To collect the evidence for prehistoric loans, multiple subprojects were created with focuses on different Indo-European subgroups. Originally, three PhDs project were envisaged, focusing on Baltic, Italic and Armenian. Later, a fourth PhD project was added with a focus on Sardinian, a Romance language spoken in Sardinia. Finally, a postdoc project was started with a focus on Celtic.
All of the above projects resulted in collections of evidence for prehistoric language contact. One conclusion of the project is that the Indo-European subgroups of Europe were all in contact with different linguistic entities, which varied according to the different regions. However, all of these subgroups also contain evidence for early loans that were absorbed from a single non-Indo-European source. This source was likely a language with which the Indo-European branches came into contact soon after their split from Proto-Indo-European.
Another important result is that not just the European Indo-European languages were in contact with a single non-Indo-European languages, but in fact also Armenian and possibly Indo-Iranian, despite nowadays being spoken in Asia.
This suggests that most of the Indo-European languages, including the languages that ultimately migrated to Asia, were impacted by the same pre-Indo-European language or language family. These prehistoric contacts could have taken place west of the Yamnaya culture, in East Europe, from from the start of the 3rd millennium BCE. However, it cannot be excluded that these contacts continued deeper inside Europe, until later.
The project results are presented in as many as four dissertations as well as multiple standalone papers. In addition, the project has resulted in a multi-author volume, which offers a range of contributions to the reconstruction of the pre-Indo-European linguistic landscape of Europe. In addition, they offer possible new ways for improving the methodology by which prehistoric loans can be identified and analyzed.
