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The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and The Proto-Indo-European World..
The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and The Proto-Indo-European World..
http://www.mediafire.com/file/mz5zmh...o-European.pdfThe Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and The Proto-Indo-European World fills the need for a relatively concise introduction to the full range of reconstructed vocabulary of the language that gave rise to the world’s largest language family. It addresses two levels of readers. The first comprises general readers and students who want to know more about the Indo-Europeans and how they spoke, as well as professionals in disciplines such as archaeology who need to deal with the early Indo-Europeans.
The second consists of linguists interested in reWning, challenging, or adding to our understanding of Proto-Indo-European.
The book is broadly divided into two parts. The first, aimed principally
at the first group of readers, gives concise introductions to: the discovery and composition of the Indo-European language family (chapters 1 and 2); the way the proto-language has been reconstructed (chapter 3); its most basic grammar (chapter 4); the interrelationships between the divergent language groups (chapter 5); and the temporal position of the Indo- European languages (chapter 6). Some of the difficulties involved in reconstructing a proto-language are described in chapter 7.
The second part, aimed at all readers, provides accounts by semantic
Weld of the Proto-Indo-European lexicon. Where the evidence suggests that an item may be reconstructed to full Proto-Indo-European antiquity, we provide a summary table giving the reconstructed form, its meaning, and its cognates in English and in the three ‘classical’ languages of Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Our survey of semantic Welds travels first into the natural world of the earth and heavens, fauna, and Xora, before moving into the human realms of anatomy, kinship, architecture, clothing, material
culture, food and drink, and social organization. It then looks at the more abstract notions of space, time and quantity, before turning to considerations of mind, perception, speech, activity, and finally religion. This organization reXects Carl Darling Buck’s in his A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages, and we have indeed aimed to do for Proto Indo-European something of what Buck did for the individual Indo-European languages.
The final three chapters describe some of the commonest grammatical elements of Proto-Indo-European, survey the methods used to reconstruct the mythology of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, and examine the various attempts at locating the Proto-Indo-European homeland. In addition to standard indexes, the book also contains two word lists: a Proto-Indo-European English list and a list of the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary arranged by its English meaning (which should at least facilitate those who delight in such tasks as translating Hamlet into Klingon).
Students and general readers will be able to gain a broad knowledge
from this book of the ancient language that underlies all the modern Indo- European languages.We hope that the arrangement of evidence by semantic group here will also stimulate research by linguists. One cannot be confronted with a list of, say, verbal roots all with the same ‘reconstructed’ meaning without wondering how their semantic valence may have diverged in the proto-language and to what extent it might be possible to recover something of their earlier nuances. Although we frequently allude to attempts to discuss the data according to some system of folk taxonomy, this is
obviously another area that has been insufficiently examined in the study of Proto-Indo-European. The various regional ascriptions of cognates will doubtless be subject to further scrutiny: the discovery of an Iranian cognate, say, to a word otherwise only found in European languages would change our conception of Proto-Indo-European itself. Other areas for further investigation include quantitative approaches to the Indo-European vocabulary (for example, phoneme preferences and investigation of sound
symbolism by semantic class), and the comparison of Proto- Indo-European with other reconstructed proto-languages.
The Proto-Indo-European field of study opens a window on a distant
past and presents the scholar and student with many opportunities
for investigation and discovery. We hope the present guide will reveal
something of its vibrancy, challenge, and endless fascination.
Later,
-Lyfing
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