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Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin
This celebrated work by one of the foremost experts in Indo-European and Classical linguistics is now available in a fully revised second edition, thoroughly updated and corrected with over fifty pages of new material. The Outline's forty-five chapters offer a wealth of knowledge for both the generalist and the specialist in their treatment of the development of Latin from its earliest prehistoric origins down to the modern Romance languages. Not only covering the language's phonological, morphological, and syntactic prehistory in great depth, they also include important subsidiary topics like language contact and Etruscan. Basic information is presented in concise outline format in the main text and is augmented by countless additional details that populate the footnotes. The book concludes with an extensive bibliography followed by complete indices of forms, ancient sources, and subjects.
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695 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Michael Weiss
9 booksLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name.
Michael Weiss is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1993 and taught at Yale and the University of of North Carolina before returning to Ithaca in 2000. He has also taught at the Leiden Summer School in Linguistics, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Vienna.
Michael Weiss is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1993 and taught at Yale and the University of of North Carolina before returning to Ithaca in 2000. He has also taught at the Leiden Summer School in Linguistics, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Vienna.
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June 21, 2021
Very ambitious and carried through surprisingly well. It's not often a book that is this much fun to read through linearly is also as useful as this as a reference work. Latin is, of course, a hideous language with a horrible convoluted history, but Weiss manages to provide a very decent set of handles on the whole thing. There are obviously many things to disagree with, but there are always going to be.
Also much appreciated are the chapter on Etruscan, which manages to be a lot more helpful in a lot less space than a certain well-regarded de-facto standard work that could be named, and the final chapter on later developments in the Romance languages, which makes a pretty good effort at a reasonable level.
If I manage to maintain an interest in Latin for long enough to finish my degree, it'll mainly be thanks to Weiss.
Also much appreciated are the chapter on Etruscan, which manages to be a lot more helpful in a lot less space than a certain well-regarded de-facto standard work that could be named, and the final chapter on later developments in the Romance languages, which makes a pretty good effort at a reasonable level.
If I manage to maintain an interest in Latin for long enough to finish my degree, it'll mainly be thanks to Weiss.
Displaying 1 of 1 review