Leiden Studies in Indo-European – serie

In The Precursors of Proto-Indo-European some of the world’s leading experts in historical linguistics shed new light on two hypotheses about the prehistory of the Indo-European language family, the so-called Indo-Anatolian and Indo-Uralic hypotheses. The Indo-Anatolian hypothesis states that the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family should be viewed as a sister language of ‘classical’ Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of all the other, non-Anatolian branches. The common ancestor of all Indo-European languages, including Anatolian, can then be called Proto-Indo-Anatolian. The Indo-Uralic hypothesis states that the closest genetic relative of Indo-European is the Uralic language family, and that both derive from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-Uralic. The book unravels the history of these hypotheses and scrutinizes the evidence for and against them.Contributors are Stefan H. Bauhaus, Rasmus G. Bjørn, Dag Haug, Petri Kallio, Simona Klemenčič, Alwin Kloekhorst, Frederik Kortlandt, Guus Kroonen, Martin J. Kümmel, Milan Lopuhaä-Zwakenberg, Alexander Lubotsky, Rosemarie Lühr, Michaël Peyrot, Tijmen Pronk, Andrei Sideltsev, Michiel de Vaan, Mikhail Zhivlov.

How can we explain metrical irregularities in Homeric phrases like ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην? What do such phrases tell us about the antiquity of the epic tradition? And how did doublet forms such as τέτρατος beside τέταρτος originate?In this book, you will find the first systematic and complete account of the syllabic liquids in Ancient Greek. It provides an up-to-date, comprehensive and innovative etymological treatment of material from all dialects, including Mycenaean. A new model of linguistic change in the epic tradition is used to tackle two hotly-debated problems: metrical irregularities in Homer (including muta cum liquida) and the double reflex. The proposed solution has important consequences for Greek dialect classification and the prehistory of Epic language and meter.

Homeric language fascinates because of its many oddities with respect to other forms of Ancient Greek. From which dialects did this poetic language take shape and develop? In which ways did individual poets alter the language? In this volume you will find twelve cutting-edge studies on linguistic change in oral traditions, with a focus on Early Greek epic but also including Near-Eastern traditions (Biblical Hebrew, Quranic Arabic). Several studies focus on an innovative idea of phonological change occurring within an oral tradition. You will also find studies on the adaptation of linguistic form to meter; formulae and epithets; and contact between different traditions or registers.

The East Baltic languages are well known for their conservative phonology as compared to other Indo-European languages, which has led to a stereotype that the Balts developed in isolation without much contact with other speech communities. This book challenges that view, taking a deep dive into the East Baltic lexicon and peeling away the layers of prehistoric borrowings in the process. As well as significant contact events with known languages, the lexicon also reveals evidence of contact with unattested languages from which previous populations must have shifted.

During the past decade, the ancient DNA revolution has had a massive impact on the scholarly debates on the origins and dispersals of language families. Now, linguists are asking the question: does linguistic and genetic evidence paint the same picture of the human past? This book sheds new light on an old hypothesis on the relatedness of Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages, by studying unique lexical correspondences of these branches. It argues that their common Indo-Slavic origin supports an emerging picture based on ancient DNA, which shows a genetic relationship between prehistoric populations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

"How did the Tocharians reach China?" "Who did they meet on the way?” are some of the most intriguing questions in Indo-European studies. This book is zooming in on a specific part of the question: on their way to China, Tocharians were in contact with an Iranian people living in the south Siberian Steppes, and with a people related to the Oxus Civilization (BMAC). This Iranian people spoke a specific language, called here “Old Steppe Iranian”. They gave Tocharians many words, such as mañiye ‘servant’, etswe ‘burden-carrying horse’ or ‘mule’, pāke ‘portion, share’. The BMAC-related people gave the Tocharians other words such as etre ‘hero’ and kercapo ‘donkey’. This book reconstructs features of the language of both these peoples, and examines how they influenced the Tocharians. Based on the latest archaeological findings, it also suggests a reconstruction of the chronology and the way the Tocharians followed before entering the Tarim Basin. Winner of the 2nd prize for the best dissertation of the Indogermanische Gesellschaft prize for the best Indo-European studies dissertation.

This book provides an introduction to the historical syntax of the Indo-European languages. It aims to provide an overview of the main issues concerning the comparison of syntactic structrures within the language family and the reconstruction of their common ancestor.Click here for Part 2

This book provides an introduction to the historical syntax of the Indo-European languages. It aims to provide an overview of the main issues concerning the comparison of syntactic structrures within the language family and the reconstruction of their common ancestor.Click here for Part 1

An increasing number of historical linguists now believe that the traditional reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European stop system (*T, *D, *Dh) is likely flawed. Yet, despite various proposed alternatives—ranging from systems featuring glottalised or non-plosive consonants to those based on length contrasts—no single theory has achieved broad consensus. This volume, comprising twenty chapters, brings together leading specialists who examine all relevant data, as well as comparative and typological arguments, to reassess the Proto-Indo-European stop inventory. It also offers the most up-to-date analyses of the evolution of the stop systems across the individual Indo-European branches.Contributors are: Pascale Eskes, Alwin Kloekhorst, Martin Joachim Kümmel, Rianne van Lieburg, Orsat Ligorio, Alexander Lubotsky, Ranko Matasović, Brett Miller, Michaël Peyrot, Tijmen Pronk, Joseph Salmons, Ollie Sayeed, Peter Schrijver, Michiel de Vaan, and Bert Vaux.

This volume offers a discussion of the phonological, accentological and morphological development of the Baltic languages and their Indo-European origins. The first half of this book is about Baltic historical phonology and morphology and the second half is about Prussian. The emphasis is on the relative chronology of sound changes and on the development of the flexional and derivational categories of nouns, pronouns and verbs. It is argued that the Balto-Slavic acute tone was a glottal stop which developed from the Indo-European laryngeals and from Winter’s law and that the original circumflex continues other vocalic sequences. Special points of attention are the gen.pl. endings, ē and ī/jā stems, and thematic and athematic present endings. The second half of the book contains a comparative analysis of the three Prussian catechisms, resulting in the conclusion that they represent three consecutive stages of a real linguistic system. It includes a discussion of the Prussian accent shift, initial vowels, diphthongs, infinitives, verb classes, participles and traces of ablauting paradigms. The final part of the book offers a full linguistic interpretation of the three Prussian catechisms on the basis of the preceding chapters, followed by a list of references and a word index. The book is of interest to Balticists, Slavicists, Indo-Europeanists, and other historical linguists.

The red thread which runs through this book is a quest for relative chronology of linguistic developments. The probability of a reconstruction can be judged against the background of the transitions which it implies for the linguistic system as a whole. The reconstructions are always bottom-up, never top-down. It follows that the chapters on Germanic can be read without reference to the Indo-European background and that the Indo-Uralic part of the book can be left out of consideration if one does not want to look beyond Proto-Indo-European. The initial chapters of the book offer an introduction to the background and methodology of the reconstructions with a discussion of the spread of the Indo-Europeans, the role of general linguistics in linguistic reconstruction, the nature of mixed languages, the origin of the Goths, the relations between Indo-European, Uralic and Caucasian languages, and the structure and development of Proto-Indo-European. The following chapters deal with the phonology and morphosyntax of Indo-European, Greek, Indo-Iranian and Tocharian. These are followed by a discussion of Germanic phonology, verb classes, verbal and nominal inflexion, and specific issues in English, German and Scandinavian languages. After a short treatment of Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic and Italo-Celtic topics, the volume is concluded with a discussion of Anatolian and Indo-Uralic phonology and morphosyntax. The book is of interest to students of Germanic, Indo-European and historical linguistics.

The n-stems are an intriguing part of Proto-Germanic morphology. Unlike any other noun class, the n-stems have roots that are characterized by systematic consonant and vowel alternations across the different Germanic dialects. This monograph represents a diachronic investigation of this root variation. It traces back the Germanic n-stems to their Indo-European origin, and clarifies their formal characteristics by an interaction of sound law and analogy. This book therefore is not just an attempt to account for the typology of the Germanic n-stems, but also a case study of the impact that sound change may have on the evolution of morphology and derivation.