Indo-European Linguistics (De Gruyter Textbook) by Michael Meier-Brügger (PDF)

Description

This Textbook on Indo-European Linguistics is designed as an introduction to the field. It presents current topics and questions in Indo-European linguistics in a clear and informative manner. This is the English translation of the eight edition of the work first published by Hans Krahe and it takes account of more recent research. While Krahe only considered phonology and morphology, the edition also includes a comprehensive account of syntax and lexis. Manfred Mayrhofer assisted with the section of phonology; Matthias Fritz wrote the section on syntax and provided support for the project as a whole.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐As an amateur lover and linguistics and a person interested in PIE studies, I find this to be quite the complex book. Despite its short length, it is so jam-packed with information you’d be amazed that it isn’t bursting off the pages. Every single branch of IE languages is gone over in this book, the section on PIE phonology noted for individually separating every phoneme in PIE and then giving examples in PIE with reflexes in the daughter languages. The work on nominal morphology is also spectacular, with Brügger going into the nuts and bolt of PIE’s accent system and the ablaut seen in nouns to an extent most other books skim over. The end of the book goes over word formation and lexicon, a rather surprising and welcome addition, as most books, once again, either skim over this info or don’t talk about it at all.Indeed the best way to describe this book is that it provides an incredibly good look on most aspects of PIE. Those wishing to compare how the various IE languages stack up phonology-wise can spend days in the section on the PIE sound system, while those who want to know how nouns worked in the proto-language have the nominal section to pore over. As someone who conlangs and simply wants to know a lot about PIE in one small package, this book is perfect for me, as I can fling open any chapter and read without slogging through Brügger taking up precious space teaching the un-versed (not that such books are a bad thing–but a book that gives me the info without the lesson is highly useful).However, this book is not perfect. For one, it is DENSE. Despite purporting to be an introductory textbook, it is by no means one. Brügger layers thick pages upon pages of text and works at such a blinding pace any beginner would be lost. At the very least, knowledge of linguistics is a must. A background, no matter how faint, in PIE linguistics would also be a great boon. Those who are merely starting from the ground would do well to grab Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction by James Clackson, orIndo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction by Benjamin W. Fortson IV.Second, this book was translated from German, and this is *painfully* obvious. While the translation is perfectly manageable and never devolves into Engrish-level nonsense, Charles Gertmenian, the translator, either saw it fit to get lazy, or didn’t have the time. Instead of the common usage of “C” to mean “consonant”, this book uses the obviously-imported-from-German K, even though this could have been fixed with ease. In addition, the grammar of the book often blinds you with it’s “German-ness”; as someone who has taken it, I can see many times where the order of the English words would nearly correspond to the original German, such as an overuse of V2 word order. For instance, I merely opened the book right now, and came across with a few page flips the sentence “(concerning Vedic ablaut)To the zero grade basic forms, -a- is added a first grade, called Guṇa”. What? Was “A first grade, called Guṇa, is added to the zero grade basic forms with -a-?” too much? However, despite my complaints, these are by no means deal-breakers, but any prospective reader should be aware of them. In some cases, Brügger quotes others–for the large quotations, German ones are translated, but anything else is usually left untranslated (though I presume it was like this in the original work as well). More serious are the odd amount of German words left untranslated, and not even with italics. Usually these are easy enough to deal with…but why were they left untranslated?(The original language of this also makes the deluge of citations near-useless to those of us who cannot read German at a high level, as nearly all of them are German papers, though this is simply something to be expected from a translated academic book)Another knock against the book is the surprisingly paltry overview of the verbal system. Brügger does go over it, but for all the extreme complexity of the PIE verb, he gives it….21 pages. The nominals on the other hand receive 31. The information is not bad, but still rather small. The detail on phonology and nominal morphology more than makes up however.Finally, though this is minor, despite being labeled as “hardcover” here on Amazon, the book I received was a softcover, albeit one with very high quality paper. It certainly wont fall apart anytime soon.It should be said that despite all my criticisms of the book, it is still an extremely good book. It simply does not hold one’s hand, and while there is lacking polish and bizarre choices sometimes made, Brügger has supplied a very good in-depth look on PIE, allowing those of us with some knowledge already a chance to reach a higher level. The book also has an incredibly rich bibliography, as sometimes an entire page can be taken up with citations, and the bibliography in the back reaches over 70 pages–hopefully you can read German however. Newbies to the field, however, would do better with the two books I mentioned above.

⭐Michael Meier-Brugger’s INDO-EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS is a textbook published by Walter De Gruyter that has already gone through eight editions in the original German. New information on phonology was contributed by Manfred Mayrhofer, a section on Proto-Indo-European syntax by M. Fritz, and then the entire enterprise was translated into English by Charles Gertmenian.This is not an introduction to comparative Indo-European linguistics, for it assumes some prior knowledge of the basics of the field. Many terms, such as ablaut, as used extensively long before they are even defined. If you have no experience with IE linguistics, try a basic introduction such as Lehmann’s THEORETICAL BASES or Fortson’s INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE. What Meier-Brugger does is get the student to a higher level of understanding through a more rigorous presentation of concepts and encouragement to seek out papers and monographs. The basic format of the book is an outline: concepts are concisely described, and then followed by a long list of bibliographic citations.The format doesn’t usually permit much in the way of explanation–information in the section on PIE verbal morphology is especially meagre–but the book does shine in several areas. Its description of the very complicated world of nominal morphology, with its varying accentuations and ablaut, is admirable. The last portion of the book, a treatment of the PIE lexicon, has some very entertaining insights into onomastics.One major complaint I have is that this is a very poorly edited translation. Gertmenian seems to have very hastily translated the German original, judging from the enormous amount of German words left untouched (and Germanisms like “KVK(K)” for “CVC(C)”), and De Gruyter evidently gave the text no significant proofreading because all these would have been spotted and corrected immediately. Another issue I have with the book is that its authors couldn’t decide whether to neutrally reflect all schools of scholarship, as in many sections, or take sides, as when they dismiss glottalic theory and the existence of three genders in PIE. Nonetheless, in spite of its problems this is a text worth seeking out for students of Indo-European linguistics, if only for its rich bibliography.

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