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Subject

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.

Comparative 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

Secretariat

Monday 08:30 to 16:30
Wednesday/Thursday 13:30 to 16:30
Friday 11:30 to 13:30

Library

Monday to Thursday 10:00 to 16:30
Friday 10:00 to 13:30

Due to the current COVID-19 situation, the library is open for lending only. We kindly ask you to contact us in advance by phone or e-mail, stating the shelf mark of the books you are looking for.

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 winter term 2020/2021

Comments to courses offered in winter term

Please note the information on the hybrid character of the upcoming term.

News

November 24, 2020 --- Lecture

Tue 15.12.20, 6:00 pm
Eugen Hill (University of Cologne)
Zur diachronen Typologie der morphologischen Null (Watkins' Gesetz und Watkins' Transformationen)

Lecture as part of the Linguistic Colloquium

November 2, 2020 --- Information

The Linguistics Department at the University of Göttingen has published a series of video introductions to the grammar of several ancient Indo-European languages under the title "Ancient Indo-European Grammars Online", including a lecture on Classical Armenian by Ronald Kim and Daniel Kölligan.

September 17, 2020 --- Research

The German Rectors' Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, HRK) will be funding a project developed by Kristina Becker (Würzburg) and Theresa Roth (Marburg) within the initiative "Small subjects: visibly innovative!"

... more

September 10, 2020 --- Research

We are pleased to welcome Petr Kocharov as a guest researcher at the Chair of Comparative Philology, who will be working on Armenian verbal morphology as part of a Humboldt Scholarship starting March 2021.

August 20, 2020 --- Teaching

The new commented class schedule for winter term 2020/2021 has been published.

PDF

June 15, 2020 --- Obituary

The Chair of Comparative Philology mourns the loss of Prof. Dr. Heinrich Hettrich who passed away on June 9, 2020.

... more

Recent publications

Kölligan, Daniel. 2020. "Gr. σφήξ ‚Wespe‘ und uridg. *(s)bʰeh₁gʰ-." Indogermanische Forschungen 125.1.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2019[2020]. "Remarks on the genitive in Apollonius Rhodius’ Argonautica." Aitia 9.2.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2020. "The Perfect in Classical Armenian". In: Robert Crellin & Thomas Jügel (eds.): Perfects in Indo-European Languages and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 352–376.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2020. "Etyma armeniaca.", in: Le Feuvre, C. & D. Petit (eds.), Onomatôn histôr - Mélanges offerts à Charles de Lamberterie. Leuven: Peeters, 71–88.

Quadrio, Tiziana. 2020. “Desiderativ-jussive Formeln in den griechischen LIebeszaubern und das Problem von μή + Impv. Aor. im Griechischen.” In: Tra semantica e sintassi: il ruolo della linguistica storica. Zwischen Semantik und Syntax: die Rolle der historischen Sprachwissenschaft. Atti del Convegno Congiunto | Gemeinsame Arbeitstagung. Società Italiana di Glottologia | Indogermanische Gesellschaft. Verona, 11-14 ottobre 2017. A cura di Paola Cotticelli Kurras e Sabine Ziegler. Roma: Il calamo. 203–230.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2020. “From parenthesis to particle: the grammaticalization of speech act verbs in Greek and Latin.”, in: Tra semantica e sintassi: il ruolo della linguistica storica. Zwischen Semantik und Syntax: die Rolle der historischen Sprachwissenschaft. Atti del Convegno Congiunto | Gemeinsame Arbeitstagung. Società Italiana di Glottologia | Indogermanische Gesellschaft. Verona, 11-14 ottobre 2017. A cura di Paola Cotticelli Kurras e Sabine Ziegler. Roma: Il calamo. 129–141.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2020. "Future periphrasis in John Malalas.", in: Rafiyenko, Dariya / Seržant, Ilja A. (eds.). Postclassical Greek. Contemporary Approaches to Philology and Linguistics. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. 71–96.

Chronz, Tinatin / Kölligan, Daniel / Brakmann, Heinzgerd. 2020. "Die Feier der Myronweihe in der armenischen Kirche. Mit einer deutschen Übersetzung und liturgiehistorischen Beobachtungen", Oriens Christianus 101 (2018) [2020], 177–233.

Hisatsugi, Satoko. 2019. "Der lateinische Dativ: neue Wege in Transitivität und funktionaler Semantik.", in: Lidewij van Gils, Caroline Kroon und Rodie Risselada (eds.), Lemmata Linguistica Latina, Volume II: Clause and Discourse. Berlin: de Gruyter, 134–154.

Kölligan, Daniel. 2019. "Germanic *ƀra (PIE *pro) as ditropic clitic and the etymology of *ƀrenga-, *ƀruka- and *ƀraiđa-", Indogermanische Forschungen 124, 115–135.

Becker, Kristina. 2019. "An ihrer Sprache sollt ihr sie erkennen!" – Argumentationstopoi im Stürmer und in Publikationen der Neuen Rechten auf Compact-online und unzensuriert.at. In David Römer / Constanze Spieß: Populismus und Sagbarkeiten in öffentlich-politischen Diskursen (Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 95). 181–209.