Customer Reviews

Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics)

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This is the book I wish I'd had when I took Introduction to Indoeuropean many years ago. It covers not only the traditional topic of the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European but PIE culture, homeland, and migrations. The most valuable part is the survey of the subgroups of IE. It gives much more extensive coverage than is usual to "minor" subgroups such as Tocharian, Albanian, and Armenian, and does not ignore the lesser known languages within subgroups, such as the Anatolian languages other than Hittite and the minor Italic languages.

By providing information about the entire subgroup, not just its earliest attested languages, it avoids the overemphasis on reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European of so many books on this topic and thereby provides more of a sense of the history of the many and widespread languages of this important language family. Even for linguists, historical linguistics is not only about reconstruction of protolanguages: it is also about how particular languages have changed over time and how language change works in general. Non-linguists are also likely to be interested in questions like: "How did the Slavic languages get to be the way they are?". Books that focus exclusively on reconstruction and earliest attestations do a poor job of responding to such questions.

The view of Indo-European presented is modern, with good coverage of laryngeal theory, but appropriately conservative for an introductory book in not digressing excessively on marginal aspects of the field, such as possible remoter connections of Indo-European and reconstruction strongly influenced by typology.

It is a virtue of this book that all data is provided in romanization as this makes it accessible to people who are not already committed students of Indo-European. The fact is that it has been several generations since educated Americans or Europeans could be assumed to know Greek. Even my eighty-year old mother had a year of Greek in highschool only because the Latin teacher agreed to teach an extra class during the lunch period. For those of us who read Greek it may look funny in romanization, but this book is not intended primarily for us. Furthermore, comparison of data from different languages is facilitated by a common representation of the data.

The chapters on the various subgroups are sufficiently self-contained that they can be read independently by someone who wants to bone up on a particular group of languages so long as he or she has a basic understanding of historical linguistics and of the elements of comparative Indo-European presented in the first few chapters. The bibliographies for the chapters on subgroups focus on recent reference works and important recent developments rather than on the classics. This is appropriate for an introductory work as references to classic works and other information about the history of the field are easily obtained elsewhere.

Fortson has intended this book to be an introduction for the undergraduates, and it exactly is that, and a bit more (in my experience with undergrads, not all of them are very comfotable with learning about complicated linguistic theories).

The book's first part has sections on the history of IE studies and discusses matters of Morphology, Phonology, Nouns, Verbs, and Syntax in seperate chapters which are well written, but sometimes uneven. The second half of the book runs through each major IE linguistic subgroup, sometimes paying attention to some groups more than others.

For those previous reviewers who seem to find the book ineffcient, I have to repeat that this book has no claim of replacing Szemerenyi or Meier-Brugger, which are more advance handbooks for already well-versed IE experts. Also, for someone who asked "do we want to admit people to the field who have no Greek", my answer would be, why not? Who said Greek and Latin should be the prerequisites to IE? Why not admit someone who is familiar with Sanskrit or OCS or Avestan to the field, and then make them learn Greek? It is quite common for people with good Greek or Latin who come in and then embark upon learning Sanskrit and the rest, so why not the other way around? I disagree with the statement on the transliteratio of Greek being annoying. You would expect him to transliterate Hittite and Sanskrit and OCS and the rest, so why not Greek?

This is a useful introduction to Indo-European linguistics, and it provides the barest of introductions to the cutural aspects. These are hardly on the same level: the linguistic introduction is solid and well-developed, while the cutural aspects are barely outlined and largely undeveloped.

The book provides a reasonably comprehensive but introductory survey to each of the Indo-European language branches, as well as brief surveys within the branches. Each of these surveys looks at phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes.

This book is designed to take an absolute beginner from no knowledge in comparative linguistics to a point of having a good foundation of the comparative and historical linguistics of the Indo-European language family. While I am not entirely sure this book hits the mark there (it starts out assuming no knowledge but moves forward EXTREMELY FAST), it certainly is close.

I would recommend this work subject to the caveat that the promise of an introduction to Indo-European cultural studies is entirely unfulfilled.

Introductory handbooks to comparative Indo-European linguistics, expecting their readers to chase monographs and have some prior knowledge of comparative method and a couple of ancient languages, are plentiful. Benjamin Fortson's INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE is the first real textbook for university undergraduates, and in spite of some faults, it is to be welcomed.

What makes this a useful textbook instead of a dry handbook is exercises and a list of terminology to review at the end of each chapter. People new to the field can make sure they're keeping up with so much new information, and even those who have already slogged through the primers of Szeremenyi or Lehmann will be pleased to check how much they've retained. Fortson begins by giving a clear and concise introduction to comparative method and shows how this allowed early 19-century thinkers to work a coherent system out of the resemblance between so many Western languages. The second half of the book explores each of the branches of Indo-European in depth, admirably giving more attention to Tocharian and Albanian than most primers. The Baltic and Slavonic languages are treated together in a single chapter (and, darn it, no coverage of the Slavonic accent). A final chapter covers languages whose preservation is fragmentary.

Fortson's work is not perfect. He transliterates Greek words, resulting in text that is annoying for those who already have some experience with Greek in its own natural alphabet. Furthermore, do we really want to be inviting people into the field when they have no prior experience with Greek? Fortson also neglects much of the exciting application of typology to reconstruction in the last quarter-century, and though he treats laryngeals as a matter of course, the outlook on the language isn't so different from conservative handbooks like Szeremenyi's. Finally, I disagreed with his decision to discuss the modern languages of each branch, instead of the first attested language as usual. This enlarged the work with data not terribly useful for reconstruction.

If you are interested in comparative Indo-European linguistics, there's no single book that can do it all. I would recommend obtaining, at the very least, Lehmann's THEORETICAL BASES, Sihler's NEW COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF GREEK AND LATIN, and Gamkrelidze & Ivanov's controversial but exciting INDO-EUROPEAN AND THE INDO-EUROPEANS. However, Fortson's textbook is a worthy purchase, especially for those with no prior experience with diachronic linguistics.

This book comes in two parts, an overview of Proto-Indo-European (including cultural as well as linguistic considerations), and a survey of each branch of the family. The first part serves its purpose fairly well as an introduction, although I'm not sure how much sense the discussion of (say) the verbal system makes without experience in at least one old IE language. Still, the discussions of IE grammar are relatively clear and accessible. If you want a more elegant view of this material, I recommend James Clackson's Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics), which covers much the same material in a crystal clear style, and navigates the controversies of reconstruction a bit more masterfully (unsurprising, since Clackson's book is explicitly designed to cover the controversial aspects of the field for a relative beginner). I highly recommend using these two books together (especially since Clackson has no survey of the branches as Fortson does).

The second half is where Fortson really shines. Each chapter covers one particular branch, and they can easily be read independently of each other in any order. If some reviewers aren't interested in all the branches, or in some of the more recent languages which Fortson discusses, then they can just skip those sections; Fortson makes it easy. Each chapter contains sections on history and culture, outlines the main characteristics of each branch, and then discusses the grammatical features each sub-family within the branch. These are hardly complete grammars, of course, but Fortson generally does an excellent job of capturing some of the most striking features of each family, and whetting your appetite for more. The text samples for you to work through are very nice features.

Fortson ends each chapter with a Further Reading section, which often contains some important reference grammars, dictionaries, and articles for the family. The main lack is that Fortson generally does not suggest pedagogical grammars, which is a shame since the book introduces languages so well that I (at least) often want to follow up study with a good, reliable teaching resource. It would save a great deal of uncertainty and searching if Fortson had offered some recommendations to begin with (though I can appreciate the difficulty this would have created for the author, since recommending pedagogical grammars is so often a matter of explaining the pros and cons of a number of imperfect resources).

I'm giving this book five stars since I feel that it's intended audience--interested students or dilettantes--will find this an amazingly valuable introduction which really does contain a wealth of information. Read this in conjunction with Clackson, and you will get an excellent overview of Proto-Indo-European, as well as nice introductions to each of the sub-families (which are usually fascinating even internally, regardless of their value for PIE reconstruction). There's a lot more to IE linguistics than can possibly be covered in these two books, but they provide very solid foundations for further language study or reading about the field.

Four stars is being a little ungenerous, and I wouldn't want to discourage you from buying this book. Because have no doubt this is the best introduction and companion to Indo-European comparative philology going. If you want only one book, this is the one. But that doesn't mean it's perfect !

The format is a breakthrough, combining both a linguistic overview of Proto-Indo-European, and a detailed panorama of the descendant languages. Rather than a paragraph or two, which is usually all that other handbooks include, each language group is treated in such detail (including original texts) that you can use this book as a starting-point for serious study - including otherwise very inaccessible and forbidding, though important, languages such as Hittite. If you can't devote the time to learn Sanskrit, for example, the chapter in this book can at least give you a real grounding in its structure. It's more than just a bluffer's guide.

The linguistic section is clear and effective as an introduction, and passes the greatest test of clarity in being able to explain the laryngeal theory. For the first time I was able to understand it fully, and was convinced of its necessity. It turns out that it actually simplifies so much in the traditional, over-elaborate accounts of the Proto-Indo-European vowel system. It is also founded on (and exhibits really well) the soundest principles of the comparative method.

The wider discussion of Indo-European culture is succinct but (or hence?) excellent. A helpful feature is the giving of not just a full bibliography, but some guidance and critical comments on further reading as well - making for easy orientation into a subject with a large literature.

Improvements are possible, however. (Perhaps the things that strike me come from an old-fashioned point of view.) I don't think the book makes enough use of its typeface to aid clarity and easy learning (as well as use for quick reference), something that old (mostly German) handbooks were good at - things like summary charts and tables (e.g. a two-page spread showing sound correspondences between Proto-Indo-European and the key daughter languages would be good), or different sizes or boldness of fonts to highlight key information. It could present more of the basic data, again following the practice of older handbooks, which would present a row of cognate words for each sound, chosen for maximum interest so that other linguistic and cultural side-issues could be introduced. None of this is absent from Fortson's book, just not used as fully as it might. A more traditional setting out of the basic material comes in Szemerenyi's Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics, but for beautifully chosen example-words Hans Krahe's little Sammlung Goschen books are still valuable (though out-of-date otherwise, even when last revised in the 1960s). (Bear in mind that Szemerenyi takes a sceptical view of laryngeals.)

There is not much on word-formation, and most of it is on compounds. Still exemplary, but again badly out-of-date, is C.D. Buck's 1930s account in his 'Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin'. As well as compounds, he discusses systematically all of the suffixes and stem-types, including what semantic effect can be inferred for them. This really does belong in any introductory handbook, but always seems to be shied away from. Another feature of Buck is his engaging introduction to the principles of linguistic and semantic change, and maybe Fortson could have said more here, whether on the mechanisms of linguistic change (stem-theory, wave-theory, etc.), or on some of the theoretical bases of dialectology (e.g. the isogloss) - in other words some orientation into the field of etymology.

I would also have liked there to be some discussion of the debate over the 'Old European Hydronymy'. It has vital cultural implications, and makes an interesting case study in 'applied' comparative philology - even for an introductory handbook.

But these are all minor criticisms, and really only aimed at an ideal of a complete statement on the subject in one standalone handbook. This is a book that deserves to become a standard introduction to the subject and I hope it goes through many more editions.

And hopefully a later edition will come out in hard covers, because physically the book is somehow a little unwieldy - in the tradition of large, floppy, paperback college textbooks (usually science), which go to tatters quickly.

There is simply not another book currently available that is a more comprehensive or better introduction to Indo-European linguistics. It is the book I wish I had when I was studying Indo-European comparative grammar at Hunter College many years ago. I am currently using it as the main text in a special studies program I am teaching.

This is a super-duper book and not only for first-timers to the subject matter but also for the seasonal and avid Indo-European scholars.

What does this book do? It enables the one to comprehend the IE lang. & culture so easily in twenty in-depth chapters that are so highly organised into sub-chapters that can be garnered mentally to be never forgot once finished with the book. Now that's saying something for a book so cheap.

There are introductory books and there are books; now this is an introductory book, so get it whatever you do and you'll never ever regret it. I promise you!

All the above said by an Englishman born in Yorkshire, but who now lives in London.

I have been studying both linguistics and languages for years. I am particularly interested in historical linguistics. I would consider Forston's book to be a good, updated primer on the subject,especially for those interested and intrigued by Indo-European studies.

A reasonable overview for the absolute beginner, though not one that inspires confidence that the author is fully conversant with the field. The fairly dumbed-down tone and the exercises imply this is for junior high school students - tertiary students are likely to want something more substantial. As a first introductory text it is useful - especially the bibliographic notes, though they are often idiosyncratic.