I n t r o d u c t i o n

For more than 200 years Indo-European studies have reached very high scientific level.

Indo-European comparative linguistics is an essential part of education for specialists in Classic, Slavic, Baltic, German and other languages.

In a presidential address to the Bengal Asiatic Society in 1786, William Jones declared that Sanskrit showed to Greek and Latin “a stronger affinity, both in the roots ... and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer (linguist) could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.” 

The extensive Sanskrit and ancient Greek literatures preserved characteristics of the basic Indo-European forms and pointed to the existence of a common parent language. By 1800 the close relationship between Sanskrit, ancient Greek, and Latin had been demonstrated. Hindu grammarians had systematically classified the formative elements of their ancient language. To their studies were added extensive grammatical and phonetic comparisons of European languages. 

Further studies (of A. Schleicher, K. Brugmann, F. Bopp) led to specific conclusions about the sounds and grammar of the assumed parent language (called Proto-Indo-European), the reconstruction of that hypothetical language, and estimates about when it began to break up into separate languages. 

The decipherment of Hittite texts (identified as Indo-European in 1915) and the discovery of Tocharian in the 1890s (spoken in medieval Eastern Turkistan, and identified as Indo-European in 1908) added new insights into the development of the family and the probable character of Proto-Indo-European.

The early Indo-European studies established many principles basic to comparative linguistics. One of the most important of these was that the sounds of related languages correspond to one another in predictable ways under specified conditions.

There were two main discoveries made during XX c.

The first one was theory of larengeals elaborated by Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913). It helped to describe the grammatical system and its development of proto-language in a much more consequent and systematic manner.

The second one was theory of H. Pedersen (1867-1953) who demonstrated an important connection between ablaut and accent. Further investigations in this field were carried out mainly by German, Austrian and American scientists (Harvard University, Erlangen University etc.).

Academician Fedor Fortunatov (1848-1914) was the founder of Indo-European studies in Russia who paid special attention to the comparative accentology. Indo-European studies at Saint-Petersburg University were developed by Boduen de Courteney (1845-1929) and S. Bulitch (1859-1921), in Soviet period - by I. Tronskiy (1897-1970) and A. Desnitskaja (1912-1992). Their adherents carry on Indo-European studies and teach comparative linguistics at Saint-Petersburg State University.

Following this tradition Department of General Linguistics organized special course of Indo-European studies. Responsible person for this course is professor Leonard Herzenberg. Great many lectures are read by Corresponding Member, Head of Institute of Linguistics N. Kazanskiy.