The Indo-European Language Family

Thomas Olander (University of Copenhagen)

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English

Cambridge University Press
17 April 2025

Historical & comparative linguistics; Oral history

Modern languages like English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi as well as ancient languages like Greek, Latin and Sanskrit all belong to the Indo-European language family, which means that they all descend from a common ancestor. But how, more precisely, are the Indo-European languages related to each other? This book brings together pioneering research from a team of international scholars to address this fundamental question. It provides an introduction to linguistic subgrouping as well as offering comprehensive, systematic and up-to-date analyses of the ten main branches of the Indo-European language family: Anatolian, Tocharian, Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic. By highlighting that these branches are saliently different from each other, yet at the same time display striking similarities, the book demonstrates the early diversification of the Indo-European language family, spoken today by half the world's population. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Edited by: Thomas Olander (University of Copenhagen)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 17mm
Weight: 456g
ISBN: 9781108731522
ISBN 10: 110873152X
Pages: 314
Publication Date: 17 April 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction Thomas Olander; 2. Methodology in linguistic subgrouping James Clackson; 3. Computational approaches to linguistic chronology and subgrouping Dariusz Piwowarczyk; 4. What we can (and can't) learn from computational cladistics Don Ringe; 5. Anatolian Alwin Kloekhorst; 6. Tocharian Michaël Peyrot; 7. Italo-Celtic Michael Weiss; 8. Italic Michael Weiss; 9. Celtic Anders Richardt Jørgensen; 10. Germanic Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen & Guus Jan Kroonen; 11. Greek Lucien van Beek; 12. Armenian Birgit Anette Olsen & Rasmus Thorsø; 13. Albanian Adam Hyllested & Brian D. Joseph; 14. Indo-Iranian Martin Joachim Kümmel; 15. Balto-Slavic Tijmen Pronk.

Thomas Olander is Associate Professor in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Balto-Slavic Accentual Mobility (2009) and Proto-Slavic Inflectional Morphology (2015), and has edited several books on Indo-European linguistics and the linguistics–archaeology interface.

Reviews for The Indo-European Language Family

'The volume presents a very useful discussion of the methodology of linguistic subgrouping, methods of computational cladistics and the features allowing the establishment of the individual subbranches of Indo-European and speaking for or against possible higher intermediate nodes.' Daniel Kölligan, Folia Linguistica 'This is an outstandingly valuable book, bringing together facts and hypotheses which have been scattered through the professional literature. It will surely become a convenient reference source and a starting-point for scholars who develop new hypotheses in this field.' Geoffrey Sampson, The Linguist List 'Olander and crew have provided us with a set of very fine analyses of the major issues in Indo-European subgrouping, and the extensive bibliographies themselves might be said to be worth the price of admission. No one will agree with all the conclusions, but the evidence is there for all to see and further development of the question, whether to reinforce the syntheses presented here or to forge new ones, must take this book as a point of reference.' Douglas Adams, The Journal of Indo-European Studies