Chapter 5. Kinship Resulting from Marriage Abstract Except for the husband and wife, for whom no specific terms seem to have existed in Indo-European, the words in this field have a constant form and precise sense—but they are not amenable to analysis. They always designate the tie of kinship through a man—the husband’s mother and father, the husband’s brother, the husband’s sister, the brother’s wife and the husband’s brother’s wife. Read more
Chapter 6. Formation and Suffixation of the Terms for Kinship Abstract From the morphological point of view, the great unity of the Indo-European vocabulary of kinship emerges from the existence of the class suffix *-ter (or *-er), which not only characterizes a great number of the most ancient terms (*pǝter, etc.), but still continues to figure in the most recent creations or remodeled expressions. Even when they differ from one… Read more
Chapter 7. Words Derived from the Terms for Kinship Abstract Greek here offers a group of new designations—huiōnós ‘grandson’, páppos ‘grandfather’, adelphidoûs ‘nephew’—which, with adelphós supplanting phrátēr, are evidence for the passage from a system of classificatory kinship to a descriptive one. Latin has three adjectives derived from pater. Only one is Indo-European: this is patrius, which, in fact, goes back to *pǝter in its most ancient “classificatory” sense (patria… Read more
Book III: Social Status Chapter 1. Tripartition of Functions Abstract By parallel series of terms, often of revealing etymology, but which differ from language to language, Iranian, Indic, Greek and Italic testify to a common Indo-European heritage: that of an hierarchical society, structured according to three fundamental functions, those of priests, warriors and tillers of the soil. Text According to Indo-Iranian traditions society is organized into three classes of activity,… Read more
Chapter 2. The Four Divisions of Society Abstract The tripartition studied in Chapter One is of a functional character and it is by no means identical with the hierarchy of the groups to which a man belongs. These are political divisions that concern societies when studied over their whole extension. Here ancient Iranian has preserved four terms, designating respectively the “family,” the “clan,” the “tribe” and the “country.” But the… Read more
Chapter 3. The Free Man Abstract Although the opposition “free/slave” is common to all Indo-European peoples, a common designation of the notion of “liberty” is unknown. The fact that this designation evolved along parallel lines in two groups of languages merely serves to bring out better the specific content of the notion. In Latin and Greek the free man, *(e)leudheros, is positively defined by his membership of a “breed,” of… Read more
Chapter 4. Phílos Abstract The specific values of Lat. cīvis ‘fellow citizen’, Got. heiwa– ‘family group’, Skt. śeva ‘friendly’ lead us to postulate for the Indo-European word *keiwo-, which these words enable us to reconstruct, a meaning with both a social reference and sentimental overtones. The uses, especially the Homeric ones, of Gr. phílos and its derivatives point in the same direction, however unsure we may be about the full… Read more
Chapter 5. The Slave and the Stranger Abstract The free man, born into a group, is opposed to the stranger (Gr. xénos), that is to say, the enemy (Lat. hostis), who is liable to become my guest (Gr. xénos, Lat. hospes) or my slave if I capture him in war (Gr. aikhmálōtos, Lat. captivus). A stranger by necessity, the slave is designated in the Indo-European languages, even modern ones, either… Read more
Chapter 6. Cities and Communities Abstract The Western dialects of Indo-European (Celtic, Italic, Germanic, Baltic) have preserved the word *teutā, derived from a root *tew– ‘to be swollen, powerful’, to designate “the people” as a full development of the social body. Quite naturally, this term, which supplied national ethnics among the Germans (Teutoni, deutsch) acquired the opposite meaning when Slavic borrowed it from German: Old Slav. tŭždĭ means “stranger.” The… Read more
Book IV: Royalty and its Privileges Chapter 1. Rex Abstract Rex, which is attested only in Italic, Celtic, and Indic—that is, at the western and eastern extremities of the Indo-European world—belongs to a very ancient group of terms relating to religion and law. The connection of Lat. rego with Gr. orégō ‘extend in a straight line’ (the o– being phonologically explicable), the examination of the old uses of reg– in… Read more
