Customer Reviews

The Indo-Aryan Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Masica does a decent job of what is obviously a difficult task of organizing the Indo-Aryan languages and reviewing them both synchronically and diachronically. He does review the languages using historical linguistics to trace language change from Sanskrit/Old Indo-Aryan thru Pali and the various Prakrits to the Modern Indo-Aryan languages.
However my primary fault with this book is that it doesn't read as easily as other Cambridge Language Surveys like The Dravidian Languages by Krishnamurti or The Slavic Languages by Sussex and Cubberley. He offers a chart showing the first person singular and plural pronouns but little reference to the 2nd person pronouns. More summaries showing the details of each language or language groups and their respective dialects and sample texts would have been helpful. Also he switches back and forth from one transcription system for Kashmiri to another and its difficult to track which is which. A little more organization would have increased its accessibility.