Paul Widmer - Böcker

The contents of the present volume will enhance our understanding of the diachrony of agreement systems and provide a useful starting point for future studies on this both fascinating and intricate field of research.

The ability to compare is fundamental to human cognition. Expressing various types of comparison is thus essential to any language. The present volume presents detailed grammatical descriptions of how comparison and gradation are expressed in ancient Indo-European languages. The detailed chapters devoted to the individual languages go far beyond standard handbook knowledge. Each chapter is structured the same way to facilitate cross-reference and (typological) comparison. The data are presented in a top-down fashion and in a format easily accessible to the linguistic community.The topics covered are similatives, equatives, comparatives, superlatives, elatives, and excessives. Each type of comparison is illustrated with glossed examples of all its attested grammatical realizations.The book is an indispensable tool for typologists, historical linguists, and students of the syntax and morphosyntax of comparison.

The prototypical reflexive and the prototypical middle are two ways of conceptualizing an event with at least two participants where two participant roles are coreferential. While the formal exponents of the reflexive and the middle typically overlap in natural languages, they are also polysemous. Multiple factors besides participant distinguishability determine the patterns attested in individual languages. The papers included in this handbook give an exhaustive overview of how (notional) reflexives and (notional) middles are expressed in Ancient Indo-European languages. For each language, the survey is extended to non-prototypical uses of the reflexive and middle markers and constructions. The detailed chapters devoted to the individual languages go far beyond standard handbook knowledge. Each attested pattern is illustrated extensively with glossed examples. The volume is an indispensable tool for typologists, historical linguists, and students of coreferentiality, reflexivity and the middle.