2143/REA.40.0.3290106.

Dieu, Eric. 2022. Redaktion von 10 Notizen für die Chronique d’Étymologie Grecque Nr. 18 (Ergänzungen zum Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque von Pierre Chantraine, Paris, 1968–1980), Alain Blanc, Charles de Lamberterie (Hrsgg.), in: Revue de philologie, 94/1, 2020 [2022], S. 191–221: Notizen zu Ἥρᾱ (S. 199–200), ἥρως (S. 200), μάργος (S. 204–205), μείρομαι (S. 205), μόργος (S. 206), πᾱνός (S. 210–212), πῦρ (S. 212), σεύομαι (S. 212–213), σκεθρός (S. 213–215), σῶς (S. 215).

Bichlmeier, Harald / Zimmer, Stefan. 2022. Die keltischen Flussnamen im deutschsprachigen Raum. Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, Beiheft 32. Hrsg. von Daniel Kölligan, Norbert Oettinger & Stefan Schaffner. Dettelbach: Röll.

Becker, Kristina und Theresa Roth. 2022. Ein neuer Blick auf *derk- und *spek-. Die Argumentstruktur von Wahrnehmungsverben und ihre Bedeutung für Suppletionsverhältnisse. In: Melanie Malzahn, Hannes Fellner und Theresa-Susanna Illés: Zurück zur Wurzel – Struktur, Funktion und Semantik der Wurzel im Indogermanischen Akten der Tagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 13. bis 16. September 2016 in Wien. Wiesbaden: Reichert. 15–30.