This book is an investigation of how semivowels were realised in Indo-European and in early Greek. More specifically, it examines the extent to which Indo-European *i and *y were independent phonemes, in what respects their alternation was predictable, and how this situation changed as Indo-European developed into Greek. The comprehensive nature of this study, its chronological sensitivity, and careful assessment of what is inherited and what is innovative, enables substantive conclusions to be drawn regarding the behaviour of semivowels at various stages in the history of Greek and in Indo-European itself.

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.

In The Indo-European Syllable Andrew Miles Byrd investigates the process of syllabification within Proto-Indo-European (PIE), revealing connections to a number of seemingly unrelated phonological processes in the proto-language. Drawing from insights in linguistic typology and synchronic theory, he makes two significant advances in our understanding of PIE phonology. First, by analyzing securely reconstructable consonant clusters at word’s edge, he devises a methodology which allows us to predict which types of consonant clusters could occur word-medially in PIE. Thus, a number of previously disconnected phonological rules can now be understood as being part of a conspiracy motivated by violations in syllable structure. Second, he uncovers evidence of morphological influence within the syllable, created by processes such as quantitative ablaut. These advances allow us to view PIE as a synchronic grammar, one which can be described by -- and contribute to -- modern linguistic theory.

This book traces the development of Greek from Proto-Indo-European to around the 5th century BC, drawing on all the tools of scientific historical and comparative linguistics. Don Ringe begins by outlining the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, focusing on its complex phonology, phonological rules, and inflectional morphology. He then discusses the changes in both phonology and inflectional morphology that took place in the development of Greek up to the point at which the dialects began to diverge, seeking to establish chronological relationships between those changes. The book places particular emphasis on the diversification of Greek into the attested groups of dialects, the relationship between those dialects, and the extent to which innovations spread across dialect boundaries. The final two chapters cover syntactic changes in the prehistory and history of Ancient Greek, and the sources of the Ancient Greek lexicon. The volume contributes to long-standing debates surrounding the classification of Ancient Greek dialects, and offers a discussion of the tension between cladistics and contact phenomena that is relevant to the study of the relationships within any language family.

This book presents the most comprehensive coverage of the field of Indo-European Linguistics in a century, focusing on the entire Indo-European family and treating each major branch and most minor languages. The collaborative work of 120 scholars from 22 countries, Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics combines the exhaustive coverage of an encyclopedia with the in-depth treatment of individual monographic studies.

This book describes the earliest reconstructable stages of the prehistory of English, focusing specifically on linguistic structure. It outlines the grammar of Proto-Indo-European, considers the changes by which one dialect of that prehistoric language developed into Proto-Germanic, and provides a detailed account of the grammar of Proto-Germanic. In the course of his exposition Don Ringe draws on a long tradition of work on many languages, including Hittite, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Slavic, Gothic, and Old Norse. This second edition has been significantly revised to provide a more in-depth account of Proto-Indo-European, with further exploration of disputed points; it has also been updated to include new developments in the field, particularly in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European verb and nominal inflection. The author also reconsiders some of his original approaches to specific linguistic changes and their relative chronology based on his recent research. This new edition of the first volume in A Linguistic History of English will be of central interest to all scholars and students of comparative Indo-European and Germanic linguistics, the history of English, and historical linguistics more generally. The second volume, The Development of Old English by Don Ringe and Ann Taylor, was published by OUP in 2014 (paperback 2016)

This book traces the evolution of the Indo-European verbal system from the early proto-language to the period of the first Greek texts.

The volume assembles about 50 contributions presented at the Intenational Colloquium on Ancient Greek Linguistics, held in Rome, March 2015. This Colloquium opened a new series of international conferences that has replaced previous national meetings on this subject. They embrace essential topics of Ancient Greek Linguistics with different theoretical and methodological approaches: particles and their functional uses; phonology; tense, aspect, modality; syntax and thematic roles; lexicon and onomastics; Greek and other languages; speech acts and pragmatics.

Fulk’s Comparative Grammar offers an overview of and bibliographical guide to the study of the phonology and the inflectional morphology of the earliest Germanic languages, with particular attention to Gothic, Old Norse / Icelandic, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, and Old High German, along with some attention to the more sparsely attested languages. The sounds and inflections of the oldest Germanic languages are compared, with a view to reconstructing the forms they took in Proto-Germanic and comparing those reconstructed forms with what is known of the Indo-European protolanguage. Students will find the book an informative introduction and a bibliographically instructive point of departure for intensive research in the numerous issues that remain profoundly contested in early Germanic language history.

As one of the most debated categories of Tocharian nominal morphology, grammatical gender is in this book investigated from the point of view of Indo-European comparative reconstruction, by applying the methods of historical linguistics, Tocharian philology, and typological linguistics.