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Historical linguists have proven that the languages spoken since ancient times in Eurasia, including Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Italic, Indo-Iranian, and Anatolian, are genetically affiliated with each other. Together, they are called the Indo-European language family. Naturally, their speakers are expected to have also had genetic affiliations. Historical linguists study how Indo-European languages and their speakers have spread throughout Eurasia. But it is sometimes difficult — in particular the similarities and differences among the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic languages are difficult to interpret.

One of the prehistoric developments difficult to recover is that of the voice systems of those three branches. Proto-Indo-European is known to have had a voice called “medio-passive” (or simply “middle”), by which the agent / doer is at the same time acted upon or indirectly affected by the action. The middle inflection is well preserved in Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Tocharian, while it has gone through shifts of the voice system in the Balto-Slavic and Germanic branches.

Gothic, one of the oldest attested Germanic languages (AD 4C~), preserves the middle inflection with the passive meaning, but Slavic (AD 9C~) and Baltic (AD 14C~) do not preserve any obvious traces of the middle inflection anymore. This project will try to answer the questions as follows:

• What happened to the inherited voice system (among other things) since they branched out from Proto-Indo-European? How were their voice system restructured?


• Were the restructuring processes shared innovation or contact-induced?


• Are our hypotheses compatible with their assumed migration routes?

Recent advancements in ancient DNA analysis and isotope analysis (e.g., Haak et al. 2015; Narasimhan et al. 2019) have made it possible to evaluate our linguistics-based hypotheses from an interdisciplinary perspective. Although the DNA information does not directly indicate anything related to languages, the correlation between the geographic distribution of the ancient DNA types and the speakers of Indo-European languages can be cautiously evaluated. In response to these advancements, the RJ-funded programme LAMP Languages and Myths of Prehistory, led by Professor Jenny Larsson at Stockholm University, was organised in January 2020. Sharing with the LAMP programme the aim to comprehend the prehistoric past of the Indo-European peoples, this project approaches the voice systems of the Balto-Slavic and Germanic language families from a migrational perspective.

A collaboration with an archaeogeneticist, Natalija Kashuba (Uppsala University, The Circus Network):

• As the investigation progressed, the language situation / contacts, as well as demography in early Bronze Age Fennoscandia and Eastern Europe have emerged as an important issue to pursue.


• It turns out there was a considerable dynamism in the aforementioned area around 2000 BCE, possibly caused by climatic changes ca. 2200 BCE. According to studies of ancient demography, migrations of populations who could have been potential carriers of IE and Uralic languages have occurred during this period. Particularly, the emergence of a large trading network, reflected in the archaeological culture complex of Seima-Turbino, is considered to be pivotal for the expansion of the Uralic speaking peoples.


• We are now looking into the paleogenetic and archaeological aspects of the movements of people within this trans-Siberian contact network.

A close collaboration with the LAMP team will foster the interdisciplinary aspect of this project. In addition, informal meetings / discussions with people in the related fields on the occasions of conferences are also important.

• Meeting with the LAMP team at a seminar on November 9th 2022, and an additional lunch meeting on 11th 2022. We discussed issues on Indo-European word formations, etymologies, and verbal morphology including the voice.


• Meeting with the LAMP team at the workshop New Shoots from the Roots (June 2nd-3rd 2022) in Copenhagen. We discussed issues on the migration routes from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to Central Europe, various possibilities of branching-out processes of the Indo-European languages, and verbal morphology.

• "The simple thematic present ending in the 2nd person singular in East Baltic"
  September 13th, 2023, Arbeitstagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft , University of Köln. [presentation slides]


• "The 3rd person thematic ending in Baltic"
  November 30th, 2022, Indo-European Seminar, Uppsala University. [presentation slides]


• "The Baltic verbal endings - what happened to them while traveling from the IE homeland?"
  September 22nd, 2022, Tarptautinė Kazimiero Būgos konferencija, Vilnius University.


• "Dar kartą apie kláusti, klausýti ir jiems giminingų formų priešistorę (Examining once again the prehistory of kláusti, klausýti, and their related forms)"
  May 27th, 2022, 3-ioji tarptautinė hibridinė Prano Skardžiaus konferencija, Vilnius. [presentation slides]


• "Introducing Traveling Voices — The diachronic development of the voice system in the Baltic, Slavic, and Germanic branches from a migrational perspective"
  March 23rd, 2022, The Next Step — Shaping the Future of Indo-European Studies, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. [Presentation slides].

• "Diathetic problem of the Baltic ā-preterits to the simple thematic presents" Historische Sprachforschung 134 (1), 2021, 290-311.


• "The prehistory of kláusti, klausýti, and their related forms revisited" Lietuvių kalba 17, 2022, 49-60. doi: 10.15388/LK.2022.4.

As for the "travels" of the voices, so far the analysis progressed to indicate that both Germanic and Balto-Slavic inherited both athematic and thematic mediopassive conjugations. The relics of forms and the inflectional endings are distributed in different ways, though:

	Thematic	Athematic
Germanic	3sg. *hait-a-þai ‘to be called’ (Goth. haitada, ON 1sg. haite, PIE 3sg. *ḱoid-o-toi) Intransitive inchoative nasal-infix thematic present (e.g., OE climban, OHG klimban ‘to climb’ ← Northern IE *gli-n-bʰ-ó-toi)	3sg. *dugai[þ] ‘to be helpful, be fit’ (ON dugir, PIE *dʰugʰ-oi)
Baltic	Intransitive inchoative nasal-infix thematic present (e.g., Lith. 3sg./pl. -buñda ‘wake up’ [inf. -bùsti] ‘to climb’ ≺ Northern IE *b(ʰ)u-n-d(ʰ)-ó-toi)	1sg. *-mai (Lith. -mi / -mie-, PIE *-h₂ai), 2sg. *-sai (Lith. -si / -sie-, PIE *-th₂ai) Some verbs that have been sematically back-formed from the original mediopassives: 3sg./pl. rañda ‘find(s)’ ~ rañdas ‘happens’ (also possibly, sùka ‘turns (tr.)’ ~ sùkas ‘turns (intr.)’ ← *suk-(t)oi)
Slavic	Intransitive inchoative nasal-infix thematic present (e.g., OCS 3sg. -bъ(d)netъ sę ‘wakes up’ ← Northern IE *b(ʰ)u-n-d(ʰ)-ó-toi)	*kъ žьdo (r or -i?) ‘each, every’ (OCS kъžido, PIE inj. *gʰidʰ-o?)

At least for now, we could say that the mediopassive voice "traveled" together with those branches, keeping both thematic and athematic types.