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Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An introduction
The book gives a comprehensive introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, the first to appear in English. It starts with a presentation of the languages of the family (from English and the other Germanic languages, the Celtic and Slavic languages, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit through Armenian and Albanian) and a discussion of the culture and origin of the Indo-Europeans, the speakers of the Indo-European proto-language, who are considered to have lived in what is today the Ukraine.The book gives an introduction into the nature of language change and the methods of reconstruction of older language stages, with many examples (from the Indo-European languages). A full description is given of the sound changes, which makes it possible to follow the origin of the different Indo-European languages step by step. This is followed by a discussion of the development of all the morphological categories of Proto-Indo-European.
The book presents the latest in scholarly insights, like the laryngeal and glottalic theory, the accentuation, the ablaut patterns, and these are systematically integrated into the treatment.
While the book presents a large amount of material and discusses many principles and the relevant terminology, it is written in a very readable and lucid style. Use of the book is facilitated by an appendix on phonetics, a glossary, full indexes, and an extensive bibliography. The book can be used as a first introduction to the field, and at the same time brings the reader to the current moment of research.
The book presents the latest in scholarly insights, like the laryngeal and glottalic theory, the accentuation, the ablaut patterns, and these are systematically integrated into the treatment.
While the book presents a large amount of material and discusses many principles and the relevant terminology, it is written in a very readable and lucid style. Use of the book is facilitated by an appendix on phonetics, a glossary, full indexes, and an extensive bibliography. The book can be used as a first introduction to the field, and at the same time brings the reader to the current moment of research.
398 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Robert S.P. Beekes
9 booksRobert Stephen Paul Beekes was a Dutch linguist and emeritus professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 20, 2020
In 1990 Beekes wrote Vergelijkende Taalkunde, which was translated into English in 1995, with that translation then being revised for a second edition by Michiel De Vaan in 2011. The result is a very practical introduction to comparative linguistics and the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European that, for all its practicality (not to mention the stellar reputations of its authors), is also unfortunately rife with minor-but-still-relevant errors (on the order of e.g. "Almost without exception, all the languages of Europe which have survived are Indo-European languages: the exceptions are Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Basque") and very—sometimes notoriously—controversial claims stated as bare facts (e.g. "The lexicon [...] of Armenian contains the largest number of similarities with Greek of all the main Indo-European branches"); both things that are annoyingly well-tolerated in Dutch-language undergrad textbooks in my experience, but now much less so in the Anglosphere.
To that it adds a litany of minor sins that are irritating in any language: another non-standard phonetic alphabet (an appendix calls it IPA but it extremely isn't; the linked website elucidating it is now gone and not archived), transcribed Greek (occasionally ambiguous, always harder to parse; the Greek alphabet takes all of ten minutes to master and as an Indo-Europeanist you're going to need to anyway), a section on PIE culture and the homeland that ranges from archaeologically naïve to wildly out of date,⁰ the repeated claim that Dutch collapsed its masculine and feminine genders,¹ &c. It's also true that the PIE reconstruction discussed is a very specific one—that of the Leiden school, as De Vaan also points out. I'm not equipped to assess the extent to which it diverges from any mainstream opinion in every case, so the most I can say is that it often, but definitely not always, signposts points of significant contention, usually without discussing the alternative views themselves.²
(On the topic of Leiden, Beekes' supposed "direct everyday" language that the translation tried to preserve did absolutely nothing for me except make me read the whole thing in a thick Dutch accent.)
Lest I give the impression that literally the only thing Comparative Indo-European Linguistics has going for it is its relative shortness compared to many alternatives (and it does have that going for it—and, crucially, none of its flaws are a consequence of that shortness), I should stress that it absolutely is a serviceable introduction to the field, and that a course that uses it as a textbook isn't likely to be a waste of time. But if you have the option to use something else (my tentative recommendation is Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics , though that's not as specifically about PIE; I intend to try a few other ones this year), I probably would.
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⁰ De Vaan mentions in his preface that it was rewritten based on "Mallory's book", which is presumably In Search of the Indo-Europeans . That's a great book, but it was also already over twenty years old at the time and itself definitely represents an upper bound on how sloppy that particular discussion can reasonably get. David Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language is mentioned in the updated bibliography.
¹ Hollandse zever.
² De Vaan also mentions that fully modernising the contents of the book wasn't a primary goal of his second edition, so aspects of it are presumably out of date. The only one I noticed was the brief mention of Lindeman's rule as describing a real phenomenon.
To that it adds a litany of minor sins that are irritating in any language: another non-standard phonetic alphabet (an appendix calls it IPA but it extremely isn't; the linked website elucidating it is now gone and not archived), transcribed Greek (occasionally ambiguous, always harder to parse; the Greek alphabet takes all of ten minutes to master and as an Indo-Europeanist you're going to need to anyway), a section on PIE culture and the homeland that ranges from archaeologically naïve to wildly out of date,⁰ the repeated claim that Dutch collapsed its masculine and feminine genders,¹ &c. It's also true that the PIE reconstruction discussed is a very specific one—that of the Leiden school, as De Vaan also points out. I'm not equipped to assess the extent to which it diverges from any mainstream opinion in every case, so the most I can say is that it often, but definitely not always, signposts points of significant contention, usually without discussing the alternative views themselves.²
(On the topic of Leiden, Beekes' supposed "direct everyday" language that the translation tried to preserve did absolutely nothing for me except make me read the whole thing in a thick Dutch accent.)
Lest I give the impression that literally the only thing Comparative Indo-European Linguistics has going for it is its relative shortness compared to many alternatives (and it does have that going for it—and, crucially, none of its flaws are a consequence of that shortness), I should stress that it absolutely is a serviceable introduction to the field, and that a course that uses it as a textbook isn't likely to be a waste of time. But if you have the option to use something else (my tentative recommendation is Lyle Campbell's Historical Linguistics , though that's not as specifically about PIE; I intend to try a few other ones this year), I probably would.
--------
⁰ De Vaan mentions in his preface that it was rewritten based on "Mallory's book", which is presumably In Search of the Indo-Europeans . That's a great book, but it was also already over twenty years old at the time and itself definitely represents an upper bound on how sloppy that particular discussion can reasonably get. David Anthony's The Horse, The Wheel, and Language is mentioned in the updated bibliography.
¹ Hollandse zever.
² De Vaan also mentions that fully modernising the contents of the book wasn't a primary goal of his second edition, so aspects of it are presumably out of date. The only one I noticed was the brief mention of Lindeman's rule as describing a real phenomenon.
January 17, 2014
Not the best introduction. Often seems willfully abstruse, and contains many speculations that are by no means communis opinio. Throws a lot of half-explained stuff at the reader's head that can only be understood by someone who is already deeply familiar with the material. There are better introductions to this fascinating field by Clackson, Baldi, Lehmann, and (best of the bunch): Benjamin W. Fortson IV, Indo-European Language and Culture.
May 7, 2008
A book on Indo-European comparing philology. Very interesting. It gives a bit of chronological insight in the discovering of the emerging of European languages and cultures. It also contains notations in the world wide known notation to describe sounds. So it is not an EASY read, but it sure is very interesting!
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March 20, 2010I returned this to the library before reading all of it. It isn't a book to casually read through without plenty more background on Indo-European linguistics than I have. I did take some good notes, though, on some basic principles, language families, and reconstruction. Would be a good book to pick back up after I've learned more on the topic.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews