The Indo-European Language FamilyThomas Olander Modern languages like English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi as well as ancient languages like Greek, Latin and Sanskrit all belong to the Indo-European language family, which means that they all descend from a common ancestor. But how, more precisely, are the Indo-European languages related to each other? This book brings together pioneering research from a team of international scholars to address this fundamental question. It provides an introduction to linguistic subgrouping as well as offering comprehensive, systematic and up-to-date analyses of the ten main branches of the Indo-European language family: Anatolian, Tocharian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic. By highlighting that these branches are saliently different from each other, yet at the same time display striking similarities, the book demonstrates the early diversification of the Indo-European language family, spoken today by half the world's population. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Methodology in Linguistic Subgrouping | 18 |
Computational Approaches to Linguistic Chronology | 33 |
What We Can and Cant Learn from Computational Cladistics | 52 |
Anatolian | 63 |
Tocharian | 83 |
ItaloCeltic | 102 |
Italic | 114 |
Celtic | 135 |
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Common terms and phrases
Aeolic Albanian Anatolian Anatolian languages aorist archaisms Armenian attested Balkan Baltic and Slavic Balto-Slavic Beek branches Brill century BCE Chapter Clackson cladistics computational consonant derived ending evidence family tree forms Frederik Germanic Goth Graeco-Armenian historical linguistics Historische Sprachforschung Hitt Hittite Indo Indo-European languages Indo-European linguistics Indo-European studies Indo-Iranian Indogermanische inflection Innsbruck Iranian isoglosses Italic and Celtic Italo-Celtic Kloekhorst Kortlandt Kümmel labiovelars language family laryngeals Latin Leiden lexical lexicon Lith Luwian Luwic Lydian MBret Meillet Melchert merger Mycenaean nasal noun Olander Olsen original Oscan Palaic PAnat PCelt Peyrot PGmc phonological Phrygian phylogenetic Porzig pronoun Proto-Balto-Slavic Proto-Celtic Proto-Indo-European Proto-Italic proto-language reconstruction reflex Reichert relative chronology Ringe root Sabellic semantic shared innovations Slavic sound changes Sprachwissenschaft stem subgroup suffix syllable thematic Toch.B Tocharian velar Venetic verbs vowel Warnow West Greek Wiesbaden word