Thomas Olander – författare

Recent developments in aDNA has reshaped our understanding of later European prehistory, and at the same time also opened up for more fruitful collaborations between archaeologists and historical linguists. Two revolutionary genetic studies, published independently in Nature, 2015, showed that prehistoric Europe underwent two successive waves of migration, one from Anatolia consistent with the introduction of agriculture, and a later influx from the Pontic-Caspian steppes which without any reasonable doubt pinpoints the archaeological Yamnaya complex as the cradle of (Core-)Indo-European languages. Now, for the first time, when the preliminaries are clear, it is possible for the fields of genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics to cooperate in a constructive fashion to refine our knowledge of the Indo-European homeland, migrations, society and language. For the historical-comparative linguists, this opens up a wealth of exciting perspectives and new working fields in the intersections between linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, for the archaeologists and geneticists, on the other hand, the linguistic contributions help to endow the material findings with a voice from the past. The present selection of papers illustrate the importance of an open interdisciplinary discussion which will gradually help us in our quest of Tracing the Indo-Europeans.

Boken är resultatet av ett forskningsprogram i vilket deltagarna har arbetat för att fördjupa förståelsen av de indoeuropeiska språkens och kulturernas ursprung och utveckling. Genom att förena språkvetenskap, arkeologi och religionshistoria har projektet undersökt hur språkliga och kulturella mönster kan rekonstrueras och analyseras för att belysa förhistoriska samhällen. Projektet tar avstamp i de indoeuropeiska språkens särställning som en av världens mest spridda språkfamiljer. Dessa språk delar ett gemensamt ursprung, som forskningen länge arbetat med att rekonstruera genom att jämföra språkens ljud, grammatik och ordförråd. Ändå återstår många grundläggande frågor: Hur spreds språken? Vilka samhällen bar upp dem? Och hur förhöll sig språk, riter och ekologiska omständigheter till varandra? Författarna har närmat sig dessa frågor genom en ansats där ekologi, teknologi och symboler getts en central plats – något som visat sig fruktbart för att förstå språkens och kulturernas djupt sammanlänkade utveckling.

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.

Proto-Slavic, the reconstructed ancestor of the Slavic languages, presents a rich inflectional system inherited from Proto-Indo-European. In this handbook all the inflectional endings of Proto-Slavic are traced back to Proto-Indo-European through a systematic comparison with the corresponding forms in related languages.Applying a redefinition of Proto-Slavic based on prehistoric loanword relations with neighbouring non-Slavic languages, Thomas Olander provides a new look at the Proto-Slavic inflectional system. The systematic, coherent and exhaustive approach laid out in the handbook paves the way for new solutions to long-standing problems of Slavic historical grammar.

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.

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.

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.

Why does the accent jump back and forth in Russian words like golová 'head', acc. gólovu, gen. golový, dat. golové etc.? How come we find similar alternations in other Slavic languages and in a Baltic language like Lithuanian? The quest for the origin of the so-called "mobile accent paradigms" of Baltic and Slavic leads the reader through other Indo-European language branches such as Indo-Iranian, Greek and Germanic, all of which are relevant to the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European accentuation system. After the examination of the evidence for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European accentuation system, focus is moved to the Baltic and Slavic accentuation systems and their relationship to each other and to Proto-Indo-European.A comprehensive history of research and numerous bibliographical references to earlier pieces of scholarship throughout the book make it a useful tool for anybody who is interested in Balto-Slavic and Indo-European accentology. Written in a simple style and constantly aiming at presenting old and new opinions on the various problems, the volume may serve as an introduction to this complicated field.

Why does the accent jump back and forth in Russian words like golová ''head'', acc. gólovu, gen. golový, dat. golové etc.? How come we find similar alternations in other Slavic languages and in a Baltic language like Lithuanian?

The quest for the origin of the so-called "mobile accent paradigms" of Baltic and Slavic leads the reader through other Indo-European language branches such as Indo-Iranian, Greek and Germanic, all of which are relevant to the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European accentuation system. After the examination of the evidence for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European accentuation system, focus is moved to the Baltic and Slavic accentuation systems and their relationship to each other and to Proto-Indo-European.

A comprehensive history of research and numerous bibliographical references to earlier pieces of scholarship throughout the book make it a useful tool for anybody who is interested in Balto-Slavic and Indo-European accentology. Written in a simple style and constantly aiming at presenting old and new opinions on the various problems, the volume may serve as an introduction to this complicated field.

Text in English & German. The present volume contains selected papers from a symposium on Internal Reconstruction in Indo- European: Methods, Results and Problems, which formed a subsection of the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held at the University of Copenhagen. This is one of the first international conferences ever to deal with internal reconstruction. Internal reconstruction is what the historical linguist resorts to when the possibilities of more traditional comparative reconstruction have been exhausted. This is certainly the case at the level of the protolanguage: when Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed on the basis of a painstaking comparative analysis of the entire data field drawing on the full range of extant lE languages, there are quite often questions still left unanswered. Comparable methods can be applied to later stages of the language where the immediate prehistory is not accessible or a corroboration is wanted. Today, internal reconstruction is routinely applied at all levels of historical linguistic analysis as one of the tools that open up the linguistic prehistory. The papers published illustrate the full range of the phenomenon of internal reconstruction.

One of the most detailed and comprehensive studies of Indo-European phonology, this book brings together leading linguists working in Indo-European studies to examine both the broadest definitions of the group -- from minute phonetics to abstract levels of phonemics centring on all varieties of Indo-European -- and individual branches, with contributions on Celtic, Anatolian, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Italic, Armenian, and even Euphratic.

Ablaut, the grammatically conditioned vowel alternations found in e.g. English sing vs. sang vs. sung, is one of the most characteristic features of the Indo-European languages. The different ablaut grades seem to be related to the position of the accent in Proto-Indo-European. A good understanding of the relationship between accent and ablaut in Proto-Indo-European requires thorough analyses of the role played by the two phenomena in the Indo-European daughter languages. The aim of the volume is to present the state of the art in current work on accent and ablaut in Proto-Indo-European and its daughter languages. The contributors analyse the interplay between accent and ablaut with attention both to theoretical aspects and to the specific linguistic material. Presenting up-to-date overviews of the models developed by various schools of thought, the contributors discuss a wide array of empirical as well as methodological problems, thus opening up vistas for further research.

Ablaut, the grammatically conditioned vowel alternations found in e.g. English sing vs. sang vs. sung, is one of the most characteristic features of the Indo-European languages. The different ablaut grades seem to be related to the position of the accent in Proto-Indo-European. A good understanding of the relationship between accent and ablaut in Proto-Indo-European requires thorough analyses of the role played by the two phenomena in the Indo-European daughter languages. The aim of the volume is to present the state of the art in current work on accent and ablaut in Proto-Indo-European and its daughter languages. The contributors analyse the interplay between accent and ablaut with attention both to theoretical aspects and to the specific linguistic material. Presenting up-to-date overviews of the models developed by various schools of thought, the contributors discuss a wide array of empirical as well as methodological problems, thus opening up vistas for further research.

Tocharian and Indo-European Studies (TIES) publishes central topics on the two closely related languages Tocharian A and B, attested in Central Asian Buddhist manuscripts dating from the second half of the first millennium AD. It focuses on philological and linguistic aspects of Tocharian, and its relation with the other Indo-European languages.

Tocharian and Indo-European Studies is the central publication for the study of two closely related languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B. Found in many Buddhist manuscripts from central Asia, Tocharian dates back to the second half of the first millennium of the Common Era, though it was not discovered until the twentieth century. Focusing on both philological and linguistic aspects of this language, Tocharian and Indo-European Studies also looks at it in relationship to other Indo-European languages. This issue addresses topics such as the function and origin of the present suffix "-sk", verbal endings, the words for "fear" and "perfume", secular documents, and Tocharian glosses in Sanskrit manuscripts.

Tocharian and Indo-European Studies is the central publication for the study of two closely related languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B. Found in many Buddhist manuscripts from central Asia, Tocharian dates back to the second half of the first millennium of the Common Era, though it was not discovered until the twentieth century. Focusing on both philological and linguistic aspects of this language, Tocharian and Indo-European Studies also looks at it in relationship to other Indo-European languages.

This volume contains eighteen contributions to the increasingly detailed discussion about neolithic and bronze-age Europe. It touches on the arrival of Uralic and Indo-European settlers, on the origins of their languages, their customs, and pantheon. The contributors are historical linguists, archaeologists and geneticists; some interpret actual scientific findings, others go to the core of the methodology applied in the various subfields. The interdisciplinary perspective on this epoch in European history has proven particularly fruitful ever since genetics became a reliable player in the field. The volume contains the proceedings of the first Scandinavian conference dedicated to this approach.

Tocharian and Indo-European Studies is the central publication for the study of two closely related languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B. Found in many Buddhist manuscripts from central Asia, Tocharian dates back to the second half of the first millennium of the Common Era, though it was not discovered until the twentieth century. Focusing on both philological and linguistic aspects of this language, this volume also looks at Tocharian in relationship to other Indo-European languages.