The precursors of Indo-European: The Indo-Hittite and Indo-Uralic hypotheses

(Leiden University, 9-11 July 2015). Book of Abstracts. — Leiden: Leiden University, 2015. — 32 p.Like any other language, Proto-Indo-European must have had its relatives and precursors. One theory that operates with such a precursor is the Indo-Hittite hypothesis. Its proponents argue that the Anatolian branch occupies such a special place in the Indo-European language family that it must be seen as a sister of Proto-Indo-European rather than as a daughter of it. This implies that Proto-Indo-European and Anatolian derive from an earlier mother language, which tentatively has been called ‘Proto-Indo-Hittite’. Another theory dealing with the prehistory of Proto-Indo-European goes even beyond Indo-Hittite, and argues for a genetic relationship with the Uralic language family, assuming the existence of a so-called ‘Indo-Uralic’ mother language. This workshop aims at discussing the possibility of reconstructing one or more precursors of Proto-Indo-European, both from an empirical as well as a methodological point of view.