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PROTO-INDO-IRANIAN LANGUAGE
Proto-Indo-Iranian, was the Indo-European language spoken by the Proto-Indo-Iranians in the late 3rd millennium BC. It was a Satem language, likely removed less than a millennium from the late Proto-Indo-European language, and in turn removed less than a millennium from the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda. It is the ancestor of the Indo-Aryan languages, the Iranian languages and the Nuristani languages. The main phonological change separating Proto-Indo-Iranian from Proto-Indo-European is the collapse of the ablauting vowels *e, *o, *a into a single vowel, Proto-Indo-Iranian *a (but see Brugmann's law). Grassmann's law, Bartholomae's law, and the Ruki sound law were also complete in Proto-Indo-Iranian.
Among the sound changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian to Indo-Aryan is the loss of the voiced sibilant *z, among those to Iranian is the de-aspiration of the PIE voiced aspirates.
References
Asko Parpola, 'The formation of the Aryan branch of Indo-European', in Blench and Spriggs (eds), Archaeology and Language III, London and New York (1999).
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