Re: Beekes.

Hallo!

On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:08:30 +0200, Lars Finsen wrote:

> Den 27. jul. 2008 kl. 19.10 skreiv Jörg Rhiemeier:
> >
>
> >  A book that looks very
> > good to me hasn't been mentioned here yet:
> >
> > Benjamin W. Fortson IV, _Indo-European Language and Culture:
> > an Introduction_.
>
> Looks good? Have you read it?
Yes.  I don't judge books by their covers, but by their contents.
I wrote "looks good to me" because I am careful with judging
things for which I am not really an expert.  But it is well
written, and my impression of its contents is that it sums up
the facts very well and accurately.  Fortson concentrates on
presenting the consensus opinion on Proto-Indo-European rather
than trying to interpret the facts in some idiosyncratic way.
The book does not only introduce the reader to PIE, but also
discusses Proto-Indo-European culture (taking a modernized
"Kurganist" stance) and all the branches of Indo-European,
including summaries of the sound changes.

> Guess I have to put that one on my wanted list, too. Too bad
> everything that's available in books is introductory. For details, we
> have to search in articles.
Yes, most books on PIE are introductory in nature, or they
present alternative, not commonly accepted views on the matter.
An example of the latter is _Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans_
by T. Gamkrelidze and V. Ivanov.  A very interesting read, but
the alternative model of PIE (the most famous aspect of which is
the "glottalic theory", but that's not all) they present is highly
controversial, and in my opinion, some of its features must be
assigned to an earlier stage of PIE than the time of breakup, and
others seem very doubtful to me.

These are things that can drive someone mad.  Indo-European is
the best known language family, and still, what is written about
it leaves so much to desire.  There isn't even an up-to-date
etymological dictionary!  Everybody still has to work with
Pokorny, but that is almost half a century old, uses a totally
obsolete phonology and includes many items with very limited
distribution in the family that are likely to be borrowed from
substratum languages.

... brought to you by the Weeping Elf

Reply