The German verb sein (“to be”) presents one of the most ancient and complex examples of suppletion within the Indo-European languages. Its forms derive from several distinct Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots h₁es- (“to be”), bʰuH- (“to become”), and h₂wes- (“to dwell”) which merged over millennia into a single verbal paradigm. This paper examines the historical development of sein and its cognates across the Germanic languages, focusing on the role of bʰuH- and h₂wes- in shaping the present and past tense structures. By comparing cognate evidence from Sanskrit, Greek, Tocharian, and other Indo-European branches, the study highlights the unique Germanic innovation of using h₂wes- to form past-tense morphology, in contrast to the typical use of bʰuH- elsewhere in the Indo-European family. This analysis demonstrates that the verb “to be” preserves traces of ancient semantic distinctions between being, becoming, and dwelling—and that these distinctions illuminate the deep conceptual history of existence and identity in Indo-European thought.

Proto-Indo-European, suppletion, verb sein

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