The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Oxford Linguistics)

It's hard to understand what audience a book like this is aimed toward. Yes, it's from a university press, so one assumes an academic audience of some kind. But the level of writing is much too light, fun, and enjoyable to be aimed at only people earning credit toward degrees or trying to make tenure. I'm doing neither of those actions but enjoyed the hell out of this book. But I wonder whether the authors were being mischievous or dismissive when they write something like, "In addition to standard indexes, the book also contains two word lists: a Proto-Indo-European English list and a list of the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary arranged by its English meaning (which should at least facilitate those who delight in such tasks as translating Hamlet into Klingon)." Eh, anyway, it's a fun book if you embrace your love of learning and shut away the voices of anti-intellectualism.

When I heard that Oxford University Press would be publishing THE OXFORD INTRODUCTION TO PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN AND THE INDO-EUROPEAN WORLD, I was excited. I envisioned an update of Oswald Szemerenyi's old Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics that, because of the specific research interests of authors J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, would not only reflect contemporary developments in IE linguistics, but would seamlessly show what we can reconstruct for the culture of PIE speakers. Well, the book is something like that, but it turns out not to be much of a useful introduction to the field.

The book is over 700 pages long, but the introduction to Proto-Indo-European itself is quite small, less than a 100 pages really. It's certainly no substitute for a real handbook like Szemerenyi's, Beekes', Fortson's, or (my favourite) Lehmann's. The branches of Indo-European, its phonology and the basics of its morphology, and the debate over the relationship between the disparate languages that are first attested are set out. The authors nicely use Schleier's tale in its progressive versions to show how reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European have been consistently refined. While the view of Proto-Indo-European is generally the same as in introductions from the 1990s, the authors do reconstruct four laryngeals instead of the usual three, and prefer the transcription *h-subscript-x for an unknown laryngeal instead of *H.

The bulk of the book's content concerns the reconstruction of PIE lexicon, with chapters divided along such themes as "Food and Drink", "Speech and Sound", and "Material Culture". This portion is exciting, especially when the authors link reconstruction to archaeological evidence to make even more detailed ventures about the nature of PIE society. Nonetheless, the material can be tiresome to read straight through; it works best in pieces or in consultation for specific topics.

A final chapter discusses the debate over the IE homeland, where the authors remain very non-committal about the whole deal. There are two appendices. The first sets out basic sound correspondences between PIE and the major IE groups in tabular form. The second a PIE-English and English-PIE wordlist, nearly a hundred pages long. The bibliography and general index together are nearly 200 pages long. So, one can understand that the book contains quite a bit that might seem "fluff".

If you are a student of Indo-European linguistics with previous knowledge gained through one of the great handbooks like Lehmann's Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics, then the reconstruction of the lexicon in this work of Mallory and Adams is sure to offer some entertainment. However, this is the sort of the thing that is best consulted in a university library, and I found the book not worth obtaining for a home collection.

In 26 chapters, each with a helpful "Further Reading" section, Mallory and Adams offer a thorough survey of the current status of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) studies. In their introduction they acknowledge the example of Buck's A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages, asserting that they "have indeed aimed to do for Proto-Indo-European something of what Buck did for the individual Indo-European languages," and they succeed. Therefore, readers looking for detailed analyses of - for instance - the current state of knowledge about the PIE verb, the most complex part of the language, will find themselves disappointed. But then such readers already know which journals to read to follow current debates at the cutting edge, and the ample bibliographies here will also serve them well. Glottalic theory, to pick another favorite sticking point, likewise receives brief treatment, but with a balanced observation typical of the book's treatment of differing theories as a whole: "Fortunately, one can interchange the reconstructed forms between the traditional system and the variety of newly proposed systems in a relatively mechanical fashion. The traditional system is understood by all, and until the weight of scholarly opinion dismisses it for a single new system ... it remains the one most often cited." Nineteen chapters, the heart of the text, focus on the larger PIE world, with word lists, helpful summary charts and detailed discussion of semantic fields for clothing, religion, physical actions, relationships, food and drink, speech and sound, anatomy, and so on. The over 250 pages of appendices and indices, including a lexicon of some 2000 Proto-Indo-European roots (with both English-PIE and PIE-English sections), alone make this volume worth owning. As a challenging text for undergrad linguistics majors, or an excellent and readable survey for grad students in other fields, as well for as the general reader interested in linguistic and cultural reconstruction, this text will serve admirably.