Carling, Cathcart 2021 Evolution of Indo-European Grammar

Reconstructing the evolution of Indo-European grammar
Gerd Carling, Chundra Cathcart
Language, Volume 97, Number 3, September 2021, pp. 561-598 (Article)
Published by Linguistic Society of America

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2021.0047
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/806348
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RECONSTRUCTING THE EVOLUTION OF INDO-EUROPEAN GRAMMAR
GERD CARLING CHUNDRA CATHCART

Lund University University of Zurich
This study uses phylogenetic methods adopted from computational biology in order to recon-
struct features of Proto-Indo-European morphosyntax. We estimate the probability of the presence
of typological features in Proto-Indo-European on the assumption that these features change ac-
cording to a stochastic process governed by evolutionary transition rates between them. We com-
pare these probabilities to previous reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European morphosyntax, which
use either the comparative-historical method or implicational typology. We find that our recon-
struction yields strong support for a canonical model (synthetic, nominative-accusative, head-
final) of the protolanguage and low support for any alternative model. Observing the evolutionary
dynamics of features in our data set, we conclude that morphological features have slower rates of
change, whereas syntactic traits change faster. Additionally, more frequent, unmarked traits in
grammatical hierarchies have slower change rates when compared to less frequent, marked ones,
which indicates that universal patterns of economy and frequency impact language change within
the family.*
Keywords: Indo-European linguistics, historical linguistics, phylogenetic linguistics, typology,
syntactic reconstruction
1. Introduction.
1.1. A century of indo-european syntactic reconstruction. More than a cen-
tury has passed since the pioneering work on syntactic reconstruction by the Neogram-
marians (Brugmann & Delbrück 1893, 1897, 1900, Wackernagel 1920), dealing with core
issues in Indo-European grammar such as case, word order, alignment, agreement, person
agreement, position of the verb, and the behavior of clitics. The system reconstructed for
Indo-European in these works was fundamentally based on a comparative-historical re-
construction of morphological and syntactic features of ancient Indo-European lan-
guages, with a strong focus on a systematic comparison of Old Indo-Aryan, in particular
Vedic Sanskrit, with Latin and Greek. This model—which we label ‘canonical’—used
Sanskrit as a template for syntactic reconstruction. In Hirt’s words: ‘Delbrück’s point of
departure is Sanskrit. If something is not present in Sanskrit, it does not belong to Indo-
European’ (Hirt 1934:5, our translation). A new era of syntactic reconstruction, which is
reflected in Hirt’s skeptical view, began with the decipherment of Hittite in 1915 and the
discovery of the Anatolian branch of Indo-European. Due to the old age of Anatolian
sources, some linguists considered the complex synthetic structure of Old Indo-Aryan and
Greek a secondary development, holding the view that Anatolian reflects a more archaic
system. Accordingly, the discovery of Anatolian gave rise to alternative theories of Proto-
Indo-European grammar, involving ergative (Uhlenbeck 1901, Vaillant 1936) or isolating
(Hirt 1934) structure, and resulted in the concept of Indo-Hittite (Sturtevant 1962). Any
grammatical reconstruction postdating Indo-Hittite has to consider the role of Anatolian
* Equal author contribution. The work was supported by the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation,
grants MAW 2012.0095 and MAW 2017.0050, both awarded to Gerd Carling. We thank audiences at the 50th
annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, the 24th International Conference on Historical Lin-
guistics, and the linguistics seminars at Lund, Zurich, and Göttingen Universities for valuable remarks, along
with three anonymous referees, Simon Greenhill, and the Language editors. We also thank Filip Larsson,
Niklas Erben Johansson, Erich Round, Sandra Cronhamn, and Arthur Holmer for helpful comments on data,
study design, and results, and Johan Frid for preparing trial versions of some of the graphs. Special thanks are
due to Gerhard Jäger for help on various technical matters as well as for providing the proof included in the
online supplementary material.
561
Printed with the permission of Gerd Carling & Chundra Cathcart. © 2021.
562 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 97, NUMBER 3 (2021)
systems in relation to Proto-Indo-European. Currently, ‘Greco-Aryan’ and ‘Anatolian’

models serve as complementary to each other in Indo-European grammar, for example, re-
garding the reconstruction of the verbal system (Clackson 2007:114–42).
Another important approach to syntactic reconstruction emerged during the 1970s,
stemming from research on typological implicational universals (Greenberg 1963,
1978), which was adapted to a model for reconstructing syntax (Lehmann 1974). Even
though this model met with skepticism from some comparative-historical scholars
(Winter 1984), it had an important continuation in the typological diachronic approach
of Nichols (1992, 1995, 1998). This approach has grown in importance in the era of
computational typology (Bickel & Nichols 2007, Wichmann 2014), giving birth to sev-
eral alternative models for explaining typological change (Baker 2011, Croft et al.
2011, Dryer 2011, Dunn et al. 2011, Levy & Daumé 2011, Longobardi & Roberts 2011,
Plank 2011, Cathcart et al. 2018).
Since the pioneering work of Greenberg (1963), most syntactic reconstruction has
been influenced by implicational typology. With the merging of typology and compara-
tive-historical syntax, several important contributions to syntactic reconstruction have
been published in recent decades, targeting the syntax of Indo-European as well as that
of other families (Harris & Campbell 1995). This area of research goes under the name
‘diachronic typology’ (Viti 2015). An important approach continues the active-stative
reconstruction model for Proto-Indo-European (Schmidt 1979, Gamkrelidze & Ivanov
1984, Bauer 2000). Other targeted domains have been the reconstruction of an active-
stative verbal paradigm (Jasanoff 1978), the collective/count plural in the case system
(Melchert 2000), dative subject constructions (Barðdal & Eythórsson 2009), and vari-
ous aspects of modality, tense, voice, aspect, particles, and gender (Meier-Brügger et al.
2010:374–412). Along with these works, there are a number of excellent overviews on
principles of syntactic reconstruction (Roberts 2007, Ferraresi & Goldbach 2008, Barð-
dal 2014) and monographs and handbooks compiling recent progress in various areas of
syntactic reconstruction (Josephson & Söhrman 2008, Kulikov & Lavidas 2015, Viti
2015, Ledgeway & Roberts 2017). In §§3–5, where we evaluate the results of our re-
construction, we discuss this literature in further detail.
1.2. Outline of the current study. Our study analyzes comparative concepts of
Indo-European morphosyntax, including the linguistic categories of alignment, ver-
bal morphology, nominal morphology, tense typology, and word order. We
analyze data from 125 languages, including ancient, medieval, and modern languages
from the Indo-European family (Table 1, Figure 1). Our data set is extracted from the
typological subsection of the Diachronic Atlas of Comparative Linguistics (DiACL;
Carling et al. 2018, Carling 2019), a collection of linguistic data from languages of
Eurasia and other regions. The original data set of 108 binary features has been recoded
to yield sixty-five categorical (i.e. nonbinary) features.
family type timeframe number

Indo-European Archaic 2000 – 500 bce 3
Ancient 500 bce – 500 ce 5
Medieval 500 – 1500 29
Modern 1500 – 2000 79
Romani 1500 – 2000 9
total 125
Table 1. Number and type of languages in the data set of the current study (see §S1).
Reconstructing the evolution of Indo-European grammar 563
Figure 1. Map of language locations in the data set, distinguished by time period.
We selected a well-known and well-studied family with a long history of scholarship

as the basis for our investigation. The aim of the study is twofold: first, we wish to assess
the extent to which phylogenetic comparative methods, which can be used to estimate the
probability of morphosyntactic features in Proto-Indo-European, agree with the results
of previous models of syntactic reconstruction for the Indo-European family. Second, we
aim to make inferences about the evolutionary dynamics and variability of different mor-
phosyntactic features during the course of the history of the Indo-European languages. In
§2, we describe the model, method, and data forming the basis for the current study. We
then evaluate the results of the reconstruction for Proto-Indo-European and envisage fur-
ther research that could emerge from the data and the model (§3). We give the results of
a statistical study in §3.5, where we compare our reconstructed results to three different
models of comparative-historical syntax. In §4, we discuss the evolutionary dynamics
and variability of the transition of traits. Finally, we discuss our results, both in the light
of previous reconstructions of Indo-European grammar and from the perspective of
general theories of grammar evolution (§5). Technical descriptions of the methods used
in this article can be found in Appendices A–F of the online supplementary material,
available at http://muse.jhu.edu/resolve/127; sections S1–S9 of the online supplemen-
tary material contain full details of the data employed and results. The raw data set is
available open access via the DiACL database (https://diacl.ht.lu.se/). All code, meta-
data, and data are available at the following links: https://github.com/chundrac/rec-evo
-IE-gram, https://zenodo.org/record/4275010.
2. Theory, model, data, coding, method, and analysis.
2.1. Comparative-historical, typological, and phylogenetic models of re-
construction. The model of morphosyntactic reconstruction introduced by scholars
of Indo-European in the nineteenth century is based primarily on the comparative-
historical method, systematizing forms and meanings of morphemes in such a way that
sets of paradigms, rules, and syntactic patterns can be reconstructed to a protolanguage.
Even though morphemes can be reconstructed as a result of the comparative-historical
method, the reconstruction of their syntactic function is nontrivial, due to the uncer-
tainty of regularity and the problem of establishing directionality in syntactic change
(Barðdal 2014). Nevertheless, this method of reconstruction is utilized by a number of
scholars, even though there is agreement that it should not be applied to properties that
are unconstrained by morphology, such as word order (Harris & Campbell 1995, Harris
2008). Proponents of the comparative-historical reconstruction model argue that if a
specific pattern, aided by morphological reconstruction, has survived in a majority of
languages, then there is reason to reconstruct it to the protolanguage (Campbell & Har-
ris 2002:615). Critics of this model point to the directionality problem: if several daugh-
ter languages carry the same pattern, we may reconstruct the pattern to an ancestral
state of those languages, but in case of a disagreement we do not know enough about
the directionality of syntactic change to reconstruct one variant over another (Roberts
2007, Walkden 2013).
The model of reconstruction used by typologists from the 1960s onward is based upon
a different principle: if language-internal implicational dependencies between typologi-
cal features, so-called universals, can be identified, then these observations can be used
as an argument for reconstructing typological properties to a protolanguage. A major ob-
stacle to the adaptation of this model is how to deal with language-internal conflicts
between features with respect to assumed dependencies, both in attested and in recon-
structed languages. An example is the controversy over Indo-European word order,
where reconstruction based on ancient languages does not yield a uniform result with re-
spect to the protolanguage (Lehmann 1974, Friedrich 1975, Watkins 1976, Winter 1984).
In phylogenetic comparative methods, the issue of reconstruction is formulated in
probabilistic terms, using phylogenetic computational algorithms originally adapted
from biology (Calude & Verkerk 2016, Silva & Tehrani 2016, Jäger 2019). These mod-
els assume a specific stochastic process underlying character evolution, which usu-
ally involves transition rates that characterize change between values of a linguistic
variable (e.g. different main clause word orders) over a phylogeny. These rates are esti-
mated on the basis of a phylogenetic representation, often a tree sample inferred from
basic vocabulary patterns or a comparable linguistic feature, and the distribution of the
feature among the daughter languages. These rates can be used to reconstruct the prob-
ability of a given value at internal nodes of the tree, including the root (i.e. the node an-
cestral to all others in the tree), as well as infer locations on branches of the tree where
change is likely to have taken place (Maurits & Griffiths 2014, Dunn et al. 2017, Wid-
mer et al. 2017, Cathcart et al. 2018, Blasi et al. 2019, Cathcart et al. 2020).
Figure 2 provides a schematic toy diagram of an ancestral-state reconstruction prob-
lem in a phylogenetic comparative framework. Given a phylogeny with observed data
at the tips of the tree, the procedure has two objectives: (i) to infer transition rates be-
tween feature values, and (ii) to estimate values for unobserved internal nodes that are
most likely to have preceded the values displayed by (or inferred for) their descendants.
In a parsimony framework (a model that minimizes the total number of character-state
changes), this often involves restricting the number of parallel changes over the phy-
logeny. In a likelihood-based framework, including its Bayesian extensions, this also
involves inferring evolutionary rates that express the probability of changes between
different states over various spans of time represented by the branch lengths of the phy-
logeny. In general, evolutionary rates are inferred while treating internal states as a nui-
sance factor, which are to be marginalized out for the sake of efficiency. The rates that
are inferred, or their posterior distributions under the Bayesian approach, can then be
used to estimate the probabilities of different states at different nodes in the tree, start-
ing at the tips and moving toward the root (Felsenstein 2004, Yang 2014).
a b b
Figure 2. Visualization of ancestral-state reconstruction in a phylogenetic comparative model. The
probability that a trait is present at a given node is estimated based on the evolutionary rates
inferred for the trait, as well as the probability that the trait is present in descendant nodes.
2.2. Data: original data set and recoding for the current study. We use a data
set of Indo-European languages extracted from the DiACL Typology/Eurasia data set
(Carling et al. 2018). The data involve categories of grammar that have been under dis-
cussion in both diachronic syntax and general typology for a long time, and are coded ac-
cording to a hierarchical model designed to represent morphosyntactic features with an
adequate level of granularity. Like other similar databases, such as AUTOTYP (Bickel &
Nichols 2002) or the The world atlas of language structures online (WALS; Dryer &
Haspelmath 2013), the data set consists of comparative concepts (Haspelmath 2010),
definitions of linguistic features of grammar designed for crosslinguistic comparison.
The original binary hierarchical model of DiACL, related to multivariate approaches
(Bickel & Nichols 2007), organizes comparative concepts according to levels of increas-
ing detail. We recoded the binary data so that the data set consists of categorical vari-
ables1 (e.g. main clause word order) taking multiple values (e.g. SVO, SOV, VSO,
V2), organized within larger morphosyntactic categories (comprising alignment,
word order, nominal morphology, verbal morphology, and tense). This results
in sixty-five categorical variables, sixty-four of which are ‘informative’ in that they show
variation within Indo-European and are thus suitable for phylogenetic analysis (Figure
3). Figure 3a illustrates the hierarchical principle of organizing linguistic properties into
grids, features, variants, and values, which is used in the database DiACL. Figure 3b
demonstrates how this hierarchy is mapped into categorical variables, which contain
blocks of value combinations, defined as traits.
There are several advantages of using a hierarchical model for typological data, as in
the original data set of our DiACL study (Carling et al. 2018) or AUTOTYP (Bickel &
Nichols 2002). The most important advantage is the possibility of increasing detail,
which enables local adaptations as well as the possibility of testing grammatical rela-
tions. Another advantage is the ability to recode the binarized strings of 1 and 0 into
new combinations that match a specific research question. A further advantage is the
possibility of contrasting features across grammatical categories (see the next section).
1 There are a number of terms for data of this type; in biology, it is common to refer to such data as a mul-
tistate character (e.g. eye color), which can be realized as one of several traits (e.g. green eyes). We use the
terms ‘variable’ and ‘value’ for the purpose of terminological and conceptual comparability with other work
in quantitative linguistics (rather than biology), at times using the terms feature and trait interchangeably
with ‘value’.
Figure 3. Organization of typological data before (a) and after (b) recoding, illustrated for the categorical
feature ‘Alignment, Noun: Present progressive’ (§S3a).
The procedure for transforming the hierarchically organized original data into our
scheme of recoded categorical variables is shown in Fig. 3, exemplified using align-
ment. The complete recoded data is given in §S3a in the online supplement. The various
coding and recoding strategies are described in their respective sections below, where
we discuss and evaluate results (§3).
2.3. Additional data sets.
Coding of reconstruction models. Our study compares a probabilistic model of
reconstruction with insights from comparative-historical approaches to syntactic
change. For this purpose, we have selected a number of well-known approaches to the
reconstruction of Indo-European syntax against which to compare our results. There is
a rich literature on the reconstruction of Indo-European syntax, the full treatment of
which is outside of this article’s scope. For the sake of simplicity, we have limited our
comparisons to representative publications that address all grammatical categories pres-
ent in our data. We found three descriptions that were complete enough to enable us to
treat the models proposed according to a coding scheme against which we could easily
compare our results. These we label canonical (Brugmann & Delbrück 1893, 1897,
1900), isolating (Hirt 1934, 1937), and active-stative (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov
1984, 1995). It is important to remember that the alternative theories (isolating and ac-
tive-stative) reconstruct a stratified Proto-Indo-European language. At the root, they re-
construct a joint Anatolian and non-Anatolian stage (Indo-Anatolian), which later
transforms into a stage that represents the predecessor of the non-Anatolian languages.
Substantial portions of the discussion within alternative theories deal with the process
of system change from Indo-Anatolian to non-Anatolian branches (Pooth et al. 2018).
In order to ensure the comparability of our results with previous theories of grammar re-
construction, we use an Indo-Anatolian reference phylogeny, which represents the con-
sensus view on branching and time depth of the Indo-European family. We take the root
of our phylogeny, which serves as the joint ancestral stage of the Anatolian and non-
Anatolian subbranches of the family, to represent the unattested proto-indo-euro-
pean language (see further §§3–5 and §S9).
The coding of feature variants of models of the raw DiACL data, including source
references, is found in §S2b; recoding of feature variants into our categorical features is
found in §S3a.
Coding of grammatical hierarchies in the data. Additionally, we implement a
coding of grammatical hierarchies between features in our data (§S7). The issue of
grammatical hierarchies is of key importance to the implicational typology model of
Greenberg (1966), Comrie (1981), and Croft (1990, 2003) and is implicitly connected
to the frequency of grammatical categories as well as markedness theory (Haspelmath
2006). During the course of our analyses, we found that our model displayed asymmet-
ric results for different features, not just between basic categories (e.g. word order,
nominal morphology, verbal morphology, alignment, tense) but also within categories,
between features differing with respect to categories such as tense (present, past) and
word class (noun, pronoun) (§S2, §S3). For this reason, we chose to adopt an additional
model of coding in which we identify pairs of features that belong to the same gram-
matical category but vary with respect to other grammatical categories, which can be
defined as in a grammatical hierarchical relation to each other. For the sake of simplic-
ity and comparability, we reduce our grammatical hierarchies to pairs of features, which
have been observed in previous literature (where they are often referred to as ‘scales’).
There is a rich literature on grammatical as well as marking hierarchies in grammar,
both from the perspective of individual languages and crosslinguistically (Comrie
1981, Croft 2003, Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al. 2015, Haspelmath 2015, Mal’čukov
2015). Generally, grammatical hierarchies are based on three different criteria (Croft
1990:92, 2003:156–57).
• Structural criteria, that is, marking in grammars
• Behavioral criteria, that is, the inflectional and distributional patterns in languages
• Frequency, that is, the occurrence in text, both in individual languages and
crosslinguistically
Only a handful of the grammatical hierarchies mentioned in the literature recur in our
data, and there is also disagreement about the hierarchical organization of some of the
categories in our data. One such example is the relation between future and present.
Whereas the original hierarchy of Greenberg (1966, 2005) and Croft (1990:92–93) puts
these traits in the order present < future, other scholars (Mal’čukov 2015, Witzlack-
Makarevich & Seržant 2018) place these properties in the order future < present <
past on the basis of existing marking patterns in some languages. The issue is complex:
we are aware that many languages reverse general hierarchies in their grammatical sys-
tems (Bickel 2008; see also Tiersma 1982).
For this purpose, we use general grammatical hierarchies (Aissen 2003, Haspelmath
2015) as our point of reference, establishing pairwise hierarchical relations which we
then implement for selected features in our data set (Table 2). The reason we use pairwise
relations and not hierarchical scales (e.g. singular < plural < dual) is that we intend
to compare grammatical hierarchies and the transition rates inferred by our model in a
systematic fashion. Since our data contain features that are defined according to several
categories, features may recur in hierarchical pairs. As an example, the features pro-
noun, present progressive: nominative-accusative and noun, present progres-
sive: nominative-accusative are in a hierarchical relationship (pronoun < noun),
whereas the features pronoun, present progressive: nominative-accusative and
pronoun, simple past: nominative-accusative are also in a hierarchical relationship
(present < past). A number of features in our data are not involved in any grammatical
hierarchy relation, for various reasons. One reason is that they lack a hierarchical gram-
matical relationship to any other feature in the data. We also chose to consistently mark
negative values in a fashion similar to their positive counterparts; for example, no
synthetic present progressive and no synthetic future are in a hierarchical re-
lation present < future, just as synthetic present progressive and synthetic
future are.
category hierarchy of features

(unmarked/more frequent < marked/less frequent)
NP type pronoun < noun
tense present < future
tense present < past
grammatical relation agent < object
grammatical relation agent/object < oblique
gender masculine/feminine < neuter
Table 2. Pairwise coded marking hierarchies in our data (see §S6 for a complete list of coded relations),
based on Greenberg 1966, 2005, Croft 1990, 2003.
We chose a priori not to code any hierarchies for word order. Even though it is evi-
dent that head-final traits (OV, relative-noun, possessor-possessed, etc.) have lower
rates of change (§S5), we prefer not to enter into a discussion about possible marking
hierarchies or general frequencies in word order (Croft 1990:84–91).
2.4. Methodology: reconstruction with phylogenetic comparative meth-
ods. The methodology on which this article relies assumes that linguistic variables
evolve under a continuous-time markov process (for an introduction see Liggett
2010), a stochastic model which assumes that there exist rates of change between val-
ues of categorical variables which characterize their evolution over time. Accordingly,
our model infers rates of change between values of the categorical variables in our data
set, using a tree sample representing genetic relationships between languages of the
Indo-European family. Once these transition rates have been inferred, they can be used
to estimate the probability of a value for a given variable at phylogenetic nodes where
data are unobserved; these internal nodes correspond to reconstructible protolan-
guages, with the root of the tree corresponding to Proto-Indo-European.
Concrete details regarding the generation of the tree sample and the inference proce-
dure can be found in the online supplementary material. Our tree sample (§S9) is gener-
ated as follows: we assume a fixed topology that agrees with received philological
wisdom, and sample branch lengths from chronologically realistic intervals, yielding a
tree with a root age uniformly distributed between 7000 and 6000 years bp. The model
is Bayesian; we infer posterior distributions for transition rates, using Felsenstein’s
pruning algorithm (Felsenstein 1981, 2004) to compute the likelihood of these pa-
rameters for trees in the tree sample. We estimate the probability of a value for a given
variable at the root of the phylogeny (i.e. for Proto-Indo-European) by randomly draw-
ing evolutionary rates from their respective posterior samples, iteratively sampling a
value at the root (Nielsen 2002, Huelsenbeck et al. 2003, Bollback 2006), and normal-
izing the counts for each sampled state to yield probabilities between 0 and 1.2 We eval-
uate these results in §3.
2 Phylogenetic rate inference and reconstruction require practitioners to define the prior probability of dif-
ferent values of a variable at the root of the phylogeny. A common practice in biology is to use the stationary
probability of the continuous-time Markov process, which gives the probability of the system taking a partic-
ular value as time approaches infinity. Felsenstein (2004:252) states that this prior is appropriate, but only if we
In most cases, there is a clear result in which our procedure reconstructs a feature
with relative certainty, inferring a high probability for a specific value of a variable and
a low probability for the remaining values. This behavior can be seen in a histogram of
all reconstruction probabilities (Figure 4); the distribution of these probabilities is
U-shaped, in that low (0.0–0.25) and high (0.75–1.0) probability ranges are more fre-
quent than the intermediate ones (0.25–0.75). While a small number of features are re-
constructed with high uncertainty, meaning that we cannot say anything concrete about
the value most likely to be present in Proto-Indo-European, the evolutionary dynamics
of such features are still of interest, since these features may emerge in later phases of
Indo-European history. Furthermore, the behavior of such variables helps us diagnose
the overall behavior of our model, with an eye to why it reconstructs certain patterns
with high certainty. We discuss our model’s results in detail below.
40
30
ount
20
10
0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

Result
Figure 4. Histogram of reconstruction probabilities at the protolanguage state (see §S4).

The lowest (0.0–0.25) and highest (0.75–1.0) probability ranges are
more frequent than the intermediate ones (0.25–0.75).
3. Results: reconstruction. Using the methodology outlined in the previous sec-

tion, we reconstructed probability distributions across values for each variable in our
data set at the root of the phylogeny. These distributions represent probabilities that par-
assume that the model of evolution has been operating for a very long time. An alternative approach is to assume
the equal prior probability of each value at the root, or to treat the root prior as an unknown parameter to be in-
ferred. The issue of how to treat the root prior is not widely discussed in phylogenetic linguistics (many studies
do not mention the issue at all), with some exceptions (Maurits & Griffiths 2014). In our main analyses, we fol-
low other work (Cathcart et al. 2018, Blasi et al. 2019, Cathcart et al. 2020) in employing the stationary prob-
ability as the root prior. At the same time, because use of the stationary probability may bias our reconstructions,
we run our models under two additional inference regimes, one using a uniform (i.e. equiprobable) root prior,
and one where the root prior is treated as a parameter to be inferred. We find that results critical to the evaluation
of our model against different traditional models are not affected by this choice (a full analysis of this issue is
found in the online supplementary material, Appendix E).
ticular features were present in Proto-Indo-European, under our model. A complete list-
ing of all results, along with figures providing visualizations of the evolutionary history
of all variables in our data set, is found in the supplementary material (§S4, §S8). In the
following sections, we provide a detailed assessment of our results, organized themati-
cally according to different domains of morphosyntax that have been discussed at
length in the traditional literature on syntactic reconstruction in Indo-European, namely
alignment, definiteness, gender, case, verbal morphology, verbal typology, and word
order. Finally, we provide a quantitative comparison of our results against received wis-
dom in the form of models of reconstruction proposed by the different schools or camps
of traditional Indo-European syntactic reconstruction described above, which we term
the canonical, active-stative, and isolating models.
3.1. Alignment. For variables pertaining to alignment (§S4, A1–30), our results
support the reconstruction of nominative-accusative alignment in multiple systems
(Table 3). Nominative-accusative alignment is found with nouns as first argument in the
present progressive and in the simple past, with pronouns as first argument in the pres-
ent progressive and in the simple past, and with verbal marking in the present progres-
sive and in the simple past. At the same time, while nominative-accusative alignment is
reconstructed with a higher probability than other alignment types are across these sys-
tems, the certainty with which it is reconstructed varies. We note that nominative-ac-
cusative is more likely in the present progressive than in the simple past, for both nouns
and pronouns, and more likely with pronouns as first argument than with nouns. The
second most frequent type of alignment is no marking, followed by ergative (both with
low probabilities).
probability 1.0–0.9 0.9–0.8 0.8–0.7 0.7–0.6 0.6–0.5 0.5–0.4 0.4–0.3 0.3–0.2 0.2–0.1 0.1–0.0
range
nouns
Present nom- no tripartite
progressive acc
Simple past nom- no ergative tripartite
acc
pronouns
Present nom- no
progressive acc
Simple past nom- ergative,
acc no,
tripartite
Table 3. Overview of probability ranges at the protolanguage state for alignment.
This discrepancy is striking. Considering language-internal distributions of the

clause and argument types involved, it is clear that nominative-accusative features are
reconstructed with higher certainty for grammatical categories of higher crosslinguistic
frequency (present, pronoun) as opposed to the more infrequent categories (past, noun).
This result is of relevance to discussions of grammatical hierarchies (Croft 2003,
Haspelmath 2006) (see §4). We also notice that the ergative appears (at a low probabil-
ity) only in the simple past. This result is reminiscent of results in the domain of verbal
morphology, in which the simple past shows different patterns of change from the pres-
ent progressive.
The reconstruction of patterns of alignment has a long history of discussion in com-

parative-historical syntax. In the canonical model of Delbrück (Brugmann & Delbrück
1893, 1897, 1900), the nominative codes the first argument (S/A), independent of the
transitivity of the predicate, and the accusative codes the second argument (O) (Meier-
Brügger et al. 2010:401–4). However, due to the reconstruction of a case marking of -s
for agent and -m for patient, ergative alignment was proposed for Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean at an early date (Uhlenbeck 1901). This theory was later continued by Vaillant
(1936) and Soviet scholars of the 1970s (Klimov 1974, Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1984),
who reconstructed an active-stative system, based on the *-os/*-om distinctions in
nominative/accusative and a corresponding *-os/*-om distinction between genitives of
active and inactive noun classes (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1995:233–76). Several schol-
ars have continued the active-stative theory (Schmidt 1979, Bauer 2000), reconstruct-
ing the relative chronology of the Indo-European paradigm, as well as reconstructing a
continuation of change from an active-stative protolanguage and into subbranches, for
example, Italic (Bauer 2000). The source of the active-stative theories is a fundamental
marking distinction between animate and inanimate (active-stative), reconstructed from
the case marking of nouns and pronouns in Proto-Indo-European (Table 4). The distinc-
tion is also reflected in suppletion in the pronominal paradigm (Table 5). The subject
case has an unmarked zero-ending, against which the object is marked (Martinet
1962:44–46, Bauer 2000).
masculine/feminine neuter
nominative -s/-∅ -∅/-m
accusative -m -∅/-m
Table 4. Markedness in the Proto-Indo-European case paradigm in the active-stative theory
(Szemerényi 1989:169, Bauer 2000:45).
1st person 3rd person m/f 3rd person n

nominative *ego *so/*sa *tod
accusative *me *to *tod
Table 5. Suppletion in the Proto-Indo-European pronominal paradigm
(Szemerényi 1989:169, Bauer 2000:45).
Under the active-stative theory, the active alignment is also marked in the two series
of verbal endings, the *-mi (active) and *-h2e (inactive) conjugation, supported by the
-mi and -h̬ i paradigm in Anatolian (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1995:254–76). But as
pointed out by other scholars, the formal contrast in Hittite between -mi and -h̬ i conju-
gation is not reflected in any systematic difference in meaning (Jasanoff 2003:1–40),
which is a prerequisite for the active-stative theory. At the same time, active-stative in-
terpretations remain important in many theories of explanation of the Indo-European
sets of endings (Jasanoff 1978).
The active-stative theory has no support under our reconstruction, pointing in the di-
rection of nominative-accusative prevalence in Proto-Indo-European, both in the case
marking on nouns and pronouns and in verbal conjugation, as well as in the present/past
distinction (Table 3). The active-stative and ergative theories are not generally sup-
ported by all Indo-European scholars (Meier-Brügger et al. 2010:412). However, they
remain of great interest to us, since they connect to the reconstruction of the Indo-Euro-
pean gender and case systems, which yields interesting results on the basis of our data,
consistent with the reconstruction of nominative-accusative alignment.
3.2. Nominal morphology.

Case marking in the NP. Our results from the domain of nominal morphology
provide information about the position of case marking within the noun phrase in Proto-
Indo-European. In the data set, we code whether languages mark case on adjectives, ar-
ticles, the first element of the NP, and the head noun (§S4, NM1–8). Our reconstruction
provides support for the presence of case marking on head nouns (0.745) and adjectives
(0.559), but not on the article, in line with the probable absence of definite articles in
Proto-Indo-European. Our system does not provide support for the presence of a rule that
case must be marked on the last member of an NP (0.076). Case marking on the noun is
not especially controversial: as long as we reconstruct a synthetic case system of a canon-
ical type (see below, Case), we also expect case marking to appear on the nominal head
in a noun phrase. However, the relatively lower degree of probability of case marking on
the adjective (0.559) is not completely in line with the canonical model, which also re-
constructs full case marking, with respect to case and gender on adjectives (note the
higher gender agreement value below; Brugmann & Delbrück 1893:402ff.).
Definiteness. On the whole, features pertaining to definiteness are reconstructed
with low probabilities, indicating that the presence of definiteness in Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean is unlikely. This is the case for definiteness marked on the adjective, definiteness
on the first element of the NP, definiteness on the last element of the NP, a definite arti-
cle, and a definiteness suffix (§S4, NM9–17). This result is uncontroversial with respect
to all models, since it is evident from the historical record that most Indo-European
branches developed definiteness marking independently, by means of grammaticaliza-
tion (Bauer 2007).
Gender. Features targeting noun class and nominal gender (§S4, NM18–27) display
particularly interesting results. The probabilities of the presence of more than five noun
classes (genders) and an animate gender are close to zero. However, the probability of
having a masculine/feminine distinction is higher (0.684) than the probability of not
having a masculine/feminine distinction (0.316). The probability of a special neuter
gender is high (0.855). Furthermore, the probability for a predicative adjective to agree
with its nominal head in gender is reasonably high (0.673; see Table 6).
probability 1.0–0.9 0.9–0.8 0.8–0.7 0.7–0.6 0.6–0.5 0.5–0.4 0.4–0.3 0.3–0.2 0.2–0.1 0.1–0.0
range
Gender on + −
predicative
adjective
Masculine/ + −
feminine
distinction
Neuter + −
Table 6. Overview of probability ranges at the protolanguage state for gender.
These results for gender are noteworthy and somewhat controversial. At an early date,
Delbrück (Brugmann & Delbrück 1893:132–33) was hesitant in reconstructing a Proto-
Indo-European three-gender system, equivalent to the system found in archaic Indo-Eu-
ropean languages such as Sanskrit or Classical Greek. Considering the formal
distribution of endings and the gender syncretism found in later Indo-European branches,
he proposes that the three-gender system of Indo-European emerged from a two-gender
system, based on an animacy/inanimacy distinction. Hirt (1934:28) reconstructs an Indo-
European protolanguage with no gender marking at all on nouns. In later literature, there
is consensus around an original two-gender model of Proto-Indo-European, where the
feminine is secondary (Szemerényi 1989:164–65, Tichy 1993, Gamkrelidze & Ivanov
1995:242–44, Matasović 2004, Luraghi 2011). The issue of gender/noun class is critical
to arguments for reconstructing active-stative or ergative systems for Indo-European,
and the animacy vs. inanimacy distinction is interpreted as an active vs. inactive, subject
vs. nonsubject distinction (Meier-Brügger et al. 2010:412). There are discussions of how
a three-gender system emerged out of a two-gender system, that is, how the animacy cat-
egory split up into a sexus distinction, the possible distinction concrete vs. abstract and
noncollective vs. collective, and the formation of a feminine gender in *-h2, originally an
abstract suffix, which was extended to the collective (Tichy 1993, Matasović 2004,
Luraghi 2011). Although we reconstruct a masculine/feminine distinction with only
moderately high probability, this result goes against the mainstream model in recon-
structing a three-gender system for Proto-Indo-European.
There are several possible reasons for this result. By using comparative concepts,
that is, features with no particular connection to individual pieces of morphological
matter, the coding does not distinguish between the two-gender system of Hittite
(which is assumed to be preserved from Proto-Indo-European) and the two-gender sys-
tem of, for example, Dutch or Swedish (which collapsed from a previous three-gender
system). Our model assumes that linguistic features evolve under a continuous-time
Markov process, which estimates transition rates between values of a linguistic variable
over time. The three-gender system is preserved and stable in many branches of Indo-
European, as well as occasionally collapsed in some of the branches (e.g. Romance,
Germanic), but not in a consistent way (masculine/feminine vs. common/neuter). Ac-
cordingly, the model estimates that it is more likely for Anatolian to have collapsed a
Proto-Indo-European three-gender system than to have preserved an ancient two-gen-
der system (see Figures 5–6, which display the most probable trajectories of historical
development of these features under our model on a maximum clade credibility (MCC)
summary tree, and further discussion in §5).
Case. Results for features pertaining to case show a degree of agreement with the
canonical system of reconstruction similar to that of the features discussed in the fore-
going sections. In Indo-European studies, the topics of morphosyntactic reconstruction
of nominal morphology, the case system and its functionality, and paths of syncretism
in various Indo-European subbranches have been the subject of much debate, a full dis-
cussion of which is outside of this article’s scope. Instead, we use our results as a point
of departure in an attempt to assess the extent to which they dovetail with previous the-
ories regarding nominal morphology in comparative-historical syntax.
As far as typological structure is concerned, we code languages for the presence of
agglutination for number and case in nouns and pronouns (§S4, NM30–33). All agglu-
tinating traits have low reconstruction probability: somewhat higher for nominal mor-
phology, but close to zero for pronominal morphology (Table 7). Consequently, the
model reconstructs absence of agglutination for Proto-Indo-European, which is more
evident for pronouns than for nouns.
In comparative-historical syntax, the discussion of the typological structure of the
Indo-European case paradigm relates to discussions of alignment, described in the pre-
vious section. Agglutination is not a key issue in the canonical model, which bases its re-
construction on the synthetic Old Indo-Aryan paradigm. A variant of the active-stative
theory of, for example, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1995) is found in Hirt 1934, which re-
Proto-Anatolian
Hittite
Hittite Proto-Tocharian
Luwian
Luwian
Tocharian_A
Tocharian A
Tocharian_B
Tocharian B
Classical_Greek
Classical Greek
Middle_Greek
Middle Greek
Modern_Greek
Modern Greek
Modern_Armenian
Modern Armenian
Latvian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Lithuanian
Proto-Balto-Slavic Old_Russian
Old_Prussian
Old Prussian
Old Russian
Russian
Russian
Ukrainian
Ukrainian
Old_Church_Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Proto-Indo-European Bulgarian
Bulgarian
Croatian
Croatian
Serbian
Serbian
Slovene
Slovene
Czech
Czech
Polish
Polish
Upper_Sorbian
Upper Sorbian
Gothic
Gothic
Old_Norse
Old Norse
Faroese
Faroese
Icelandic
Icelandic
Norwegian_Nynorsk
Norwegian Nynorsk
Danish
Danish
Proto-Germanic Norwegian_Bokmål
Norwegian Bokmål
Elfdalian
Elfdalian
Old_Swedish
Old Swedish
Proto-Nuclear-IE Old_Dutch
Old Dutch
Swedish
Swedish
Middle_Dutch
Middle Dutch
Dutch
Dutch
Old_English
Old English
Middle_English
Middle English
English
English
Old_Frisian
Old Frisian
Frisian
Frisian
Old_High_German
Old High German
Middle_High_German
Middle High German
German
German
Swiss_German
Swiss German
Yiddish
Yiddish
Old_Saxon
Old Saxon
Middle_Low_German
Middle Low German
Low_German
Low German
Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Prakrit
Prakrit
Pali
Pali
Hindi
Hindi
Urdu
Urdu
Punjabi
Punjabi
Romani_Arli
Romani Arli
Romani_Sepeides
Romani Sepeides
Angloromani
Angloromani
Scandoromani
Scandoromani
Romani_Burgenland
Romani Burgenland
Romani_Kale
Romani Kale
Romani_Sinte
Romani Sinte
Romani_Kelderash
Romani Kelderash
Romani_Lovara
Proto-Core-IE Romani Lovara
Assamese
Assamese
Bengali
Bengali
Maithili
Maithili
Oriya
Oriya
Nepali
Nepali
Kashmiri
Kashmiri
Khowar
Khowar
Sindhi
Sindhi
Sinhalese
Sinhalese
Maldivian
Maldivian
Konkani
Konkani
Marathi
Marathi
Proto-Indo-Iranian Gujarati
Gujarati
Avestan
Avestan
Ossetian_Iron
Ossetian Iron
Pashto
Pashto
Shughni
Shughni
Sogdian
Sogdian
Wakhi
Wakhi
Baluchi
Baluchi
Gilaki
Gilaki
Kurdish_Kurmanji
Kurdish Kurmanji
Kurdish_Sorani
Kurdish Sorani
Old_Persian
Old Persian
Middle_Persian
Middle Persian
Persian
Persian
Tajik
Tajik
Parachi
Parachi
Talysh
Talysh
Ashkun
Ashkun
Kati
Kati
Prasun
Prasun
Middle_Breton
Middle Breton
Breton
Breton
Cornish
Cornish
Middle_Welsh
Middle Welsh
Welsh
Welsh
Old_Irish
Old Irish
Proto-Italo-Celtic Middle_Irish
Middle Irish
Irish
Irish
Manx
Manx
Scottish_Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic
Latin
Latin
Sardinian
Sardinian
Romanian
Romanian
Old_Italian
Old Italian
Italian
Italian
Sicilian
Sicilian
Catalan
Catalan
Old_French
Old French
French
French
Walloon
Walloon
Old_Portuguese
Old Portuguese
Portuguese
Portuguese
Old_Provençal
Old Provençal
Provençal
Provençal
Old_Spanish
Old Spanish
Nominal morphology — Gender / Noun class Spanish

Spanish
Friulian
Friulian
Ladin
Ladin
Romansh
Masculine/feminine distinction
Romansh
Albanian_Tosk
Albanian Tosk
No masculine/feminine distinction
Figure 5. Maximum clade compatibility (MCC) tree with pie charts showing reconstructed probabilities of a
masculine and feminine gender distinction at root and internal nodes of tree.
constructs an uninflected stage of Proto-Indo-European. This stage is preserved in the

neuter, which has no marking. In a later stage, the distinction between -s and -m marks
‘grammatical cases’, that is, alignment cases (see Table 4 above). The genitive also rep-
Proto-Anatolian
Hittite
Luwian
Luwian
Tocharian_A
Tocharian A
Tocharian_B
Tocharian B
Classical_Greek
Classical Greek
Middle_Greek
Middle Greek
Modern_Greek
Modern Greek
Modern_Armenian
Modern Armenian
Latvian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Lithuanian
Old_Prussian
Old Prussian
Old Russian
Russian
Russian
Ukrainian
Ukrainian
Old_Church_Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Bulgarian
Croatian
Croatian
Serbian
Serbian
Slovene
Slovene
Czech
Czech
Polish
Polish
Upper_Sorbian
Upper Sorbian
Gothic
Gothic
Old_Norse
Old Norse
Faroese
Faroese
Icelandic
Icelandic
Norwegian_Nynorsk
Norwegian Nynorsk
Danish
Danish
Norwegian Bokmål
Elfdalian
Elfdalian
Old_Swedish
Old Swedish
Old Dutch
Swedish
Swedish
Middle_Dutch
Middle Dutch
Dutch
Dutch
Old_English
Old English
Middle_English
Middle English
English
English
Old_Frisian
Old Frisian
Frisian
Frisian
Old_High_German
Old High German
Middle_High_German
Middle High German
German
German
Swiss_German
Swiss German
Yiddish
Yiddish
Old_Saxon
Old Saxon
Middle_Low_German
Middle Low German
Low_German
Low German
Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Prakrit
Prakrit
Pali
Pali
Hindi
Hindi
Urdu
Urdu
Punjabi
Punjabi
Romani_Arli
Romani Arli
Romani_Sepeides
Romani Sepeides
Angloromani
Angloromani
Scandoromani
Scandoromani
Romani_Burgenland
Romani Burgenland
Romani_Kale
Romani Kale
Romani_Sinte
Romani Sinte
Romani_Kelderash
Romani Kelderash
Romani_Lovara
Assamese
Assamese
Bengali
Bengali
Maithili
Maithili
Oriya
Oriya
Nepali
Nepali
Kashmiri
Kashmiri
Khowar
Khowar
Sindhi
Sindhi
Sinhalese
Sinhalese
Maldivian
Maldivian
Konkani
Konkani
Marathi
Marathi
Gujarati
Avestan
Avestan
Ossetian_Iron
Ossetian Iron
Pashto
Pashto
Shughni
Shughni
Sogdian
Sogdian
Wakhi
Wakhi
Baluchi
Baluchi
Gilaki
Gilaki
Kurdish_Kurmanji
Kurdish Kurmanji
Kurdish_Sorani
Kurdish Sorani
Old_Persian
Old Persian
Middle_Persian
Middle Persian
Persian
Persian
Tajik
Tajik
Parachi
Parachi
Talysh
Talysh
Ashkun
Ashkun
Kati
Kati
Prasun
Prasun
Middle_Breton
Middle Breton
Breton
Breton
Cornish
Cornish
Middle_Welsh
Middle Welsh
Welsh
Welsh
Old_Irish
Old Irish
Middle Irish
Irish
Irish
Manx
Manx
Scottish_Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic
Latin
Latin
Sardinian
Sardinian
Romanian
Romanian
Old_Italian
Old Italian
Italian
Italian
Sicilian
Sicilian
Catalan
Catalan
Old_French
Old French
French
French
Walloon
Walloon
Old_Portuguese
Old Portuguese
Portuguese
Portuguese
Old_Provençal
Old Provençal
Provençal
Provençal
Old_Spanish
Old Spanish
Nominal morphology — Gender / Noun class Spanish

Spanish
Friulian
Friulian
Ladin
Ladin
Romansh
Neuter gender
Romansh
Albanian_Tosk
Albanian Tosk
No neuter gender
Figure 6. Maximum clade compatibility (MCC) tree with pie charts showing reconstructed probabilities of
neuter gender at root and internal nodes of tree.
resents a variant of the -s and -m forms. All other cases, ‘local cases’, are secondarily
formed by means of postposing elements. Even though it is not prominent in his text, it
is evident that Hirt presupposed an agglutinating stage of Proto-Indo-European (between
Proto-Anatolian
Hittite
Luwian
Luwian
Tocharian_A
Tocharian A
Tocharian_B
Tocharian B
Classical_Greek
Classical Greek
Middle_Greek
Middle Greek
Modern_Greek
Modern Greek
Modern_Armenian
Modern Armenian
Latvian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Lithuanian
Old_Prussian
Old Prussian
Old Russian
Russian
Russian
Ukrainian
Ukrainian
Old_Church_Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Bulgarian
Croatian
Croatian
Serbian
Serbian
Slovene
Slovene
Czech
Czech
Polish
Polish
Upper_Sorbian
Upper Sorbian
Gothic
Gothic
Old_Norse
Old Norse
Faroese
Faroese
Icelandic
Icelandic
Norwegian_Nynorsk
Norwegian Nynorsk
Danish
Danish
Norwegian Bokmål
Elfdalian
Elfdalian
Old_Swedish
Old Swedish
Old Dutch
Swedish
Swedish
Middle_Dutch
Middle Dutch
Dutch
Dutch
Old_English
Old English
Middle_English
Middle English
English
English
Old_Frisian
Old Frisian
Frisian
Frisian
Old_High_German
Old High German
Middle_High_German
Middle High German
German
German
Swiss_German
Swiss German
Yiddish
Yiddish
Old_Saxon
Old Saxon
Middle_Low_German
Middle Low German
Low_German
Low German
Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Prakrit
Prakrit
Pali
Pali
Hindi
Hindi
Urdu
Urdu
Punjabi
Punjabi
Romani_Arli
Romani Arli
Romani_Sepeides
Romani Sepeides
Angloromani
Angloromani
Scandoromani
Scandoromani
Romani_Burgenland
Romani Burgenland
Romani_Kale
Romani Kale
Romani_Sinte
Romani Sinte
Romani_Kelderash
Romani Kelderash
Romani_Lovara
Assamese
Assamese
Bengali
Bengali
Maithili
Maithili
Oriya
Oriya
Nepali
Nepali
Kashmiri
Kashmiri
Khowar
Khowar
Sindhi
Sindhi
Sinhalese
Sinhalese
Maldivian
Maldivian
Konkani
Konkani
Marathi
Marathi
Gujarati
Avestan
Avestan
Ossetian_Iron
Ossetian Iron
Pashto
Pashto
Shughni
Shughni
Sogdian
Sogdian
Wakhi
Wakhi
Baluchi
Baluchi
Gilaki
Gilaki
Kurdish_Kurmanji
Kurdish Kurmanji
Kurdish_Sorani
Kurdish Sorani
Old_Persian
Old Persian
Middle_Persian
Middle Persian
Persian
Persian
Tajik
Tajik
Parachi
Parachi
Talysh
Talysh
Ashkun
Ashkun
Kati
Kati
Prasun
Prasun
Middle_Breton
Middle Breton
Breton
Breton
Cornish
Cornish
Middle_Welsh
Middle Welsh
Welsh
Welsh
Old_Irish
Old Irish
Middle Irish
Irish
Irish
Manx
Manx
Scottish_Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic
Latin
Latin
Sardinian
Sardinian
Romanian
Romanian
Old_Italian
Old Italian
Italian
Italian
Sicilian
Sicilian
Catalan
Catalan
Old_French
Old French
French
French
Walloon
Walloon
Old_Portuguese
Old Portuguese
Portuguese
Portuguese
Old_Provençal
Old Provençal
Provençal
Provençal
Old_Spanish
Old Spanish
Word order — Adpositions Spanish

Spanish
Friulian
Friulian
Ladin
Ladin
Romansh
No Prepositions
Romansh
Albanian_Tosk
Albanian Tosk
Prepositions
Figure 7. Maximum clade compatibility (MCC) tree with pie charts showing reconstructed probabilities of
prepositions at root and internal nodes of tree.
an assumed isolating and a synthetic stage), at least for the case paradigm. The proposed
pathway from an agglutinating stage to a synthetic stage is reminiscent of Bopp’s (1816)
theory regarding the origin of the Proto-Indo-European verbal endings.
The issue connects to the number and type of Proto-Indo-European cases. There is
much discussion on this topic, in particular whether Indo-European had a rich case sys-
tem and was secondarily syncretic, or whether the high number of cases in Old Indo-
Aryan and other ancient languages represents an innovation. An argument is that most
Indo-European languages show a decay and an increase in case syncretism rather than a
growth in case morphology (Szemerényi 1996:158). An exception is Tocharian, which
can partly be explained by its geographic position, surrounded by other agglutinating
languages (Schmidt 1982). The evolution of Tocharian is also paralleled in modern
Indo-Aryan languages (Carling 2012). Delbrück (Brugmann & Delbrück 1893:180–91)
reconstructs a case system that is identical to that of Sanskrit, with a nominative/voca-
tive, accusative, genitive, locative, instrumental, dative, and ablative. This is also the
paradigm that scholars following the canonical model reconstruct (Meier-Brügger et al.
2010:398–410).
As for number and types of cases (Table 7), our reconstruction is in line with the
canonical model, albeit with a degree of uncertainty. We reconstruct a system with
fewer than seven cases in the nominal paradigm (0.584), but with intermediate proba-
bility. Beyond that, we find, in the nominal paradigm, an intermediate probability for a
dative and a genitive (0.608) but also a low score of (0.184) for having neither a geni-
tive nor a dative. The score for having local cases outside of the core (in our coding the
core includes cases for A, S, O, dative, and genitive) is high (0.983); the score for an ac-
cusative/objective, that is, a case for O different from A, is also high (0.715), as is the
score for a vocative case (0.885).
probability range 1.0–0.9 0.9–0.8 0.8–0.7 0.7–0.6 0.6–0.5 0.5–0.4 0.4–0.3 0.3–0.2 0.2–0.1 0.1–0.0
nouns
Agglutination: case − +
Agglutination: number − +
Difference A and O + −
Genitive and/or dative +g&+d +g&−d, −d&+g
−g&−d
Peripheral cases + −
More than 7 cases − +
Vocative + −
pronouns
Agglutination: case − +
Agglutination: number − +
Difference A and O + −
Difference O/Dative − +
Peripheral cases + −
More than 7 cases − +
Vocative − +
Table 7. Overview of probability ranges at the protolanguage state for case.
The pronominal paradigm shows similar tendencies, with some important excep-
tions: the probability of more than seven cases is close to zero (0.031), the probability
of an A/O distinction higher (0.934), the probability of a dative moderate (0.429), and
that of noncore local cases high (0.922). In addition, the probability of pronominal
vocatives is low. As with alignment, we notice that the results of the pronominal para-
digm are more distinct—that is, the difference between the preferred and the nonpre-
ferred variant is larger.
In sum, our reconstruction yields medium to high probabilities for a canonical sys-
tem, with a nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, vocative, and one or several local
cases, not exceeding seven total cases. The pronominal paradigm is similar, but with the
exception that the inference procedure reconstructs a very low probability for a system
of more than seven cases, as well as for the vocative.
3.3. Verbal morphology and tense.
Verbal morphology. The category verbal morphology targets agreement or per-
son concord, that is, the inflectional morphology of verbs with respect to their syntactic
environment (Bickel & Nichols 2007:169–71). A basic matrix (cf. Baerman & Brown
2013) includes the variants full agreement (i.e. with reference to person and num-
ber), gender agreement (with respect to gender), and no agreement, which are
matched against the core constituents S/A, O, and the case of the Recipient (dative).
The coding captures the typological variation in syncretism between full and no
agreement (see Table 8). Only A agreement has results that are of interest to us here; the
probability of dative and O agreement, which is found in branches of Indo-European, is
low for the protolanguage (Table 9).
full agreement 1 0 0
no agreement 0 0 1
Tocharian A pälk- ‘shine’ Gothic bindan ‘bind’ Swedish sitta ‘sit’
(Krause & Thomas 1960) (Bammesberger 1986)
sg 1 pälkäm binda sitter
2 pälkät bindis sitter
3 pälkäs ̣ bindiþ sitter
pl 1 pälkmäs bindam sitter
2 pälkäc bindiþ sitter
3 pälkiñc bindand sitter
Table 8. Coding patterns and example paradigms for A-agreement patterns, default paradigm of present
progressive, in Tocharian A, Gothic, and Swedish.
Our results (Table 9) display two tendencies of interest to us: the higher probability
of full A agreement (0.657) against syncretic A agreement (0.212) in the present pro-
gressive, and the higher probability of syncretic A agreement (0.207) against full A
agreement (0.031) in the simple past. Again, we see a pattern in which the more fre-
quent category (present) is reconstructed with higher certainty than the less frequent
category (past).
probability 1.0–0.9 0.9–0.8 0.8–0.7 0.7–0.6 0.6–0.5 0.5–0.4 0.4–0.3 0.3–0.2 0.2–0.1 0.1–0.0
range
present
progressive
A agreement full syncretic no
O agreement no syncretic,
full
dat agreement no syncretic,
full
simple past
A agreement syncretic full, no
O agreement no syncretic
dat agreement no syncretic,
full
Table 9. Overview of probability ranges at the protolanguage state for verbal agreement.
Our data set lacks more fine-grained distinctions between the various categories (e.g.
voice, aspect, modality) than are present in our reconstructed Indo-European system
and is therefore not fully comparable with the set of endings reconstructed for Indo-Eu-
ropean via the comparative method. Much of the system complexity of ancient Indo-
European languages is also lost in several branches of the modern languages (Clackson
2007:114–56), a transformation over time that our data reflect only to a certain degree.
Typological marking of tense. Our data set’s category tense takes as its focus the
typological marking of present progressive and future, which is linguistically relevant
from an areal perspective. In the Indo-European family, tense is historically integrated
with the category of aspect: the original tense-aspect system of Proto-Indo-European is
thought to have developed in many branches into a system that is mainly tense-based
(Hewson & Bubeník 1997). Aspect features are not included in the original data of
DiACL, which spans more families than Indo-European (Carling et al. 2018).
Tense (§S4, T1–14) includes two properties designed to capture the typological pro-
file of the forms used to mark present progressive and future. For the present progres-
sive (§S4, T1–4), the data distinguish whether a language uses a synthetic form or an
analytic construction (with an auxiliary). The model reconstructs a high probability for
a synthetic form (0.922), which is entirely consistent with the canonical model. There is
an ongoing discussion in comparative-historical syntax as to whether some of the syn-
thetic constructions of Indo-European, such as infinitives, might have an analytic origin
(Meier-Brügger et al. 2010:320–21), but this is not relevant in connection to the present
progressive, which makes our result uncontroversial.
The results pertaining to the future (§S4, T5–14) are also uncontroversial. The data
distinguish whether a language uses an analytic construction (with auxiliary), a partici-
ple, a particle, a synthetic form, or an aspectual form. Our reconstruction yields a low
probability for an analytic future formed by an auxiliary (0.372) but lower probabilities
for all other variants. The future in Indo-European is an old issue. Delbrück (Brugmann
& Delbrück 1897:242–55) doubted that the future of Sanskrit was derived from a future
in Proto-Indo-European, due to its formal similarity with the subjunctive and aorist.
In further discussions of the verbal system, even within the canonical (Greco-Aryan)
model, there is consensus that the future in Greek and Indo-Aryan is a secondary devel-
opment (Szemerényi 1989:244–47, Rix & Kümmel 2001:10–30, Meier-Brügger et al.
2010:236–42). Our results cannot contribute to this reconstruction; the probabilities are
in general low.
3.4. Word order. Since Greenberg (1966), word order (constituent order, order of
meaningful elements) has played a central role in linguistic typological research (Comrie
1981, Dryer 1992, Siewierska 1998). In diachronic syntax, reconstruction of word order
remains a controversial issue. At their core, Greenberg’s observations targeted implica-
tional relations among word-order types, in later literature defined as order of head
and dependent (Lehmann 1973), a concept that also includes typological properties be-
yond word order, following upon the order types (Nichols 1992, 1995, 1998). In
Nichols’s model, the various dependency types are seen as stable both geographically
and diachronically, something that is indicated by the fact that the types have regional
skewing patterns (Nichols 1995). Word-order harmony remains an issue also in compu-
tational typology, where the main source of controversy is whether word-order patterns
are mainly lineage-specific or areal (Baker 2011, Bickel 2011, Croft et al. 2011, Cysouw
2011, Donohue 2011, Dunn et al. 2011). To avoid confusion and not enter into too much
detail in the scientific literature on word order, we use the terms ‘head-initial’ and ‘head-
final’ to refer to the issue of constituent order in sentences and phrases.
In diachronic syntax, the reconstruction of word order is characterized as beset by

methodological difficulties (Roberts 2007:175–98). The source of the uncertainty is the
fact that word order in most cases cannot be implicitly connected to any morphosyntac-
tically reconstructible material. Therefore, reconstruction of word order has to be based
on, first, actual observation in attested languages, and second, connections to other
properties in language, which may or may not be reconstructible. Consistency and har-
mony, as well as stability in word-order patterns, are central in the model of reconstruc-
tion proposed by Lehmann and Nichols (Lehmann 1973, 1974, Nichols 1992), and this
is also one of the major sources of criticism against the reconstruction of word order
(Watkins 1976, Winter 1984, Lightfoot 2002). For a discussion of these issues and de-
fenses against some of these criticisms, see Harris & Campbell 1995, Campbell & Har-
ris 2002. It is also clear that a diachronic shift from one type to another, for example,
from head-final to head-initial, is a complex evolution in which archaic structures are
retained and coexist side-by-side with more recent, changed ones (Bauer 1995).
Word order in Proto-Indo-European is the subject of a century-long debate, beginning
with Delbrück (2010 [1897]:38–111) and Wackernagel’s (1920) study on the position of
clitics. Clitic position remains one of the few unquestioned reconstructed syntactic fea-
tures of Proto-Indo-European (Clackson 2007:168). In recent decades, two competing
positions on Proto-Indo-European word order have emerged, both of which require a
consistency approach. Much of the critique of the word-order theories revolves around
problems of establishing a default order in ancient languages, which form the basis for a
protolanguage reconstruction (Winter 1984). Other researchers highlight the general
problems of word-order reconstruction due to the inherent problem of reconstructing
variation and change (Lightfoot 2002, Pires & Thomason 2008). The mainstream posi-
tion, also given by Delbrück, assumes verb-finality (OV) and head-final order for noun
phrases (Lehmann 1973, 1974, 1993, 2002, Mallory & Adams 1997:165–71, Clackson
2007, Hock 2013). The competing position, which bases its discussion on problems
of Proto-Indo-European relative clauses, assumes VO and head-initial order for Indo-
European (Friedrich 1975).
Our data set contains standardized coding of word order in ancient languages, and
therefore the results relate to the discussion of word-order reconstruction based on evi-
dence from ancient languages. As a rule, the coding policy aims to capture the domi-
nant word order in a language, but in uncertain cases, the coding system allows for
polymorphic coding, that is, coding a value 1 for two or several variants (Carling et al.
2018). Word order is also split into a relatively high level of granularity, for example,
distinguishing different clause types (§S4, WO24–28, 42–46).
Considering the results of our reconstruction (§S4, WO1–50), we have to bear in
mind that our model does not take into account implicational dependencies between
variables (e.g. head-final or head-initial; Pagel & Meade 2006, Dunn et al. 2011, Mu-
rawaki 2018). The probability of values of a categorical variable is estimated indepen-
dently of other variables.
Our model reconstructs SOV order with high probability in main clauses (0.905) as
well as subordinate clauses (0.899). Furthermore, our model produces reconstructions
of high probability for postpositions (0.849), possessor-noun order (0.585), adjective-
noun order (0.870), OV order with participles (0.894), and OV order with infinitives
(0.806; see Table 10). These results are compatible with the mainstream view on Proto-
Indo-European as a head-final language.
Our results for clitic pronouns (§S4, WO5–19) are less simple to interpret. For clitic
pronouns, we distinguish second position, OV, and VO (if the language does not have
probability 1.0–0.9 0.9–0.8 0.8–0.7 0.7–0.6 0.6–0.5 0.5–0.4 0.4–0.3 0.3–0.2 0.2–0.1 0.1–0.0
range
NP word
order
Adpositional +postp −prep +prep −postp
word order
Noun- poss-N N-poss
possessor
Noun- adj-N N-adj
adjective
clause word
order
Main clause SOV VSO, V2,
SVO
Subordinate SOV SVO VSO, V2
clause
Infinitive WO OV VO,
irrelevant
Participle WO O-part part-O
wh-verb − +
wh-initiality + −
Noun-relative noun- rel- irrelevant
clause rel noun
Table 10. Overview of probability ranges at the protolanguage state for word order.
clitic pronouns, the variable is not applicable to the language), with finite verb, infini-
tive, and participle. Our model reconstructs distributions of high uncertainty for all cat-
egorical features pertaining to clitics. Here, it is obvious that the situation in the
languages is too complex, with too many gains and losses at hand, for a clear picture to
emerge. This result is problematic, considering the safe reconstruction of the position of
clitics in Indo-European (Krisch 1990).
Finally, we have an interesting result: a reconstructed high probability of noun-rela-
tive clause (0.627) over relative clause-noun order (0.292; see Table 10). The position
and construction type of the relative clause were a major source of conflict between
Lehmann and Friedrich and have been extensively discussed in Indo-European syntax
(Watkins 1976, Hock 2013). In accordance with Greenberg’s (1963) consistency theory,
continued by Lehmann (1973, 1974), an OV language is more likely to have relative
clause-noun order (Harris & Campbell 1995:363–67), which is also the common type
of Hittite and Latin. However, Sanskrit and Homeric Greek have the reverse order,
noun-relative clause, which is inconsistent with OV (Clackson 2007:171–76). The high
probability of noun-relative clause order can only be taken to be provisional; due to the
simplified definition of relative clauses in our data (NRel/RelN, which does not distin-
guish, for example, correlative relative clauses, type of clause relation (i.e. paratactic or
hypotactic), or restrictive/nonrestrictive types), our result does not bear fully on the
issue of Proto-Indo-European relative clauses in the degree of detail with which they
are treated in the comparative-historical literature (Hock 2013).
3.5. Comparison of results with traditional models of reconstruction. As
described above, our coding scheme for different models of traditional Indo-European
reconstruction, which we term canonical, isolating, and active-stative, is based on three
sources: Brugmann-Delbrück (Brugmann & Delbrück 1893, 1897, 1900), Hirt (Hirt
1934), and Gamkrelidze-Ivanov (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1984, 1995). We identify the
values reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European by the different models for the variables
in our data set to the extent that information is available, though not all variables in our
data set are addressed in these sources. The different models have somewhat differing
conceptualizations of the nature of the Proto-Indo-European language.
Brugmann-Delbrück do not regard Proto-Indo-European as a diachronically stratified
language; rather, they reconstruct a uniform language, based on Old Indo-Aryan, Greek,
Latin, and other ancient Indo-European languages. Compared to the others, their model
of Proto-Indo-European is simpler: they reconstruct a highly synthetic stage, which in all
branches of the family becomes simplified and less synthetic, losing a number of cate-
gories. The other models have a different take on this issue. Scholars reconstructing ac-
tive-stative and isolating systems presuppose that Proto-Indo-European was a language
with several diachronic layers, which changed from a hypothetical early active-stative or
isolating stage to a later synthetic stage, found in all ancient languages except for Anato-
lian. The principles and reasons for this change are important in both the isolating and ac-
tive-stative models (Gamkrelidze & Ivanov 1995:270–71, Hirt 1934:29–36), as well as
in other publications where alternative models are reconstructed for Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean (Bauer 2000, Pooth et al. 2018). The phylogenetic model we employ does not allow
us to explicitly stratify the protolanguage into layers. It allows us to reconstruct proba-
bilities at the root as well as at ancestral nodes of the tree (see Figs. 5–7 above and §S8);
we take the root of the phylogenetic tree to represent the earliest layer of the protolan-
guage in the sources mentioned before, but do not consider any subsequent changes or
areal differentiations within Proto-Indo-European. We use a tree sample that is compati-
ble with the Indo-Anatolian hypothesis (§S9); the root represents the earliest layer of
Proto-Indo-European in all models, before Anatolian split off and subsequent changes
began in the Anatolian and non-Anatolian subbranches.
The values reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European for each model are found in §S4. We
assess the extent to which our results agree with the views of each comparative-historical
reconstruction model on the basis of the likelihood of each model’s reconstructed values
for each variable in our data set (where applicable), that is, the probability with which our
model reconstructs the value to Proto-Indo-European for the variable in question. These
likelihoods are found in Figure 8; higher values indicate greater agreement.
Whereas the active-stative and isolating models differ from our results for some of
the domains discussed above, such as nominal and verbal morphology (isolating) or
alignment (active-stative), both of these models come close to our reconstruction for
other domains such as word order, and in future tense and definiteness being absent in
the reconstructions. At the same time, it is clear that our results show the most agree-
ment with the canonical model of reconstruction (median likelihood = 0.796), followed
by the active-stative (median likelihood = 0.657) and isolating (median likelihood =
0.652) models; agreement with the canonical model is significantly higher than with
both other models according to a pairwise Wilcoxon signed-rank test for paired samples
( p < 0.01 with Benjamini-Hochberg correction for multiple comparisons; variables for
which a reliable value was not found for all models are excluded). This indicates that
our results most clearly resemble the canonical model of Proto-Indo-European, close to
the reconstruction outlined by Brugmann and Delbrück in the nineteenth century.
4. Results: evolutionary dynamics.
4.1. Reconstructed probabilities, feature distributions, and transition
rates. Our reconstructions are estimated from transition rates inferred on the basis of
our tree sample and the features in our data set; these rates characterize the behavior of
pairwise transitions between all values of each variable in our data set. Specifically, a
1.00
0.75
Likelihood
0.50
●
0.25
●
●
0.00 ●
Active−Stative Canonical Isolating

Model
Figure 8. Violin plot displaying likelihoods of reconstructions proposed by each comparative-historical

model, labeled ‘canonical’, ‘isolating’, and ‘active-stative’, under the results produced
by our model. Higher values signify greater agreement.
transition rate represents the average number of times that a change from a value x (e.g.
SOV main clause word order) to a value y (e.g. SVO main clause word order) occurs
within a 1000-year span. In this section, we assess the extent to which the frequencies
of individual features, as well as gain and loss rates pertaining to the transition rates of
individual features—or as a proxy, their diachronic stability or instability—influence
the reconstructions produced by our phylogenetic model. It may be the case that only
highly stable and frequent features have a chance of being reconstructed to the pro-
tolanguage with high probability, and less frequent features or features in greater flux
are unlikely to be reconstructed. If our model essentially carries out a majority rules–
style method of reconstruction, then its utility is severely diminished, as a phylogenetic
model is not needed to reconstruct the most frequent pattern. If, however, it picks up on
more nuanced patterns of change and incorporates these dynamics into the reconstruc-
tions it produces, then the value of methods of this sort is evident. Additionally, an
analysis of rates of change alongside reconstruction probabilities provides a better un-
derstanding of temporal dynamics within Indo-European.
Does our model simply reconstruct the most frequent feature? If our
model simply reconstructs via a majority-rules approach, then there is no real reason to
use a phylogenetic model, since our method attends only to the frequency distributions
of features across languages and not to patterns of genetic relatedness between said lan-
guages. Furthermore, if this is the case, then certain Anatolian features, if rare within
Indo-European, face a natural disadvantage and will not be reconstructed, which leads
to a result in line with the canonical model of Indo-European reconstruction.
In order to assess the degree of sensitivity of our reconstructions to the frequency dis-
tributions of features in our data set, we computed the relative frequency in our data set
for features reconstructed with highest probability by our model. We carried out this
procedure for all languages, as well as only the ancestral languages in our sample. Fig-
ure 9 shows the probabilities with which ‘winning’ features (black dots) and ‘nonwin-
ning’ features (gray dots) are reconstructed, plotted against their relative frequencies in
our data set. Visually, it is clear that the relationship between these quantities is noisy;
at best, the correlation is moderate (all languages: Spearman’s ρ = 0.58, p < 0.001; an-
cestral languages: ρ = 0.4, p < 0.001; statistical tests include only ‘winning features’ re-
constructed with highest probability in order to ensure that data points are independent).
This indicates that our system’s reconstructions are somewhat (but not overwhelm-
ingly) sensitive to the distribution of features within our data set and within more
archaic ancestral languages. Certain highly frequent features are not necessarily recon-
structed, if our system infers that the feature is likely to have come about many times in
parallel. Additionally, an infrequent feature may be reconstructed if is more likely to
have survived into certain languages than to have come about in parallel. This can be il-
lustrated using our system’s reconstruction of adpositions: prepositions are frequent in
our data set, but infrequent among older languages, and are accordingly reconstructed
with low probability.
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0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00 0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

Relative frequency

Figure 9. Reconstruction probabilities of features reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European with maximum

probability, plotted according to their relative frequency across all languages (left) and ancestral languages
(right) in the data set, with selected features annotated. Black dots represent ‘winning’ features reconstructed
with maximum probability, while gray dots represent features not reconstructed with maximum probability.
A few concrete examples serve to exemplify the consequences of this behavior, with
respect to the reconstruction of features found in Anatolian to Proto-Indo-European.
Figure 5 above shows that a masculine/feminine gender distinction is reconstructed by
our model to Proto-Indo-European, despite the fact that it is absent in the archaic Ana-
tolian subgroup; because the gender distinction is predominant in Nuclear Indo-Euro-
pean (i.e. all non-Anatolian languages) and because it has been lost several times, our
model assigns high probability to a scenario where Anatolian lost the gender distinction
during its development (our model also assigns a small amount of probability to a sce-
nario in which the gender distinction was lost independently within Anatolian). In Fig.
6, we see that neuter gender is reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European because it is
shared by a substantial number of Core Indo-European (i.e. all of Indo-European but
Anatolian and Tocharian) languages and by Anatolian, to the exclusion of Tocharian.

Figure 7 shows that our system does not reconstruct prepositions to Proto-Indo-Euro-
pean with high probability; incidentally, although prepositions are reconstructed with
high probability for Core Indo-European, our model finds it unlikely that prepositions
were lost independently in the history of Anatolian as well as Tocharian (but finds it
likely that they were lost in some Indo-Iranian lineages). Hence, we see that Anatolian
features have a good chance of being reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European if they are
reconstructed to the protolanguage of at least one other higher-order or archaic Indo-
European branch.
Transition rates. Given the transitions between each pair of values (e.g. ergative
→ accusative) within a variable, we estimate the overall entry or gain rate and the
overall exit or loss rate for individual features according to the formulae given in the
online supplementary material, Appendix F. The full list of interfeature transition rates
as well as the gain and loss rates for each feature are found in §§S5–6. A scatterplot of
gain and loss rates for each feature, organized according to overarching grammatical
categories, is found in Figure 10. The size of individual data points indicates the proba-
bility with which a given feature is reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European by our model,
with larger size indicating higher probability. The plot is divided according to the me-
dian gain and loss rates for our variables; this allows us to divide features into the fol-
lowing four classes of features.
(i) High gain rate, high loss rate (upper right quadrant): features of high instabil-
ity, in frequent flux, gained and lost frequently. These include features per-
taining to the presence of case on adjectives, clitics, distinctions between
dative and genitive marking, absence of case on nouns, and different align-
ment systems in the simple past.
(ii) High gain rate, low loss rate (lower right quadrant): features of high stability
to which languages are frequently attracted; gained often and rarely lost.
These include features pertaining to the presence of case on nouns, case dif-
ference between A and O for nouns as well as pronouns, masculine/feminine
distinction, noun-relative word order, possessor-noun word order, present
progressive by auxiliary, and absence of neuter gender and vocative case.
(iii) Low gain rate, high loss rate (upper left quadrant): ‘recessive’ features (cf.
Nichols 1993) quickly repulsed by languages when they do occur. These in-
clude features pertaining to the presence of future tense by participle, future
tense by particle, more than seven cases, more than seven pronominal cases,
more than five genders, tripartite alignment, ergative alignment in pronouns,
active-stative alignment, double oblique alignment, V2 word order, and VSO
word order.
(iv) Low gain rate, low loss rate (lower left quadrant): highly stable features that
arise infrequently. These include features pertaining to the presence of adjec-
tive-noun word order, agglutination for case, agreement on prepositions, case
on the last member of an NP, definite articles, definite suffixes on adjectives,
definite suffixes on nouns, neuter gender, a noun class for animates, and a
synthetic future tense.
We follow the literature on the diachronic dynamics underlying typological stability
and instability (see Greenberg 1978, Nichols 2003, Dediu 2010) in our interpretation of
these patterns.
For two of the classes, patterns of reconstruction are highly consistent. Stable features
that are frequently gained and infrequently lost (lower right quadrant) are virtually al-
2
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log loss rate (per 1000 years)
0 ● ●
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●
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● Ty
Type
Alignment
●
●
● Nominal mor phology

Te
Tense
−2 Verbal mor phology
● Word order
●
●
−4
−4 −3 −2 −1 0
log gain rate (per 1000 years)
Figure 10. Features in the data set plotted according to their log gain and log loss rates. Shapes represent
grammatical categories to which features belong; sizes represent the probability
with which features are reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European.
ways reconstructed with high certainty. Recessive features that are rarely gained and fre-
quently lost (upper left quadrant) are consistently reconstructed with low probability. For
the remaining classes, the behavior of our model is more variable. Infrequently gained
but stable features (lower left quadrant) are reconstructed with both high and low proba-
bility. For instance, SOV word order (in both main and subordinate clauses), adjective-
noun word order, neuter gender, postpositions, and vocative case are reconstructed with
high probability, whereas features pertaining to definiteness and agglutination, as well as
SVO word order (in both main and subordinate clauses), are reconstructed with low prob-
ability. The same variability is found for features that fluctuate (upper right quadrant):
features pertaining to nominative-accusative alignment, the genitive/dative distinction,
and case on adjectives are reconstructed with a probability greater than 0.5, whereas fea-
tures pertaining to case mergers, clitic word order, and the presence of ergativity in the
simple past tense are reconstructed with low probability.
It is noteworthy that features pertaining to nominal morphology and tense (inflec-
tional typology) tend to exhibit slow change and features pertaining to alignment and
verbal morphology (agreement) show more rapid patterns of change. Word order is well
represented among swift-changing features. These results partly confirm that traits that
are immediately bound by morphology, such as nominal morphology and tense, have
slower rates of change, in contrast to traits that are not bound by morphology, such as
word order and alignment, which have swifter rates of change. Verbal morphology, that
is, agreement patterns, and the most stable and frequent word orders constitute an ex-
ception to these tendencies.
All in all, these results show that the reconstructions produced by our model are not
simply artifacts of feature distributions across our data set; on the contrary, they reflect
multifaceted patterns of change. For certain types of stability or instability, features are re-
constructed with either high or low probability, while for other patterns, there is more vari-
ability among reconstruction probabilities. These patterns are summarized in Table 11.
gain rate loss rate interpretation reconstruction probability

high high unstable trait in flux low/high
high low stable, attractor feature high
low high recessive feature low
low low infrequent but stable feature low/high
Table 11. Interpretation of behavior patterns of traits depending on probability of presence at
the protolanguage state and gain/loss rate.
4.2. Transition rates and grammatical hierarchies. Earlier, we mentioned the

existence of asymmetries in the certainty with which features are reconstructed to
Proto-Indo-European that correspond to differences in grammatical hierarchies. This
asymmetry can also be found in transition rates pertaining to the features in question.
As described in §2.3, we organize our features into hierarchical pairs that belong to the
same grammatical category but that vary with respect to other features of the grammar.
The categories we identify in our data are restricted to the following features (un-
marked/more frequent < marked/less frequent; see Table 2).
• pronoun < noun
• present < past
• agent < object
• agent/object < oblique
• masculine/feminine < neuter
Since loss rates are an inverse measure of the longevity of a given feature (i.e. shorter-
lived features are lost at a higher rate), we can measure whether the loss rates differ sig-
nificantly across the unmarked/marked feature pairs that we identify in our data set. We
find that the loss rates of marked traits are higher than those of unmarked traits (V =
851, p < 0.001, according to a one-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank test), indicating that
marked traits are lost more frequently than unmarked, more frequent traits (Figure 11).
This is an interesting result, but it is not entirely unexpected. The idea of grammatical
or marking hierarchies in the traditional sense (Greenberg 1966, Comrie 1981, Croft
1990) is based on the notion that higher-ranking categories as a rule are more frequent
in languages. The idea that more frequent and basic categories, both in grammar and
lexicon, are more conservative and archaic, due to their everyday use, has a long history
in Indo-European linguistics (Meillet 1948:135). Many lexemes that are typically part
of Swadesh lists, such as kinship words, body parts, numerals, fire, water, and so forth,
as a rule preserve more archaic paradigms, including change in stem consonants (e.g.
-r-/-n-, -l-/-n-) or ablauting patterns (qualitative, quantitative) (Meier-Brügger et al.
2010:336–48). The reflexes in daughter languages of the most frequent verbs, such as
PIE *h1es- ‘to be’ or PIE *h1ey- ‘to go’, are typically irregular, preserving archaic in-
flection patterns and categories (Rix & Kümmel 2001:232–33, 241–42). By contrast,
analogy and other types of changes that harmonize and simplify language structures,
making them easier to memorize, are more frequently found among words and cate-
gories of lower frequency. By means of phylogenetic methods, we know that there is, at
least in the lexicon of basic vocabulary, a correlation between frequency and substitu-
tion rates: the most frequent meanings are concepts with generally lower substitution
rates (Pagel et al. 2007). Transferred to a scenario of grammatical hierarchies, we ex-
pect the unmarked categories, representing the more frequently used categories, to have
Loss rate
●
●
Marked Unmarked
Hierarchical level
Figure 11. Distributions of loss rates for marked (less frequent) and unmarked (more frequent) features.
Median values are indicated by dots. Unmarked traits are lost on average less frequently than marked ones.
lower loss rates and longer periods between transitions, whereas we expect the marked
categories, representing less frequent categories, to have higher loss rates and shorter
periods between transitions.
5. Discussion. In the preceding sections, we presented the results of Proto-Indo-
European reconstruction using phylogenetic comparative methods and provided a care-
ful analysis of our model’s behavior in order to better understand the mechanisms
underlying the results it produces. We found broad support for the canonical model of
Indo-European syntactic reconstruction, largely because the features reconstructed
under alternative models undergo evolutionary dynamics that make them unlikely to
survive into the languages that attest them; they are more likely to have been innovated
in parallel. The behavior of the model we use rests on the assumption that we can make
inferences about the behavior of linguistic features in prehistory on the basis of their be-
havior during attested history; calibrating these dynamics according to attested patterns
of change is made possible by the use of ancestry constraints. The methodology that we
use relies on a number of simplifying assumptions about the nature of change. One of
these is the assumption of rate uniformity, namely, that rates of change between val-
ues of a linguistic variable are the same on all lineages of Indo-European. There are a
number of methods that relax this assumption in order to incorporate rate variation
or heterotachy (Tuffley & Steel 1998, Heath et al. 2012, Beaulieu & O’Meara 2014),
but the utility of these methods may be limited relative to their increased computational
complexity; phylogenetic linguistic analyses assuming rate homogeneity dovetail well
with independent evidence (Blasi et al. 2019), and incorporating heterotachy produces
no or little improvement (Chang et al. 2015, Blasi et al. 2020).
Our data consist of typological variables rooted in comparative concepts that can be
easily operationalized. Other approaches to syntactic reconstruction, rooted in particu-
lar syntactic theories, have different assumptions about the levels of representation that
should be reconstructed to the protolanguage (Hale & Kissock 2015); at the same time,
similar work makes use of bioinformatic algorithms to address questions of linguistic
prehistory (Longobardi et al. 2013). Furthermore, certain syntactic theories make
strong predictions about syntactic change over many generations of first language ac-
quisition (Berwick & Niyogi 1996, Yang 2000), which, if correct, can potentially find
support in phylogenetic models. While some of the assumptions we make may be chal-
lenged by other scholars, in terms of both methodology and the nature of the data we
employ, we believe that our contribution is of great utility to Indo-European studies, as
the assumptions of our probabilistic model are explicit, the results we present are replic-
able, and we provide a means of explicit evaluation against the hypotheses explored in
this article.
Our results shed light on interesting crosslinguistic diachronic tendencies. At the
same time, our data are confined to one family, Indo-European, and the problem of em-
bracing uniformitarianism within one family leads to the problem of sample diversity
pointed out by Levy and Daumé (2011).When investigating differences in diachronic
dynamics across hierarchies, we build upon insights from a crosslinguistic sample
while assessing results derived from one family only, which is not possible without
adapting a uniformity-of-state framework to language evolution: rules that govern lan-
guage structure are similar in the present and in the past, and all languages reflect some
basic universal principles (Croft 2003:233, Roberts 2007:174, Walkden 2019). We are
forthcoming in the admission that restricting data to one family gives a limited picture.
Some of the observed patterns are obviously uniquely Indo-European, such as the loss
of synthetic structure. At the same time, the markedness rubric we employ is derived
from crosslinguistic typological observations beyond the scope of Indo-European, al-
lowing us to avoid circular reasoning. On the basis of trends within Indo-European, we
confirm broader hypotheses regarding crosslinguistically universal tendencies, namely,
that factors such as economy and frequency interfere in the processes of language evo-
lution (Croft 2003, Haspelmath 2015). Furthermore, our finding that features pertaining
to unmarked, more frequent categories are lost less frequently than those of marked,
less frequent categories dovetails nicely with the common finding that frequently used
items are resistant to various types of change (e.g. Diessel 2007).
It is remarkable how closely our comparative phylogenetic reconstruction approaches
a canonical reconstruction model of Indo-European syntax (Brugmann & Delbrück
1893, 1897, 1900, Krahe et al. 1972). Despite all of the variation and change in the gram-
mar in the Indo-European family, our model reconstructs a highly synthetic, mainly
head-final language, with nominative-accusative alignment, independent of tense and
animacy degree of the first argument, case marking on nouns, no definite article, three
genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), predicative gender agreement, a nonagglutinating
case system with fewer than seven cases but with a nominative, accusative, dative, gen-
itive, and vocative, also in pronouns, a synthetic present, no future, full agreement in
the present tense of verbs but not in the past tense, postpositions, OV infinitive word
order, SOV in main and subordinate clauses, possessor-noun, adjective-noun, noun-
relative clause, OV participle word order, and wh-initial word order. The outcome is
striking. We see the structure of a grammatical system that has been retained to a high de-
gree through many branches of Indo-European and that is remarkably constant, despite
several millennia of language contact and change, loss of categories, emergence of new
categories by grammaticalization, and substantial typological changes, for instance in
word-order patterns.
Alternative models (see §1.1, §2.3) assume far-reaching typological changes be-
tween Proto-Indo-European and the non-Anatolian subbranches of the tree. These
changes are supported by internal reconstruction based on Proto-Indo-European para-
digmatic correlations in combination with a comparison with other unrelated language
families (see §3). Given a nuanced understanding of Indo-European chronology (Meid
1975, Schlerath 1981, Bouckaert et al. 2012, Chang et al. 2015), as well as both attested
and estimated information regarding the timespans characterizing change between ty-
pological features of the type that we investigate here (Hock & Joseph 1996:183–84,
Croft 2003:252, Haspelmath 2018), it is increasingly clear why there is limited support
for the alternative theories. On the basis of what can be inferred about change between
alignment systems of languages in our sample, for instance, a relatively rapid develop-
ment from ergative or active-stative alignment (as assumed by the active-stative model)
or via grammaticalization from an isolating system with as yet undeveloped agreement
marking (as assumed by the isolating model) to a nominative-accusative system is less
likely than the retention of nominative-accusative alignment. All of these models take
into account a large amount of data (morphological, typological) that may be connected
directly or indirectly to the typological traits investigated in our study.
In the realm of alignment, nominative-accusative alignment is dominant in many
contemporary and most historical states of the family (Carling 2019:31–50) and is also
reconstructed to the protolanguage (Table 3). Absence of agreement marking (features
involving no marking), which implies isolating structure, is reconstructed to the pro-
tolanguage with low probability. In conclusion, nominative-accusative alignment is sta-
ble, and the only noteworthy trend over time is a higher rate of transition from
nominative-accusative to no marking (synthetic > isolating). Developments of other
systems (ergative, active-stative, tripartite) from nominative-accusative are marginal
and have low transition rates. Similar patterns can be seen across other data types: in
general, within Indo-European, there is greater evidence for developments in the direc-
tions synthetic > isolating and synthetic > agglutinating. Developments in the
opposite direction are not impossible, but are unlikely to have taken place between
Proto-Indo-European and its descendants. An exception is word order, where features
exhibit varying degrees of stability and instability.
Our results are of key relevance to larger discussions about typological stability, as
well as the suitability of typological data for language classification (Dunn et al. 2011,
Plank 2011, Dediu & Levinson 2012, Dediu & Cysouw 2013). We observe two over-
arching feature classes characterized by different patterns of change. In the first, change
is slow and overwhelmingly unidirectional, moving from synthetic to isolating, which
is found mainly in the paradigmatic categories, that is, nominal morphology and parts
of verbal morphology, where a synthetic system is broken down in the direction of
an isolating system. This type of change conforms to a model of unidirectional, cyclic
typological change, occurring at a slow change rate (Croft 2003:227ff.). Alternatively,
the evolutionary trend is oscillating, with high amounts of gains and losses. This oc-
curs in the syntactic (nonparadigmatic) categories, mainly in word order, alignment,
and partly in verbal morphology traits. This type generally conforms to a theory of
punctuated and nondirectional change, which may take any direction depending on a
combination of internal pressure and areality-induced change (Dixon 1997). Given
this result, the search for a phylogenetic signal in the evolution of nonhomologous,
structural linguistic features is difficult without considering areality and ancient lan-
guage data.
Finally, we employed a relatively uncontroversial and neutral model of change that
has been used in state-of-the-art work in phylogenetic linguistics. Simple models like
the continuous-time Markov process assume that a feature can be born and die (or that
change between traits of a multistate character can occur) with a given rate, and there
are no a priori restrictions on the values taken by these rates, as long as they are posi-
tive. These models are appropriate for grammatical and lexical data, and are suitable in
situations when the system may leave and return to states, as in the case of variants of
word order, agreement, case, or different lexical meanings. More complex models like
the stochastic Dollo character (SDC; Nicholls & Gray 2006), which assume that fea-
tures are born only once in the history of a language family, are useful for features that
cannot return to identical states, such as morphological traits bound to specific forms,
irreversible outcomes of sound change (e.g. mergers), or features that may undergo
grammaticalization. Using an SDC model would likely yield different results for our
data, at least for gender. At the same time, many scholars agree that SDC models are un-
suitable for not only comparative concepts, which aim to capture features crosslinguis-
tically, independent of linguistic matter, but also other types of linguistic characters
(Chang et al. 2015), though modifications thought to be more appropriate for linguistic
data have been proposed (Bouckaert & Robbeets 2017). However, we are confident that
a Bayesian approach has the capacity beyond a comparative-historical model to con-
tribute in a meaningful way to the theoretical discussions about trends in diachrony, di-
rectionality of syntax, rates of gains and losses, and stability of features and categories,
as well as correlations to important aspects of typology such as frequency, economy, hi-
erarchies, and general trends in grammar change. Future work can potentially contrast
the results of different evolutionary models in applications like the one undertaken in
this article; researchers wishing to argue for a specific evolutionary model over others
(along with its concomitant result) may employ posterior predictive checks (Box 1980;
see also the online supplementary material, Appendix D) to demonstrate that their
model is a better fit to the data than others.
6. Conclusion. The current article had several foci. We reconstructed the evolution-
ary history of selected aspects of Indo-European morphosyntax by means of a model
that infers patterns of diachronic development of linguistic features over a phylogeny.
This allowed us to infer the most probable value of a given linguistic variable in the un-
attested Proto-Indo-European language. We used a data set of binary coded compara-
tive concepts, recoded as categorical features, which also contained data from extinct
and historical Indo-European languages. We focused on five categories of grammar:
alignment, nominal morphology, verbal morphology, tense, and word order. We com-
pared the result at the protolanguage state to previous reconstructions of Proto-Indo-Eu-
ropean grammar that were based on the comparative-historical method and diachronic
typology. The methodology we used allowed us to compare ideas from the traditional
comparative-historical linguistic literature with our model’s output. We found that phy-
logenetic reconstruction produced a consistent and coherent system, which corresponds
to a highly synthetic, mainly head-final language, with nominative-accusative align-
ment, independent of tense and animacy degree of the first argument, case marking on
nouns, no definite article, three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), predicative gen-
der agreement, a nonagglutinating case system with fewer than seven cases but with a
nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and vocative, also in pronouns, a synthetic
present, no future, full agreement in present tense of verbs but not in the past tense,
postpositions, OV infinitive word order, SOV in main and subordinate clauses, posses-
sor-noun, adjective-noun, noun-relative clause, OV participle word order, and wh-ini-
tial word order. This reconstruction matches a canonical model of Proto-Indo-European
grammar, as described by the Neogrammarians in the nineteenth century.
We also analyzed the inferred interfeature transition rates on which our reconstruc-
tions are based. Our analysis sheds light on different tendencies of change across fea-
tures. In general, traits that were reconstructed to the protolanguage had relatively low
loss and gain rates, which implies that the reconstructed typological system is consis-
tent and stable in the family. The most noteworthy tendency is a change from synthetic
to isolating structure. In addition, a general tendency is for morphological (paradig-
matic) categories (nominal morphology and tense) to have low change rates and for
syntactic categories (alignment and word order) to have higher change rates. Verbal
morphology opposes this tendency with high change rates. Finally, we divided our
grammatical traits (excluding word order) into hierarchical pairs by different members
of categories available in our data, such as tense (present, past), word class (noun, pro-
noun), and gender. We found that the unmarked, more frequent traits are lost less fre-
quently than marked, less frequent traits; this difference was significant.
In sum, our results support the theory that grammar evolution both is divergent, down
to the level of highest granularity, and follows general universal principles. Over the
6000–7000-year cycle represented in our data, morphological traits tend to show a uni-
directional path of change, fundamentally moving from synthetic to isolating, whereas
word order, alignment, and person agreement properties show more nondirectional and
unpredictable paths of change, with higher rates of gains and losses. The results are in
line with both a cyclic and a punctuated model of change. Our results also indicate that
the variability of change in grammar over time is governed by general ‘universal’ ten-
dencies, such as grammatical hierarchies and frequency.
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[[email protected]] [Received 2 April 2019;
[[email protected]] revision invited 25 April 2019;
revision received 22 May 2019;
revision invited 7 September 2019;
revision received 21 January 2020;
revision invited 15 July 2020;
revision received 16 November 2020;
accepted pending revisions 6 January 2021;
revision received 6 February 2021;
accepted 16 February 2021]

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Reconstructing the evolution of Indo-European grammar

Gerd Carling, Chundra Cathcart

Language, Volume 97, Number 3, September 2021, pp. 561-598 (Article)

Published by Linguistic Society of America

For additional information about this article

GERD CARLING CHUNDRA CATHCART

systems in relation to Proto-Indo-European. Currently, ‘Greco-Aryan’ and ‘Anatolian’

family type timeframe number

We selected a well-known and well-studied family with a long history of scholarship

category hierarchy of features

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75 1.00

Figure 4. Histogram of reconstruction probabilities at the protolanguage state (see §S4).

3. Results: reconstruction. Using the methodology outlined in the previous sec-

This discrepancy is striking. Considering language-internal distributions of the

The reconstruction of patterns of alignment has a long history of discussion in com-

1st person 3rd person m/f 3rd person n

3.2. Nominal morphology.

Nominal morphology — Gender / Noun class Spanish

constructs an uninflected stage of Proto-Indo-European. This stage is preserved in the

Nominal morphology — Gender / Noun class Spanish

Word order — Adpositions Spanish

In diachronic syntax, the reconstruction of word order is characterized as beset by

Active−Stative Canonical Isolating

Figure 8. Violin plot displaying likelihoods of reconstructions proposed by each comparative-historical

Figure 9. Reconstruction probabilities of features reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European with maximum

Anatolian and Tocharian) languages and by Anatolian, to the exclusion of Tocharian.

● Nominal mor phology

gain rate loss rate interpretation reconstruction probability

4.2. Transition rates and grammatical hierarchies. Earlier, we mentioned the

by László Zsolt Garamszegi, 395–408. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-662

Althochdeutschen, Litauischen und Altkirchenslavischen, Bd. 5: Vergleichende Syntax

Matasović, Ranko. 2004. Gender in Indo-European. Heidelberg: Winter.

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