Customer Reviews

New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin

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This one will take you some time to chew through. What you are getting here is an extensive treatment of the derivational processes that generate Greek and Latin words. You will be wasting your time unless you bring some familiarity with current Indo-European comparative linguistics with you.

For those who have the needed background and interest, this will be a fascinating read. Especially welcome is the extensive discussion of the various changes that went into the making of Latin, where seeing the Indo-European roots behind the several words is a much more complex process, usually, than with Greek.

But for a work of such monumental learning, a bibliography would have been helpful --- even if it would have doubled the book's size, as it probably would. It would have also been nice to have at least some discussion of the comparative syntax of the two languages; while most Indo-European scholars have focused mostly on the origins of words, some of the more interesting recent work involves reconstructing the larger structures of the proto-language.

First of all, don't expect this to be a "teach yourself Greek and Latin"-type book. It assumes you already know at least the fundamentals of Greek and Latin grammar (and can read the Greek alphabet).

The value of this book is in its analysis of how Greek and Latin developed from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language -- and its insights into how PIE is reconstructed. It is not for the faint of heart -- much of the discussion is quite technical, and you'd better know your fricatives from your vocatives. There is a certain amount of more-accessible material to introduce each chapter, including an entertaining discussion of form vs. function and why the so-called "present" tense in English in fact has four functions, none of which have anything to do with the here and now.

A few quibbles: it includes indexes (by language) of words in all the languages mentioned, but no index of PIE roots. And I would have liked to have seen more detail on prepositions and suffixes. Still, for a serious student of historical linguistics, this is a must-have. For a broader and more accessible treatment, consider Robert Beekes's "Comparative Indo-European Linguistics".

Coming from OUP, being the "big book" on the topic after several decades, i.e. coming into the market as the reference of choice for students and teachers alike, it is hard to believe this enormous book does not include any bibliographical information. Not at all! That is a weird author and publisher choice indeed. The other problem is the indexing, which for this kind of book should be as thorough as possible, with detailed topics, names, loci citati indexes, but instead of that we only get word lists per language, and even those in most simplistic alphabetical order, without any indexing organisation proper. It gives the impression that the book was finished in a rush, or that the publisher and the author could not agree on some details! Bad for us readers. For the errata, there are excellent reviews by Clackson and Weiss available, very detailed and helpful.

In spite of the flaws, I agree with the above reviewers in that the book is still highly informative, containing a wealth of recent (if unsourced) data to be much profitted from. I for one would buy it again, if somewhat grumpily. Let us hope for a second edition where these regrettable defficiencies are corrected.

An excellent historical grammar both for the beginner and as a reference for the more skilled reader. Sihlers work is 100% up to date focusing much on the "laryngal-theory", and the 'dictionary' in the end is outstanding. The only problem is the lack of bibliography.

This is a truly great book which I strongly recommend for anyone even remotely interested in ancient Greek, Latin, or their ancestor PIE, which is the mother of all Indo-European languages. Indeed that is the third language which this book is about, the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). That is the hidden benefit of Shiler's book, that it is a fantastic way to learn PIE.

The format & content of this book are extremely easy to describe: incredible amounts of detail extremely well organized. Over 625 pages are filled with detailed, point by point comparisons of ancient Greek, Latin, AND PIE. PIE is mentioned multiple times on almost every page of this book. PIE is in the point by point comparisons, and has its own summary sections which discuss topics (like laryngeals) at a somewhat higher and abstract level.

The content is incredibly well organized, in an outline format with a total of 569 numbered and named topics, each of which may have multiple numbered topics under it. The numbered topics are grouped into sections up to three levels deep, each level of which is named. Everything is then indexed, with for example the Greek word "poka" indexed to sections 381.1 and 385. An example section heading as listed in the table of contents is "PIE *s" which refers to sections 168-74 and has 7 sub-sections like "Intervocalic *s" under it.

Unfortunately as others have pointed out, there is no detailed topic index. The table of contents is a decent starting point, and there are detailed indexes for the words in each of the comparative languages. Those languages include the common representatives of each branch of the Indo-European family including for example Sanskrit and Old English.

Shiler displays the Greek words in their native alphabet. Detailed information about Mycenaean Greek (Linear B) is included, along with Homeric and classic Greek, including regional dialects like Doric, but there is little to no reference to later Greek dialects.

There are numerous tables which are helpful and which clearly involved a lot of thought. Multiple type faces are used to increase readability.

In summary, it is impossible for a short review to give justice to the depth and quality of this book. This book would be worth buying even for a reader who only uses one of a hundred sections. I give this book the highest possible recommendation and expect to use it every day that I study these languages.

Andrew Sihler's NEW COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR OF GREEK AND LATIN was initially envisioned as a simple update of C.D. Buck's classic comparative grammar of Greek and Latin, with just some updates to take into account such things as laryngeal theory. However, Sihler's undertaking, which was begun in 1986, came to produce a fascinating book that brings evidence in from all the Indo-European languages and serves as a key text for anyone entering the field of Indo-European linguistics. Sihler's work was published in 1995, and while some progress has occured in the field since, the vast majority of his book is still state-of-the-art.

Sihler's book assumes some knowledge of the fundamentals of historical linguistics. While Sihler's revision here cut out Buck's original presentation of these basics, Sihler did write a new introduction that was published by John Benjamins as a separate book. Except for that, Sihler does try to start from the very beginning here: we find a presentation of all the branches of Indo-European and the ancient languages that are so vital to reconstruction. Now, I don't think that Sihler's work would serve a *total* beginner in Indo-European linguistics well -- try, say, Clackson's textbook or Lehmann's Theoretical Bases. However, it will still appeal to relative newcomers to the field.

The meat of the book is the comparison of how the grammar of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European was transformed into Greek and Latin. This is divided into the parts Phonology, Declension, Pronouns, Numerals and finally Conjugation. Now, looking at just some of the sample pages online will give a better idea of the book's contents than I can. Nonetheless, I'll offer some comments. The Phonology part is straightforward: for each of the reconstructed PIE phonemes, Sihler shows their different reflexes in G and L. The Declension part is nice for understanding the Latin fourth and fifth declensions, which are of mysterious origin. For the reconstructed PIE verb conjugatins, Sihler goes with the view that it was based on an stative-eventive distinction, though he does mention that the Hittite evident suggests that this system arose from an earlier, different one.

There is an index of all Latin and Greek words cited in the text, as well as the vocabulary items brought in from other IE languages.

The great downside of Sihler's work is its lack of references. You'll find no citations to any literature to back up Sihler's reconstructions, and there's not even a list of further reading. It can be frustrating to see various assertions made without getting any idea of Sihler's sources. This stops it from being a truly great work.

Still, I've gained enormous profit from Sihler's book and it does have "practical" application. In my undergraduate studies in Classics, internalizing the changes that produced Greek and Latin from PIE helped me in reading passages where I didn't know a Greek word but could guess it from the Latin or vice versa. Similarly, knowing the history of the conjugation made it much easier to deal with the erratic principle parts of Greek verbs.

This book is not for the faint-hearted. But for those
who have a sound background in Greek and Latin and
want to learn more about the linguistic history of
both languages it is THE book to buy. In addition
it is also a very good introduction to Indo-European
linguistics.