Proto-Greek language
The Proto-Greek language, also known as Proto-Hellenic, is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent Greek dialects">Greek language">Greek dialects and, ultimately, Koine, Byzantine and Modern Greek. Proto-Greek speakers entered Greece sometime during the European Bronze Age with the diversification into a southern and a northern group beginning by approximately 1700BC.
Origins
Context
The evolution of Proto-Greek could be considered within the context of an early Paleo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages. The characteristically Greek representation of word-initial laryngeals by prothetic vowels is shared, for one, by the Armenian language, which also seems to share some other phonological and morphological peculiarities of Greek; this has led some linguists to propose a hypothetically closer relationship between Greek and Armenian, although evidence remains scant.Estimates
Estimates for the introduction of the Proto-Greek language into prehistoric Greece have changed over the course of the 20th century. Since the decipherment of Linear B, searches were made "for earlier breaks in the continuity of the material record that might represent the 'coming of the Greeks'". A Middle Bronze Age estimate, originally presented by C. Haley and J. Blegen in 1928, was altered to an estimate spanning the transition from Early Helladic II to Early Helladic III. However, the latter estimate, accepted by the majority of scholars, was criticized by John E. Coleman as being based on stratigraphic discontinuities at Lerna that other archaeological excavations in Greece demonstrated were the product of chronological gaps or separate deposit-sequencing instead of cultural changes.Models
In modern scholarship, different settlement models have been proposed regarding the development of Proto-Greek speakers in the Greek peninsula.- Paul Heggarty et al., advancing a mixed steppe-farmer model of Indo-European origins via Bayesian statistics, places Greek south of the Caucasus as an already diverged branch of Indo-European at around 7000 years before present.
- Panayiotis Filos states that the term Proto-Greek "does not necessarily refer to a fully homogeneous Indo-European language of the Early/Middle Bronze periods ". He argues that Proto-Greek developed "during a long, continuous linguistic process, as a migrating population of Greek speakers were en route to/on the outskirts of Greece, i.e., somewhere to the north of the Greek peninsula proper" and amalgamating with Pre-Greek speakers."
- Radoslav Katičić states that the lack of any traces of pre-Greek toponymy in Epirus and western Thessaly makes the region the most probable concentration site of Greek-speakers at around c. 1950 BC before their descent southwards.
- Nancy Demand argues that speakers of what would become Proto-Greek migrated from their homeland throughout Europe and reached Greece in a date set around the transition of the Early Bronze Age to the Middle Bronze Age.
- David Anthony argues that Proto-Greek emerged from the diversification of the Proto-Indo-European language, the last phase of which gave rise to the later language families having occurred in BCE; its formation in Greece occurred during the beginning and end of the Early Helladic III period. Specifically, Pre-Proto-Greek, the Indo-European dialect from which Proto-Greek originated, emerged BCE in an area which bordered pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian to the east and pre-Proto-Armenian and pre-Proto-Phrygian to the west, at the eastern borders of southeastern Europe.
- Asko Parpola and Christian Carpelan date the arrival of Proto-Greek speakers from the Eurasian steppe into the Greek peninsula to 2200 BCE.
- John E. Coleman estimates that the entry of Proto-Greek speakers into the Greek peninsula occurred during the late 4th millennium BC with pre-Greek spoken by the inhabitants of the Late Neolithic II period.
- A. L. Katona places the beginning of the migration of the Proto-Greek speakers from Ukraine towards the south BCE. Their proposed route of migration passed through Romania and the eastern Balkans to the Evros river valley from where their main body moved west. As such, Katona, agreeing with M. V. Sakellariou, argues that the main body of Greek-speakers settled in a region that included southwestern Illyria, Epirus, northwestern Thessaly and western Macedonia."
- Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and Vjaceslav V. Ivanov date the separation of Greek from the Greek-Armenian-Aryan clade of Proto-Indo-European to around the 3rd millennium BCE. The Greek clade afterwards split into independently developed dialects during the end of the 3rd or beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE.
- Robert Drews dates the coming of chariot-riding Greeks into the Aegean in BC viewing earlier estimates as "deeply flawed". Drews' model, however, is rejected by modern Mycenologists on the grounds that it is both historically and linguistically inaccurate.
- An older model by Bulgarian linguist Vladimir I. Georgiev placed Proto-Greek in northwestern Greece and adjacent areas and Pieria in Macedonia during the Late Neolithic period. The boundaries are based on the high concentration of archaic Greek place-names in the region, in contrast to southern Greece which preserves many pre-Greek place-names. However, the dating of Proto-Greek in Bronze Age Greece is compatible with the inherited lexicon from the common Proto-Indo-European language which excludes any possibility of it being present in Neolithic Greece.
Diversification
Ivo Hajnal dates the beginning of the diversification of Proto-Greek into the subsequent Greek dialects to a point not significantly earlier than 1700BC. The conventional division of the Greek dialects prior to 1955 differentiated them between a West Greek and an East Greek group. However, after the decipherment of the Linear B script, Walter Porzig and Ernst Risch argued for a division between a Northern and a Southern group, which remains fundamental until today.In Lucien van Beek's diversification scenario, South Greek-speaking tribes in spread to Boeotia, Attica, and the Peloponnese, while North Greek was spoken in Epirus, Thessaly, parts of Central Greece, and perhaps also Macedonia.
For Christina Skelton, "he state of the Greek dialects in the second millennium BCE is still controversial."
Phonology
Phonemes
Proto-Greek is reconstructed with the following phonemes:Vowels
- Diphthongs are ai ei oi ui, au eu ou, āi ēi ōi, and possibly āu ēu ōu; all are allophonic with the corresponding sequences of vowel and semivowel.
- Exactly one vowel in each word bears a pitch accent.
Proto-Greek changes
The primary sound changes separating Proto-Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language include the following.Consonants
- Delabialization of labiovelars next to, the "boukólos rule". This was a phonotactic restriction already in Proto-Indo-European, and continued to be productive in Proto-Greek. It ceased to be in effect when labiovelars disappeared from the language in post-Proto-Greek.
- Centumization: Merger of palatovelars and velars.
- Merging of sequences of velar + *w into the labiovelars, perhaps with compensatory lengthening of the consonant in one case: PIE *h₁éḱwos > PG *híkkʷos > Mycenaean i-qo, Attic híppos, Aeolic íkkos.
- Debuccalization of to in intervocalic and prevocalic positions. Loss of prevocalic *s was not completed entirely, evidenced by sȳ́s ~ hȳ́s "pig", dasýs "dense" and dásos "dense growth, forest"; *som "with" is another example, contaminated with PIE *ḱom to Mycenaean ku-su /ksun/, Homeric and Old Attic ksýn, later sýn. Furthermore, sélas "light in the sky, as in the aurora" and selḗnē/selā́nā "moon" may be more examples of the same if it derived from PIE *swel- "to burn".
- Strengthening of word-initial y- to dy- > dz-.
- Filos argues for a "probable" early loss of final non-nasal stop consonants: compare Latin quid and Sanskrit cid with Greek ti; however, Mycenaean texts are inconclusive in offering evidence on this matter, as the Linear B script did not explicitly mark final consonants. However, it appears that these stops were preserved word finally for unstressed words, reflected in ek "out of".
- Final >.
- Syllabic resonants *m̥, *n̥, *l̥ and *r̥ that are not followed by a laryngeal are resolved to vowels or combinations of a vowel and consonantal resonant. This resulted in an epenthetic vowel of undetermined quality. This vowel then usually developed into a but also o in some cases. Thus:
- * *m̥, *n̥ > *ə, but > *əm, *ən before a sonorant. *ə appears as o in Mycenaean after a labial: pe-mo "seed" vs. usual spérma < *spérmn̥. Similarly, o often appears in Arcadian after a velar, e.g. déko "ten", hekotón "one hundred" vs. usual déka, hekatón < *déḱm̥, *sem-ḱm̥tóm.
- * *l̥, *r̥ > *lə, *rə, but *əl, *ər before sonorants and analogously. *ə appears as o in Mycenaean, Aeolic and Arcadocypriot. Example: PIE *str̥-tos > usual stratós, Aeolic strótos "army"; post-PIE *ḱr̥di-eh₂ "heart" > Attic kardíā, Homeric kradíē, Pamphylian korzdia.
Changes to the aspirates
- Devoicing of voiced aspirates *bʰ, *dʰ, *ɡʰ, *ɡʷʰ to *pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ, *kʷʰ. This change preceded and fed both stages of palatalization.
- Loss of aspiration before *s, e.g. heksō "I will have" < Post-PIE *seǵʰ-s-oh₂.
- Loss of aspiration before *y, detailed under "palatalization".
- It postdates the Greek-specific de-voicing of voiced aspirates.
- It postdates the change of >, which is then lost in the same environment: ékhō "I have" < *hekh- < PIE *seǵʰ-oh₂, but future heksō "I will have" < *heks- < Post-PIE *seǵʰ-s-oh₂.
- It postdates even the loss of aspiration before *y that accompanied second-stage palatalization, which postdates both of the previous changes.
- On the other hand, it predates the development of the first aorist passive marker -thē- since the aspirate in that marker has no effect on preceding aspirates.
Laryngeal changes
Greek shows distinct reflexes of the laryngeals in various positions:
- Most famously, between consonants, where original vocalic *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ are reflected as,, respectively. All other Indo-European languages reflect the same vowel from all three laryngeals :
| Proto-Indo-European | Greek | Vedic Sanskrit | Latin |
| *dʰh₁s "sacred, religious" | θέσφατος "decreed by God" | धिष्ण्य "devout" | fānum "temple" < *fasnom < *dʰh̥₁s-no- |
| *sth₂-to- "standing, being made to stand" | στατός | स्थित | status |
| *dh₃-ti- "gift" | δόσις | दिति | datiō |
- An initial laryngeal before a consonant leads to the same triple reflex, but most IE languages lost such laryngeals and a few reflect them initially before consonants. Greek vocalized them : Greek érebos "darkness" < PIE *h₁regʷos vs. Gothic riqiz- "darkness"; Greek áent- "wind" < *awent- < PIE *h₂wéh₁n̥t- vs. English wind, Latin ventus "wind", Breton gwent "wind".
- The sequence *CRHC becomes CRēC, CRāC, CRōC from H = *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ respectively. Sometimes, CeReC, CaRaC, CoRoC are found instead: Greek thánatos "death" vs. Doric Greek thnātós "mortal", both apparently reflecting *dʰn̥h₂-tos. It is sometimes suggested that the position of the accent was a factor in determining the outcome.
- The sequence *CiHC tends to become *CyēC, *CyāC, *CyōC from H = *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ respectively, with later palatalization. Sometimes, the outcome CīC is found, as in most other Indo-European languages, or the outcome CiaC in the case of *Cih₂C.
A laryngeal adjacent to a vowel develops along the same lines as other Indo-European languages:
- The sequence *CRHV passes through *CR̥HV, becoming CaRV.
- The sequence *CeHC becomes CēC/CāC/CōC.
- The sequence *CoHC becomes CōC.
- In the sequence *CHV, the laryngeal colours a following short, as expected, but it otherwise disappears entirely.
- In a *VHV sequence, the laryngeal again colours any adjacent short but otherwise vanishes early on. That change appears to be uniform across the Indo-European languages and was probably the first environment in which laryngeals were lost. If the first V was *i, *u or a vocalic resonant, a consonantal copy was apparently inserted in place of the laryngeal: *CiHV > *CiyV, *CuHV > *CuwV, *CR̥HV possibly > *CR̥RV, with R̥ always remaining as vocalic until the dissolution of vocalic resonants in the various daughter languages. Otherwise, a hiatus resulted, which was resolved in various ways in the daughter languages, typically by converting i, u and vocalic resonants, when it directly followed a vowel, back into a consonant and merging adjacent non-high vowels into a single long vowel.
Palatalization
First palatalization
The first palatalization replaced post-PIE sequences of dental stop + *y with alveolar affricates:| Before | After |
| *ty, *tʰy | *t͡s |
| *dy | *d͡z |
The affricate derived from the first palatalization of *ty and *tʰy merged with the outcome of the inherited clusters *ts, *ds and *tʰs, all becoming *t͡s.
Restoration
After the first palatalization changed *ty and *tʰy into *t͡s, the consonant *y was restored after original *t or *tʰ in morphologically transparent formations. The initial outcome of restoration may have been simply *ty and *tʰy, or alternatively, restoration may have yielded an affricate followed by a glide, *t͡sy, in the case of both original *t and original *tʰ. Either way, restored *ty would go on to merge via the second palatalization with the reflex of *ky, resulting in a distinct outcome from the *t͡s derived from the first palatalization. There may also have been restoration of *y after original *d in the same circumstances, but if so, it apparently merged with the *d͡z that resulted from the first palatalization before leaving any visible trace.However, restoration is not evident in Mycenaean Greek, where the reflex of original *ty is consistently written differently from the reflex of original *ky.
Second palatalization
The second palatalization took place following the resolution of syllabic laryngeals and sonorants, and prior to Grassmann's law. It affected all consonants followed by the palatal glide *y. The following table, based on American linguist Andrew Sihler, shows the outcomes of the second palatalization:| Before | After |
| *py, *pʰy | *pť |
| *ty, *tʰy | *ťť |
| *ky, *kʰy | *ťť |
| *kʷy, *kʷʰy | *ťť |
| *ďď | |
| *gy | *ďď |
| *gʷy | *ďď |
| *ly | *ľľ |
| *my, *ny | *ňň |
| *ry | *řř |
| *sy > *hy | *yy |
| *wy | *ɥɥ > *yy |
Sihler reconstructs the palatalized stops with a degree of assibilation and transcribes them as *č ''*ǰ.
The resulting palatal consonants and clusters of Proto-Greek were resolved in varying ways prior to the historical period.
The restoration of *y after original *t or *tʰ occurred only in morphologically transparent formations, by analogy with similar formations in which *y was preceded by other consonants. In formations that were morphologically opaque, the restoration did not take place and the *t͡s that resulted from the first palatalization of *ty and *tʰy remained. Hence, depending on the type of formation, the pre-Proto-Greek sequences *ty and *tʰy have different outcomes in the later languages. In particular, medial *ty becomes Attic -s- in opaque formations but -tt- in transparent formations.
The outcome of PG medial *ts in Homeric Greek is s'' after a long vowel, and vacillation between s and ss after a short vowel: tátēsi dat. pl. "rug" < tátēt-, possí/posí dat. pl. "foot" < pod-. This was useful for the composer of the Iliad and Odyssey, since possí with double s scans as long-short, while posí with single s scans as short-short. Thus the writer could use each form in different positions in a line.
Examples of initial *t͡s:
- PIE *tyegʷ- "avoid" > PG *t͡segʷ- > Greek sébomai "worship, be respectful"
- PIE *dʰyeh₂- "notice" > PG *t͡sā- > Dor. sā́ma, Att. sêma "sign"
- PreG *tótyos "as much" > PG *tót͡sos > Att. tósos, Hom. tósos/tóssos
- PIE *médʰyos "middle" > PG *mét͡sos > Att. mésos, Hom. mésos/méssos, Boeot. méttos, other dial. mésos
- PIE *h₁erh₁-t-yoh₂ "I row" > PG *eréťťō > Attic eréttō, usual non-Attic eréssō
- PIE *krét-yōs > PreG *krétyōn "better" > PG *kréťťōn > Attic kreíttōn, usual non-Attic kréssōn
- PreG *ki-āmerom > PG *ťāmeron > Attic tḗmeron, Ionic sḗmeron, Doric sā́meron
- PreG *kyā-wetes > Attic têtes, Ionic sêtes, Mycenaean za-we-te
Vowels
- Osthoff's law: Shortening of long vowels before a sonorant in the same syllable. E.g. *dyēws, "skyling, sky god" > Attic Greek Zeús.
- Cowgill's law: Raising of to between a resonant and a labial.
Cowgill's law
Note that when a labiovelar adjoins an affected by Cowgill's law, the new will cause the labiovelar to lose its labial component.
Prosody
Proto-Greek retained the Indo-European pitch accent, but developed a number of rules governing it:- * The law of limitation, also known as the trisyllabicity law, confined the freedom of the accents to the final three syllables. Alternatively, it can be analyzed as restraining the accent to be within the last four morae of the word.
- Wheeler's law, which causes oxytone words to become paroxytone when ending in a syllable sequence consisting of heavy-light-light.
- Loss of accent in finite verb forms. This probably began in verbs of independent clauses, a development also seen in Vedic Sanskrit, where they behave as clitics and bear no accent. The accentless forms later acquired a default recessive accent, placed as far left as the law of limitation allowed.
- * Certain imperative forms, such as idé "go!", regularly escaped this process and retained their accent.
- Many Proto-Greek suffixes bore lexical stress. Accentuation rules applied post-Proto-Greek such as Vendryes's law and Bartoli's law modified how and if this would surface.
Post-Proto-Greek changes
Sound changes that postdate Proto-Greek, but predate the attested dialects, including Mycenaean Greek, include:- Loss of s in consonant clusters, with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel or of the consonant : *ésmi "I am" > ḗmi, eîmi or émmi.
- Creation of secondary s from earlier affricates, *nty > *nts > ns. This was, in turn, followed by a change similar to the one described above, loss of the n with compensatory lengthening: *apónt-ya > apónsa > apoûsa, "absent", feminine.
- In southern dialects, -ti- > -si-.
- Loss of, except initially, e.g. Doric níkaas "having conquered" < *níkahas < *níkasas.
- Loss of, e.g. treîs "three" < *tréyes.
- Loss of in many dialects. Example: étos "year" from *wétos.
- Loss of labiovelars, which were converted into labials, sometimes into dentals. See below for details. It had not yet happened in Mycenaean, as is shown by the fact that a separate letter is used for such sounds.
- Contraction of adjacent vowels resulting from loss of and ; more in Attic Greek than elsewhere.
- Rise of a distinctive circumflex accent, resulting from contraction and certain other changes.
- Loss of before, with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel.
- Raising of ā to ē in Attic and Ionic dialects. In Ionic, the change was general, but in Attic it did not occur after /i/, /e/ or /r/.
- Vendryes's Law in Attic, where a penultimate circumflex accent was retracted onto a preceding light syllable if the final syllable was also light: light-circumflex-light > acute-heavy-light. For example, hetoîmos > Attic hétoimos.
- Analogical prosodic changes that converted a penultimate heavy acute accent to circumflex if both the final and the preceding syllable were light. This produced alternations within a paradigm, for example Attic oînos "wine" nominative singular, but genitive singular oínou.
Loss of and after a consonant was often accompanied by compensatory lengthening of a preceding vowel.
The development of labiovelars varies from dialect to dialect:
- Due to the PIE boukólos rule, labiovelars next to had already been converted to plain velars: boukólos "herdsman" < *gʷou-kʷólos vs. aipólos "goatherd" < *ai-kʷólos ; elakhús "small" < *h₁ln̥gʷʰ-ús vs. elaphrós "light" < *h₁ln̥gʷʰ-rós.
- In Attic and some other dialects, labiovelars before some front vowels became dentals. In Attic, kʷ and kʷʰ became t and th, respectively, before and, while gʷ became d before . Cf. theínō "I strike, kill" < *gʷʰen-yō vs. phónos "slaughter" < *gʷʰón-os; delphús "womb" < *gʷelbʰ- vs. bíos "life" < *gʷih₃wos, tís "who?" < *kʷis.
- All remaining labiovelars became labials, original kʷ kʷʰ gʷ becoming p ph b respectively. That happened to all labiovelars in some dialects like Lesbian; in other dialects, like Attic, it occurred to all labiovelars not converted into dentals. Many occurrences of dentals were later converted into labials by analogy with other forms: bélos "missile", bélemnon "spear, dart" by analogy with bállō "I throw ", bolḗ "a blow with a missile".
- Original PIE labiovelars had still remained as such even before consonants and so became labials also there. In many other centum languages such as Latin and most Germanic languages, the labiovelars lost their labialisation before consonants. This makes Greek of particular importance in reconstructing original labiovelars.
Morphology
Nouns
Proto-Greek preserved the gender and number distinctions of the nominal system of Proto-Indo-European. However, the evidence from Mycenaean Greek is inconclusive with regard to whether all eight cases continued to see complete usage, but this is more secure for the five standard cases of Classical Greek and probably also the instrumental in its usual plural suffix -pʰi and the variant /-ṓis/ for o-stem nouns. The ablative and locative are uncertain; at the time of Mycenaean texts they may have been undergoing a merger with the genitive and dative respectively. It is thought that the syncretism between cases proceeded faster for the plural, with dative and locative already merged as -si This merger may have been motivated by analogy to the locative singular -i-. Nevertheless, seven case distinctions are securely attested in Mycenaean in some domain, with the status of the ablative unclear.Significant developments attributed to the Proto-Greek period include:
- the replacement of PIE nominative plural *-ās and *-ōs by *-ai and *-oi.
- the genitive and dative dual suffix *-oin appears to be exclusive to Greek.
- the genitive singular Proto-Indo-European *-āsyo, if reconstructed as such, is reflected as -āo.
The peculiar oblique stem gunaik-, attested from the Thebes tablets, is probably Proto-Greek.
Examples of noun declension
| Case | Singular | Dual | Plural |
| Nom. | *pʰugā́ < PIE *bʰugéh₂ | *pʰugáe < PIE *bʰugéh₂h₁ | *pʰugái < PIE *bʰugéh₂es |
| Gen. | *pʰugā́s < *bʰugéh₂s | *pʰugáyyun < ? | *pʰugā́ōn < *bʰugéh₂oHom |
| Dat. | *pʰugā́i < *bʰugéh₂ey | *pʰugáyyun < ? | *pʰugáis < *bʰugéh₂mos |
| Acc. | *pʰugā́n < *bʰugā́m | *pʰugáe < *bʰugéh₂h₁ | *pʰugáns < *bʰugéh₂m̥s |
| Voc. | *pʰugā́ < *bʰugéh₂ | *pʰugáe < *bʰugéh₂h₁ | *pʰugái < *bʰugéh₂es |
| Loc. | *pʰugā́i? < *bʰugéh₂i | ? | *pʰugā́hi < *bʰugéh₂su |
| Instr. | *pʰugā́ < *bʰugéh₂h₁ | ? | *pʰugā́is < *bʰugéh₂mis |
| Case | Singular | Dual | Plural |
| Nom. | *dzugón < PIE *yugóm | *dzugṓ < PIE *yugóy | *dzugá < PIE *yugéh₂ |
| Gen. | *dzugóyyo < *yugósyo | *dzugóyyun < ? | *dzugṓn < *yugóHom |
| Dat. | *dzugṓi < *yugóey | *dzugóyyun < ? | *dzugóis < *yugómos |
| Acc. | *dzugón < *yugóm | *dzugṓ < *yugóy | *dzugá < *yugéh₂ |
| Voc. | *dzugón < *yugóm | *dzugṓ < *yugóy | *dzugá < *yugéh₂ |
| Loc. | *dzugói, -éi < *yugóy, *-éy | ? | *dzugóihi < *yugóysu |
| Instr. | *dzugṓ < *yugóh₁ | ? | *dzugṓis < *yugṓys |
.
Pronouns
The pronouns hoûtos, ekeînos and autós are created. The use of ho, hā, to as articles is post-Mycenaean.| Pronoun | Proto-Hellenic < PIE |
| I | *egṓ < PIE *éǵh₂; |
| You | *tú < *túh₂ |
| He | *autós < *h₂ewtos |
| She | *autā́ < *h₂ewtéh₂ |
| It | *autó < *h₂ewtó |
| We two | *nṓwi < ? |
| You two | *spʰṓwi < ? |
| They | *spʰо̄é < ? |
| We | *əhmés < *usmé |
| You | *uhmés |
| They | ? |
| They | ? |
| They | ? |
Verbs
Proto-Greek inherited the augment, a prefix e-, to verbal forms expressing past tense. That feature is shared only with Indo-Iranian and Phrygian, lending some support to a "Graeco-Aryan" or "Inner Proto-Indo-European" proto-dialect. However, the augment down to the time of Homer remained optional and was probably little more than a free sentence particle, meaning in Proto-Indo-European, which may easily have been lost by most other branches. Greek, Phrygian, and Indo-Iranian also concur in the absence of r-endings in the middle voice, in Greek apparently already lost in Proto-Greek.The first person middle verbal desinences -mai, -mān replace -ai, -a. The third singular phérei is an innovation by analogy, replacing the expected Doric *phéreti, Ionic *phéresi.
The future tense is created, including a future passive as well as an aorist passive. The future passive paradigm in Ancient Greek was marked by a suffix -θή-, which may relate to the Proto-Indo-European suffix dʰ-. The aorist passive in -ή- may have emerged from the Proto-Indo-European stative morpheme -eh₁, with aorist passives in -θή- developing as a later innovation.
The suffix -ka- is attached to some perfects and aorists.
Infinitives in -ehen, -enai and -men are created.
Examples of verb declension
| Pronoun | Verb |
| I | *ehmí < PIE *h₁ésmi |
| You | *ehí < *h₁ési |
| He, she, it | *estí < *h₁ésti |
| We two | *eswén? < *h₁swós |
| You two | *estón < *h₁stés |
| They | *estón < *h₁stés |
| We | *esmén < *h₁smós |
| You | *esté < *h₁sté |
| They | *ehénti < *h₁sénti |
Examples of adjectives
| Case | PIE | PE |
| Nom. | *néwoes, néweh₂es, néweh₂ | *néwoi, néwai, néwa |
| Gen. | *néwoHom, néweh₂oHom, néwoHom | *néwōn, néwāōn, néwōn |
| Dat. | *néwomos, néweh₂mos, néwomos | *néwois, néwais, néwois |
| Acc. | *néwoms, néweh₂m̥s, néweh₂ | *néwons, néwans, néwa |
| Voc. | *néwoes, néweh₂es, néweh₂ | *néwoi, néwai, néwa |
| Loc. | *néwoysu, néweh₂su, néwoysu | *néwoihi, néwāhi, néwoihi |
| Instr. | *néwōys, néweh₂mis, néwōys | *néwois, néwais, néwois |
Numerals
Proto-Greek numerals were derived directly from Indo-European.- "one": héns, hmía ; / εἷς, μία, heîs
- "two": dúwō
- "three": tréyes
- "four": nominative kʷétwores, genitive kʷeturṓn
- "five": pénkʷe
- "six": hwéks
- "seven": heptə́
- "eight": oktṓ
- "nine": ennéwə
- "ten": dékə
- "hundred": hekətón
- "thousand": kʰéhliyoi