Indo-European Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of grammar, a subject matter that is traditionally divided into five areas: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Phonetics is the study of phones, the total amount of sounds that may be uttered by all human beings, and phonology is the study of phonemes, sounds that are distinctive and systematically contrasted with other phonemes in a given language. Morphology is the study of the formation of words from smaller units of meaning, called morphemes, while syntax studies the formation of phrases and sentences. Semantics seeks to find underlying patterns of meaning among the various words, or lexemes, of a given language. Because all five aspects of grammar interface with one another, it is very difficult to attribute a linguistic phenomenon to a single category. Anyone who has studied the grammar of Greek or Latin, for example, will already be aware that morphological phenomena, such as case endings, and syntax are not easily disentangled. Although I have chosen to list more books than articles as an economic way of exposing the beginner to as much of the bibliography as possible, the majority of work in linguistics is to be found in articles in journals and collections of essays. I have cited translations of a number of works for the convenience of the Anglophone beginner, but this practice should not deceive the novice into believing that it is possible to conduct serious research in linguistics without at least a reading knowledge of French and German.

Linguistic Theory and Method

The study of grammar is further complicated by the orientation of the linguist, who may approach a given language from a single point in time (synchronic) or historical (diachronic) perspective. Within the discipline of classics, linguistic studies traditionally have been diachronic and thus concerned with the historical development of Greek and Latin, but linguistics as a discipline has gradually become dominated by synchronic approaches. Some studies concentrate on the deep underlying structures of language and the transformation of these “deep structures” into well-formed sentences, or “surface structures,” within the mind of a single speaker, while others emphasize the role of context in shaping linguistic behavior. Individual speakers are also members of larger linguistic groups, such as speakers of a particular dialect, as students of ancient Greek are well aware. Sometimes dialect may be a conscious choice, as in the use of a form of the Doric dialect in Attic tragic choruses, but a speaker of the Arcadian dialect is not likely to be making a conscious choice but rather applying, more or less unconsciously, phonological and syntactic rules that are different from the phonological and syntactic rules in the Aeolic dialect. Katz 2007 is a good entrance point for the willing but uninitiated classicist into the mysteries of linguistics. Because Indo-European linguistics is largely concerned with the phonology and morphology of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and the daughter languages, the beginner may be better served by an introduction to phonology, such as Carr 1999, and morphology, such as Aronoff and Fudeman 2005 rather than a general textbook of linguistics. A dictionary of linguistics, such as Matthews 2007, is also useful for the unfamiliar terminology often encountered in linguistic studies.

Aronoff, Mark, and Kristen Fudeman. 2005. What is morphology? Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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An introduction to the basics of morphological theory, an especially important aspect of grammar for inflected languages such as Greek and Latin.
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Carr, Philip. 1999. English phonetics and phonology. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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A concise introduction to the general principles of phonology and its relationship to phonetics and the particular application of these principles in the English language.
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Katz, Joshua. 2007. What linguists are good for. Classical World 100:99–112.
DOI: 10.1353/clw.2007.0009Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An examination of common misconceptions about linguistics in the classics, especially historical linguistics, with a number of practical illustrations of the discipline’s usefulness to classicists.
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Matthews, P. H. 2007. The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics. 2d ed. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Because there is some inconsistency of terminology even within the discipline of linguistics—not to mention the serious discrepancies between grammatical terminology in the teaching of Greek and Latin and modern linguistic studies—a dictionary of terms is a desideratum.
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Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European

Although there has been an increasing number of studies of ancient Greek and Latin from a synchronic perspective, the bulk of the linguistic work within classics has been historical. This predominantly diachronic approach to the classics is a product of both tradition and the impossibility of applying research methods—such as acoustic analyses or the study of the syntactic intuition of native speakers—to dead languages. Historical linguistics as it is practiced on Greek and Latin has been largely concerned with the prehistory of these languages; as a result, it overlaps with the larger study of the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European (abbreviated PIE), the common ancestor of Greek, Latin, English, and a number other languages originally spoken across Europe and much of Asia. A number of introductory textbooks on historical linguistics now exist, and several introductions to Indo-European linguistics have appeared since 1990. Hock and Joseph 1996 is the most suitable for the Anglophone classicist interested in PIE linguistics because much of its material deals with the history of the English language. I recommend reading Fortson 2010, Meier-Brügger 2003, Beekes 1995, and Clackson 2007 in that order, but I will append the location of the individual discussions of aspects of PIE grammar at the end of each section for those who would like to tackle PIE grammar one step at a time. Knowledge of as many ancient languages as possible, including non-Indo-European languages, is also very helpful, especially a familiarity with Oscan and Umbrian for Latinists and Sanskrit and Hittite for Hellenists. The Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterielen or TITUS texts is a good online resource for a number of aspects of PIE and for texts in, and materials for, the daughter languages. Woodard 2004 is a good resource for both Indo-European and non-Indo-European ancient languages.

Beekes, Robert. 1995. Comparative Indo-European linguistics: An introduction. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.
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Another more advanced introduction written by a member of the “Leiden School” of Indo-European linguistics and the author of the most recent etymological dictionary of ancient Greek (cited under Greek and Latin Etymological Dictionaries). It also includes a section on the general methodology of historical linguistics.
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Clackson, James. 2007. Indo-European linguistics: An introduction. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Not an introduction so much as an examination of the theoretical underpinnings of the reconstruction of PIE.
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Fortson, Benjamin. 2010. Indo-European language and culture: An introduction. 2d ed. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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The state-of-the-art introduction to Indo-European linguistics. It emphasizes the evidence from the individual languages in its initial presentation of the reconstruction of PIE and treats each branch of the Indo-European family in a chapter of its own.
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Hock, Hans, and Brian Joseph. 1996. Language history, language change, and language relationship: An introduction to historical linguistics. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
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An introduction to the theory and methodology of historical linguistics, with a general, but not exclusive, concentration on the Indo-European languages.
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Meier-Brügger, Michael. 2003. Indo-European linguistics. Translated by Charles Gertmenian. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
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A more advanced introduction to the topic with a thorough bibliography, a chapter on syntax written by Matthias Fritz, and morphological material compiled by Manfred Mayrhofer; not well translated from the German original of 2000 and retaining the German abbreviations.
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Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterielen.
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A useful collection of texts in the various daughter languages, with bibliographies, conference listings, and links to linguistics departments in Europe and North America that have specialists in Indo-European linguistics.
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Woodard, Roger D., ed. 2004. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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A collection of concise linguistic descriptions of languages attested before the end of the 5th century CE. An especially useful resource for languages outside of the Indo-European family.
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Proto-Indo-European Phonology

The reconstruction of PIE has enjoyed its greatest success on the level of phonology. Seemingly random differences between various Indo-European languages can now be explained as individual outcomes of an original system of phonemes in PIE. This success may be attributed to the “Neogrammarian hypothesis,” the principle that all sound change is regular, and to the use of the comparative method in order to construct correspondence sets between phonemes in the daughter languages that validate the Neogrammarian hypothesis. Much of the significant research conducted on PIE phonology in the 19th century can be explored in Lehmann 1967. The most current summation of many of the less obvious correspondence sets is collected in Collinge 1985, Collinge 1995, and Collinge 1999. The most impressive result of this research is perhaps the identification of a series of consonants conventionally termed “laryngeals,” first posited by Ferdinand de Saussure. These phonemes left no direct traces in the Indo-European languages known at the time but were confirmed during the 20th century by the existence of a reflex of the “second laryngeal” in Hittite. Schindler 1977 is a good place to begin the study of the effects of PIE morphology upon phonology. Eichner 1973 (cited under Proto-Indo-European Morphology) also makes an important contribution to PIE phonology, which is also discussed in Fortson 2010, pp. 53–87, Meier-Brügger 2003, pp. 71–158, Beekes 1995, pp. 124–159, and Clackson 2007, pp. 27–63 (cited under Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European).

Collinge, Neville E. 1985. Laws of Indo-European. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins.
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Collects all the established sound laws in the daughter languages and describes each briefly. Collinge consigns to an appendix several laws that he sees as “procedural guidelines to diachronic and other linguists, or virtually proverbial expressions of tendency in human language” (p. 2), including Szemerenyi’s Law and Rix’s Law, both of which are widely cited.The author has updated his collection of sound laws in Collinge 1995 and Collinge 1999.
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Collinge, Neville E. 1995. Further laws of Indo-European. In On languages and language. Edited by Werner Winter, 27–52. New York and Berlin: de Gruyter.
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The organizational principle hints at Collinge’s methodology, which is not discussed in much detail in the very short introduction to Collinge 1985. The discussion of the nachleben of Eichner’s Law (see Eichner 1973, pp. 79–80, cited in Proto-Indo-European Morphology) is especially useful.
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Collinge, Neville E. 1999. The laws of Indo-European: The state of the art. Journal of Indo-European Studies 27:355–377.
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In addition to six new laws, the last installment of Collinge’s chronicle includes his most explicit formulation of what it means to be a law.
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Lehmann, Winfred, ed. 1967. A reader in nineteenth century historical Indo-European linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.
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A collection of the original formulations of some of the most famous sound laws, most in translation, and several other influential essays, including the “Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus” by Sir William “Oriental” Jones. Available online.
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Schindler, Jochem. 1977. A thorny problem. Die Sprache 23:25–35.
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A reconstruction of a paradigmatic pattern that explains the origin of apparently cognate pairs of roots that differ in the order of their consonants in so-called “thorn-clusters.”
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Proto-Indo-European Morphology

The reconstruction of the PIE phonemic system would not be possible without an insight predicated upon the remarkable morphological similarities between Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit famously noted by Sir William “Oriental” Jones in his celebrated “Third Anniversary Discourse on the Hindus” (reprinted in Lehmann 1967, cited under Proto-Indo-European Phonology) The verbal systems of ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit are so similar that is it impossible for the correspondences to be random, and the distance between the two peoples who spoke these languages is so great that they must descend from a common, prehistoric language. A great number of morphemes, the smallest phonemic units that communicate meaning, have since been reconstructed for PIE, especially inflectional morphemes for common case endings and personal endings of verbs. Reconstructions for plural oblique stems, duals, and plural second-person endings, however, have proved somewhat more elusive because they occur less frequently in the ancient texts. The understanding of the development of PIE verbal inflectional morphology has also been considerably complicated by the discovery of Hittite and has been treated recently by Jasanoff 2003. A number of suffixes, or “derivational morphemes,” have also been reconstructed, but the meanings of these suffixes in the daughter languages are not consistent and obscure their original meaning. The interface between PIE morphology and phonology in the form of a series of vocalic alternations known as “ablaut” has been the subject of particularly intense research over the last half of the 20th century. The second half of Rau 2009 is a welcome treatment of an especially complicated set of nominal and verbal derivations common to some PIE roots known as Caland stems. Nussbaum 1986 is a precise and wide-ranging discussion of the derivational variations of a single PIE root and Schindler 1975 is a seminal discussion of PIE nominal derivation. PIE morphology is also discussed in Fortson 2010 (pp. 75–151), Meier-Brügger 2003 (pp. 159–237), Beekes 1995 (pp. 162–257), and Clackson 2007 (pp. 64–156) (all cited under Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European). Schindler 1977 (cited under Proto-Indo-European Phonology) also treats various aspects of PIE morphology, while Eichner 1973 employs a phonological point to identify a new class of PIE noun.

Eichner, Heiner. 1973. Die Etymologie von heth. mehur. Münchener Studien für Sprachwissenschaft 31:53–107.
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The original formulation of “Eichner’s Law” and the identification of a lengthened-grade acrostatic neuter form of the PIE r/n stem.
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Jasanoff, Jay. 2003. Hittite and the Indo-European verb. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199249053.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An explanation of the origin of the different inflections of the present and perfect in various daughter languages including Greek, and a clear exposition of the history of the problem.
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Nussbaum, Alan. 1986. Head and horn in Indo-European. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
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An explanation of the semantic variety and phonological similarity of words for “head” and “horn” in the daughter languages and the derivational processes that allowed such a semantic shift. The sheer number of derived forms discussed is also an excellent introduction to the complexities of PIE derivational morphology. Most significantly, the clarity of the discussion and the ranking of possibilities for a particular form will also serve as an introduction to linguistic argumentation and how it differs from a more literary interpretation.
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Rau, Jeremy. 2009. Indo-European nominal morphology: The decads and the Caland system. Innsbruck, Austria: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
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An introduction to the various expressions of decads in the daughter languages and the so called “Caland stems” with an emphasis on the morpho-semantic interface. An especially helpful overview of the latter topic and its potentially confusing permutations.
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Schindler, Jochem. 1975. Zum Ablaut der neutralen s-Stämme des Indogermanischen. In Flexion und Wortbildung: Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, Regensburg, 9–14. September 1973. Wiesbaden, Germany: Reichert: 259-267.
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Not only a persuasive argument that the PIE neuter *-os stems were originally protero-kinetic roots nouns with the shape *CeC-s in the “strong cases,” but also an explicit statement of the principles of internal reconstruction and an outline of the accent classes of athematic nouns in PIE supported by judicious citation of the key evidence from the daughter languages.
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Stüber, Karin. 2002. Die primären s-Stämme des Indogermanischen. Wiesbaden, Germany: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
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A consolidation of the research on s-stems in PIE more than an original thesis, and, as such, an ideal point of entry for the beginner. Moreover, its list of reconstructed s-stem roots is an important contribution to the lexicography of PIE. A discussion of the relationship of these stems to verbal roots (divided into a number of subcategories) and Caland stems is yet another illustration of the importance of the morpho-syntactic interface.
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Proto-Indo-European Syntax

The syntax of PIE is especially elusive, because the earliest documents of the Indo-European languages are poetic, and therefore not likely to employ common phrase structures. PIE was also a highly inflected language, and it must have allowed a great deal of freedom in word order. Some advances have been made in reconstructing subordination patterns in PIE and other phrase structures, the most famous being “Wackernagel’s Law” in Wackernagel 1892, reconsidered by Hale 1987 and Adams 1994 (cited in Greek and Latin Syntax). Klein 1997 is rich discussion of three particular topics of PIE syntax that affect the etymology of Greek au, the meaning of Latin deictic pronouns and the PIE verbal accent. Many of these issues are touched upon in Watkins 1976. PIE syntax is also discussed in Fortson 2010 (pp. 152–169), Meier-Brügger 2003 (pp. 238–276, written by Matthias Fritz), and Clackson 2007 (pp. 157–186) (all cited under Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European).

Hale, Mark. 1987. Notes on Wackernagel’s Law in the language of the Rig Veda. In Studies in memory of Warren Cowgill (1929–1985). Edited by Calvert Watkins, 38–50. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
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An analysis of apparent exceptions in Vedic to Wackernagel’s Law that suggests that Wackernagel’s Law is the result of three different processes rather than one. A linguistics dictionary will be helpful in decoding the syntactic abbreviations, such as “WH-movement.”
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Klein, Jared. 1997. The contribution of RigVedic Sanskrit to the reconstruction of Indo-European syntax: Three concrete cases. In Berthold Delbrück y la sintaxis indoeuropea hoy. Edited by Emilio Crespo and Luis García-Ramón, 253–281. Wiesbaden, Germany: Reichert.
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Klein makes three significant proposals on Proto-Indo-European syntax. He argues that the PIE ancestor of the Greek particle au and its cognates were once a “distal deictic element” and not a conjunction. He then suggests that three-way opposition of deictic pronouns in some daughter languages, such as hic : iste : ille is reflective of a three-way distinction between the first, second and third person. He also suggests that the weak accent of the verb in the daughter languages is the result of the position of the verb at the end of the sentence and not an inherent quality of the PIE verb. Although, Klein’s proposals are not universally cited by the handbooks, all three deserve serious consideration and demonstrate the intimate relationship between phonology, morphology, and syntax.
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Wackernagel, Jacob. 1892. Über ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung. Indogermanische Forschungen 1:333–436.
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The single most influential (and perhaps lengthiest) paper on PIE syntax. The definitive statement of Wackernagel’s Law: clitics occupied the second position in the PIE sentence, although the argumentation is based almost entirely on examples from Greek.
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Watkins, Calvert. 1976. Towards Proto-Indo-European syntax: Problems and pseudo-problems. In Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax. Edited by Sanford Steever, Carol Walker, and Salikoko Mufwene, 305–326. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
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An especially suggestive treatment of PIE syntax that emphasizes the importance of selecting relevant data, exceptions as archaisms and acknowledging the difference between PIE and the daughter languages. Reprinted in Calvert Watkins, Selected Writings (Innsbruck, Austria: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1994), pp. 242–263.
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Proto-Indo-European Semantics

The reconstruction of PIE phonology from languages such as Greek and Latin has also allowed for the reconstruction of individual roots from congeners, or genetically related words, that often have similar (if not the same) meanings in the daughter languages, and these correspondences imply that the reconstructed root also signified a similar object or concept. The meaning of a PIE root sometimes may illuminate the meaning of an opaque word in the daughter languages, or give some insight into its history, and thus may help the understanding of obscure words in texts in Greek and Latin. The Indo-European Etymological Dictionary or IEED is a series of online etymological dictionaries of Indo-European (IE) languages, while Watkins 2000 and Pokorny 1959–1969 are dictionaries of reconstructed PIE roots. Rix, et al. 2001 is the most current dictionary of PIE roots, but only of verbs. Adams and Mallory 2006 lists and discusses a number of PIE roots in a series of chapters organized by semantic field.

Adams, Douglas, and James Mallory. 2006. The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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An overview of the state of Indo-European lexical reconstruction, with introductory chapters on a variety of related topics followed by lists of roots under a number of semantic categories, with commentary. Its use of a fourth laryngeal (and still another notated as *ha-) is unusual if not unprecedented (most handbooks reconstruct three laryngeals, not four).
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Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Project.
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A collection of etymological dictionaries of various Indo-European languages that is intended to help compile a dictionary of Indo-European roots to replace Pokorny 1959–1969. Many of the dictionaries previously available on this site have now been published in book form, such as Beekes 2010 (cited under Greek and Latin Etymological Dictionaries), and are no longer available. Several concordances of texts of ancient Indo-European languages are also available.
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Pokorny, Julius. 1959–1969. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Bern: Francke.
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Still the most comprehensive dictionary of all known PIE roots, but very out of date. It is also the common reference point for Watkins 2000; Rix, et al. 2001; and Wodko et al. 2008.
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Rix, Helmut, Martin Kümmel, Thomas Zehnder, Reiner Lipp, and Brigitte Schirmer. 2001. Lexikon der Indo-Germanischen Verben: Die Wurzeln und ihre Primärstammbildungen. 2d ed. Wiesbaden, Germany: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag.
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An extensively annotated collection of modern reconstructions of PIE verbal roots and the evidence used to reconstruct these roots. The verbal stem system employed in the lexicon, however, is not that of the standard handbooks other than Meier-Brügger 2003 (cited under Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European), which does not accept every detail of Rix’s schematic.
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Watkins, Calvert, ed. 2000. The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European roots. 2d ed. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin.
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An accessible and user-friendly collection of Indo-European roots with an index of English reflexes. The lemmata for roots with laryngeals are somewhat simplified, but reconstructions with specific laryngeals are included in the entry (laryngeals are also notated not with *h- but with a schwa). The introduction provides an accessible and precise description of the reconstruction of PIE and an extension of these principles to the reconstruction of the culture of the Indo-Europeans. Some entries are supplemented by a number of “Language and culture notes” that enliven potentially dry subject matter.
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Wodtko, Dagmar S., Britta Irslinger, and Carolin Schneider. 2008. Nomina im Indogermanischen Lexikon. Heidelberg, Germany: Universitätsverlag Winter.
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A selection of reconstructed PIE nominal roots and verbal roots with common nominal derivations. The entries are patterned as in Rix, et al. 2001: the root, a list of reconstructed derivations of the root with forms in the daughter languages that were used to reconstruct the form, followed by extensive documentation of the previous research.
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Handbooks of Greek Linguistics

At present, an up-to-date book-length treatment of ancient Greek by a single author in English is lacking, but there are treatments of the development of Greek language from its origins to the present day, and two recent comprehensive collections of essays on various topics in Greek linguistics. Horrocks 2010 is a narrative history of Greek from Mycenaean to modern Greek. Christidis 2007 and Bakker 2010 are collections of essays on various aspects of ancient Greek. Fortson 2010 (pp. 248–273) (cited in Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European) provides a chapter-length discussion of Greek, and the introduction to Colvin 2007 (cited in Greek Dialectology) is an excellent introduction to the development of Greek from Proto-Indo-European (PIE).

Bakker, Egbert. 2010. A companion to the ancient Greek language. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
DOI: 10.1002/9781444317398Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of fewer but more substantial essays than in Christidis on traditional linguistic topics and on the evidence for ancient Greek. A good place to continue on particular topics.
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Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos, ed. 2007. A history of ancient Greek: From the beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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A translation by a number of hands of a collection of more than one hundred essays on various aspects of ancient Greek, originally published in 2001. A good place to start on particular topics.
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Horrocks, Geoffrey. 2010. Greek: A history of the language and its speakers. 2d ed. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
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A narrative treatment of Greek from Mycenaean to the present day, with little emphasis on its development from PIE, but rather on the development of ancient Greek into the Hellenistic koiné, Byzantine, and modern Greek.
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Handbooks of Latin Linguistics

The Latin language is presently better served than Greek with regard to handbooks that are of reasonable length, and the two most recent handbooks, Clackson and Horrocks 2007 and Weiss 2009, complement each other very well. Vine 1993 is another excellent entry point into linguistic methodology for the classicist. Fortson 2010, pp. 274–308 (cited under Historical Linguistics and Proto-Indo-European), provides a chapter-length discussion of Latin and the other Italic languages.

Clackson, James, and Geoffrey Horrocks. 2007. Blackwell history of the Latin language. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
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A generally reliable narrative history of the Latin language, but with some shortcomings that are discussed by Brent Vine in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
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Vine, Brent. 1993. Studies in archaic Latin inscriptions. Innsbruck, Austria: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.
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Not an introductory handbook but a treatment of a range of Latin epigraphic and linguistic topics that illustrates how closely the two fields are related and how useful linguistic methodologies are in solving philological problems.
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Weiss, Michael. 2009. Outline of the historical comparative grammar of Latin. Ann Arbor, MI, and New York: Beech Stave.
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As much a reference grammar as a narrative introduction. The book balances discussion with charts of paradigms and formulations of sound changes and root shapes. Well annotated and indexed. The author’s blog containing corrigenda and addenda makes this book doubly useful for staying up to date on the current thinking on a number of linguistic topics. The independent publisher Beech Stave has released two useful collections of papers on Indo-European linguistics that are not always available through major retailers.
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Historical Grammars of Greek and Latin

Historical grammars are unlike standard grammars of Greek and Latin, such as those written by Smyth for Greek or Allen and Greenough for Latin, in their emphasis on the historical development of Greek and Latin phonology and morphology rather than the relationship between morphology and syntax. The standard historical grammars, such as Schwyzer 1939–1971 and Leumann 1977, are now out of date on some points. On the other hand, their breadth remains unequaled. Rix 1992 and Meiser 1998 are better guides to the current research on Greek and Latin historical linguistics, but not replacements for Schwyzer and Leumann. Sihler 1995 treats the historical development of Greek and Latin together in English, an arrangement that is convenient for the classicist, but a number of reviewers, such as Weiss 1996 and Simon 2009, have identified problems with Sihler as an introduction to the topic. Weiss 2009 (cited in Handbooks of Latin Linguistics) is also an excellent Latin reference grammar.

Leumann, Manu. 1977. Lateinische Laut- und Formenlehre. Munich: Beck.
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The first volume of a multivolume Latin grammar, the standard historical reference grammar of Latin in the manner of Schwyzer and hence a discursive treatment that lacks charts of phonological or morphological changes. The treatments of larger topics are followed by detailed discussions of particular points and previous treatments of them.
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Meiser, Gerhard. 1998. Historische Laut- und Formenlehre der lateinischen Sprache. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
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Less comprehensive than Leumann, but still similar in its presentation of the material as a discussion. The cross-references with Leumann and other grammars make it particularly helpful if further detail is wanted. The texts of selected early Latin inscriptions are also helpful.
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Rix, Helmut. 1992. Historische Grammatik des Griechischen: Laut- und Formenlehre. 2d ed. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgellschaft.
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About half the length of Schwyzer’s first volume, Rix treats phonology and morphology. It is, however, more user-friendly because of its use of individual paradigm charts in the daughter languages, followed by discussion and reconstructions of individual phonemes and morphemes.
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Schwyzer, Eduard. 1939–1971. Griechische Grammatik: auf der Grundlage von Karl Brugmanns Griechischer Grammatik. 4 vols. Munich: Beck.
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Exhaustive, but out of date. The second volume is a treatment of syntax by Albert Debrunner. The grammar is more of a discussion of individual points of grammar rather than a set of paradigms as in more standard grammars.
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Sihler, Andrew. 1995. New comparative grammar of Greek and Latin. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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A treatment of the Greek and Latin reflexes of PIE phonology and morphology written in English, but lacking footnotes and a subject index. The presentation of the material is dense and daunting, and the handling of various controversies is not always even-handed. The lack of footnotes exacerbates this tendency.
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Simon, Zsolt. 2009. Review of Andrew L. Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (Paperback reprint of 1995 edition). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 6.34.
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A review of the paperback edition of Sihler that synthesizes other reviews and reports recently discovered evidence that affects some of the hypotheses in Sihler.
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Weiss, Michael. 1996. Review of New comparative grammar of Greek and Latin. American Journal of Philology 117:670–675.
DOI: 10.1353/ajp.1996.0061Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A treatment of the major problems of the book for a beginner and a number of other specific problems that will help the reader use Sihler 1995 wisely.
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Greek and Latin Etymological Dictionaries

Etymologies of individual roots of Greek and Latin words help the classicist to understand the meanings of many words that would otherwise be obscure owing to paucity of attestation or lack of consistent usage. Therefore, an understanding of the historical development of various lexemes can have consequences for the study of Greek and Latin literature. There are a number of Greek and Latin etymological dictionaries published since 1960. The journal Revue de Philologie includes the Chronique d’étymologie grecque, a bibliography and summary of the work on Greek etymology in the preceding year. It remains to be seen if Beekes 2010 will become the standard etymological dictionary of ancient Greek instead of the combination of Chaintraine 1968–1980 and Frisk 1960–1972. The limited scope of de Vaan 2008, in comparison to Ernout, et al. 1985 and Walde and Hoffman 1938–1954, is roughly analogous to the relationship of Rix 1992 to Schwyzer 1939–1971 and of Meiser 1998 to Leumann 1977 (cited under Historical Grammars of Greek and Latin).

Beekes, Robert. 2010. Etymological dictionary of Greek. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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Comprehensive, although the citations for individual words are not exhaustive and the bibliography only lists books or collections of papers in book form. The introduction helpfully lays out the somewhat idiosyncratic theoretical and intellectual orientation of the compiler.
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Chantraine, Pierre. 1968–1980. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Paris: Klincksieck.
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Judicious in its citation of secondary literature, and the Proto-Indo-European root of a given word (or lack thereof) is clearly marked by the abbreviation et. at the end of the entry.
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Chronique d’etymologie grecque; Chronique d’etymologie latine.
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The French journal Revue de Philologie often publishes a supplement to Chaintraine that consists of entries in the same style as Chantraine 1968–1980 containing new research on selected lemmata. Since 2003, the same journal has published a similar ongoing update of Latin etymologies in the same dictionary format.
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de Vaan, Michiel. 2008. Etymological dictionary of Latin and other Italic languages. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
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Differs from previous Latin etymological dictionaries in its inclusion of entries for words in Italic languages not in Latin, and its exclusion of lexemes without established Indo-European origins. Well annotated with an extensive bibliography. The entries are well laid out in a clear and user-friendly format.
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Ernout, Alfred, Antoine Meillet, and J. André. 1985. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue latine. 4th ed. Paris: Klincksieck.
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Still necessary for words without established Indo-European pedigrees and more user-friendly than Walde and Hoffman 1938–1954. Much more judicious in its citations of cognate forms and secondary literature and reconstructions of PIE roots are easier to find at the end of the lemma.
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Frisk, Hjalmar. 1960–1972. Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg: Winter.
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Much like Walde and Hoffman 1938–1954, the PIE roots are difficult to find but it cross-references Chaintraine 1968–1980 and Pokorny 1959–1969 (cited under Proto-Indo-European Semantics) consistently where the root may be found.
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Walde, Alois, and J. B. Hoffman. 1938–1954. Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Heidelberg, Germany: Winter.
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The entries are very well annotated and have a wealth of cognate forms in the daughter languages, but the citations are now dated, and it is difficult to find the reconstructions of the PIE roots.
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Greek and Latin Etymologies

In spite of the fact that the results of all but the most recent etymologies may be found in the etymological dictionaries cited below, individual studies of etymologies are an excellent way for the beginner to familiarize herself with the principles of phonological, morphological, and semantic change. Listed here are a few individual etymologies that will be especially helpful for a student of the classics and that are particularly noteworthy for their methodological precision. Even the advanced student may benefit by reading the original formulations of various etymologies rather than simply relying upon entries in etymological dictionaries. Cowgill 1960, Katz 2000, Vine 1999, and Weiss 1994 all employ the full range of grammatical evidence to arrive at their respective conclusions.

Cowgill, Warren. 1960. Greek ou and Armenian oc. Language 36:347–350.
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An etymology of Greek ou based on syntactic patterns observed in other languages and PIE ablaut patterns. Reprinted in The collected writings of Warren Cowgill, edited by Jared Klein (Ann Arbor, MI, and New York: Beech Stave, 2006), pp. 99–102.
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Katz, Joshua. 2000. Evening dress: The metaphorical background of Latin vesper and Greek hésperos. In Proceedings of the eleventh annual UCLA Indo-European conference. Edited by Karlene Jones-Bley, Martin E. Huld, and Angela Della Volpe, 69–93.Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man.
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An explanation of the PIE ancestor of Latin vesper and Greek hésperos as a delocatival formation that means “that which is in a shroud,” built upon previous studies of Latin vespa and vespillo.
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Vine, Brent. 1999. A note on the Duenos Inscription. In UCLA Indo-European studies, Vol. 1. Edited by Vyacheslav Ivanov and Brent Vine, 293–305. Los Angeles: Program in Indo-European Studies.
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A new etymology of the archaic Latin verb mitat that illuminates the dangers of assuming that even semantically and phonetically similar roots are derived from the same PIE root. The volume is one of two occasional paper collections. The first volume is out of print but the contents of the entire volume are available online.
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Weiss, Michael. 1994. Life everlasting: Latin iugis, Greek hugiês “healthy,” Gothic ajukduths “eternity,” and yauaseji—“living forever.” Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 55: 131–156.
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In the process of proposing a new etymology of Latin iugis, Weiss pushes back the date of the so-called “neognós rule” and “boukólos rule” into PIE and briefly touches upon the problem of the rough breathing in Greek words that corresponds to initial i- in other daughter languages.
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Historical Phonology of Greek and Latin

Although there is a general consensus on much of the historical phonology of Latin and Greek, some questions remain about the outcome of particular combinations of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) phonemes, such as certain consonant clusters that include the PIE aspirate stops in Latin and laryngeals in certain environments in Greek. Lejeune 1972 is a trustworthy (and readable) account of the phonology of the Greek consonants, but its treatment of the vocalic system is dated. Cowgill 1978, Stuart-Smith 2004, and Probert 2006 are all eloquent testimonies to the importance of phonetics in phonological change. Meiser 1998 (cited in Historical Grammars of Greek and Latin) and Weiss 2009 (cited in Handbooks of Latin Linguistics) are good overviews of the entire phonemic system of Latin and its relationship to PIE, and Rix 1992 (cited in Historical Grammars of Greek and Latin) of Greek.

Cowgill, Warren. 1978. The source of Latin vis ‘thou wilt’. Die Sprache 24:25–44.
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Explains the irregular Latin form vis as the result of phonetic constraints of “l- exilis” and “l- pinguis” in Latin. Reprinted in The collected writings of Warren Cowgill, edited by Jared Klein (Ann Arbor, MI, and New York: Beech Stave, 2006), pp. 99–102.
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Lejeune, Michel. 1972. Phonétique historique du mycénien et du grec ancien. Paris: Klincksieck.
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Although its version of the PIE vocalic system does not incorporate laryngeal theory, its opening chapters on method, its attempt to use evidence for phonetic articulation, and its treatment of phonology in the context of the syllable, word, and sentence are exemplary, and it is often cited as the standard work on Greek phonology. Rix 1992 (cited under Historical Grammars of Greek and Latin) should be consulted for the reflexes of PIE laryngeals in ancient Greek.
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Probert, Philomen. 2006. Ancient Greek accentuation: Synchronic patterns, frequency effects and prehistory. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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A model combination of philological, historical, and theoretical linguistic methodologies to explain the variety of accentuations of Greek words with the suffixes -ro, -to, -no, -lo, and -mo, preceded by an especially helpful summary of the philological evidence for and linguistic approaches to ancient Greek accentuation.
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Stuart-Smith, Jane. 2004. Phonetics and philology: Sound change in Italic. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199257737.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A combination of modern acoustic analyses of stops that are believed to be similar to the voiced aspirate series of stops in PIE and an examination of the evidence in the Italic languages in order to clarify the process that led to the different outcomes of these consonants in Latin and the other Italic languages.
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Historical Morphology of Greek and Latin

Many of the nominal and verbal categories of Greek and Latin have origins that are independent of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) system, such as Latin adjectives ending in -idus (treated by Nussbaum 1999). Moreover, the inherited paradigms are often subject to paradigmatic leveling, that is, the loss of any inherited forms whose relationship to the other members of a paradigm has become opaque through sound change in favor of forms built by analogy with the rest of the paradigm. Some roots may be assigned to a different morphological category based on a similarity resulting from independent phonological changes, and/or assigned to a synchronically more productive class of nouns or verbs. Meissner 2006 explores the relationship of one class of Greek substantive to its counterpart in PIE. Greek and Latin have also lost, radically changed, or preserved only vestiges of some of the inherited case endings or forms, such as the “sigmatic future” in Latin, the topic of de Melo 2007 or vestigial ablatives in Greek, as discussed in Watkins 1976. Risch 1974 explores every category of derivational morphology in Homeric Greek and its relationship to PIE. The origin of these new case endings and new verbal and nominal categories constitutes an important area of research in Greek and Latin linguistics. Miller 2006 is a handbook of Latin suffixes in English, but it contains a wealth of raw material on Latin derivational morphology in handbook form. Oniga 2005 and the other papers in the volume that contains it offer a snapshot of the research on Latin compounding.

de Melo, Wolfgang. 2007. The early Latin verb system. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199209026.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Not a treatment of the entire verbal system, but of the archaic “sigmatic futures,” such as faxo, in a careful study of the synchronic evidence followed by a shorter examination of their Indo-European origins.
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Meissner, Torsten. 2006. S-stem nouns and adjectives in Greek and Indo-European. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280087.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A treatment of the relationship of the s-stem nouns in Greek to the so-called Caland stems in PIE.
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Miller, D. Gary. 2006. Latin suffixal derivatives in English and their Indo-European ancestry. New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199285051.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A well-annotated collection of Latin nominal and verbal derivational morphemes borrowed into English. The extensive entries, organized by category, are prefaced with an introduction to Latin derivational morphology and some basic theoretical concepts.
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Nussbaum, Alan. 1999. Jocidus: An account of Latin adjectives in -idus. In Compositiones Indogermanicae in Memoriam Jochem Schindler. Edited by H. C. Luschützky and H. Eichner, 377–419. Prague: Enigma.
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A reconstruction of the original Proto-Italic form of the Latin suffix -idus and a discussion of its indirect relationship to other Latin word formations such as abstract nouns in -or and to PIE Caland nouns.
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Oniga, Renato. 2005. Composition et préverbation en Latin: Problèmes de typologie. In La Composition et la préverbation en Latin. Edited by Claude Moussy, 211–227. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
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Uses the interface of morphology with syntax and phonology respectively to delineate the difference between verbal and nominal composition in Latin and in the process outlines a number of subcategories of both. Oniga’s suggestion for the syntactic origin of verbal composition has interesting similarities with Adams 1994 (cited in Greek and Latin Syntax).
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Risch, Ernst. 1974. Wortbildung der homerischen Sprache. 2d ed. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter.
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The bulk of Risch’s study is divided into three parts: nominal and verbal derivational morphology, with a section on compounding between them that bridges nouns and verbs. The PIE origins of each category are given where appropriate, and the Mycenaean evidence is also well incorporated. There is also an extensive section on Caland nouns in the first part.
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Watkins, Calvert. 1976. Observations on the Nestor’s Cup inscription. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 80:25–40.
DOI: 10.2307/311231Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An argument that some forms in the “Nestor’s Cup” inscription conceal an inherited ablative and the inherited form of the subjunctive. An answer to the question “Where is the ablative?” asked by some beginning students of Greek. Reprinted in Watkins, Selected Writings (Innsbruck, Austria: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck, 1994), pp. 544–549.
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Greek and Latin Syntax

Many of the same problems arise for Greek and Latin as for PIE syntax. The majority of the texts are literary and may differ from the spoken language in ways that can no longer be recovered, and thus they give evidence that is likely more than several removes from the spoken language. The application of Wackernagel’s Law in the daughter languages has been examined and refined in Hale 1987 (cited in Proto-Indo-European Syntax) and in Adams 1994. The interface between phrasal structure and phonological phenomena, including metrical prosody, is another avenue of research that has yielded illuminating results in Fortson 2008.

Adams, J. N. 1994. Wackernagel’s Law and the position of unstressed personal pronouns in Classical Latin. Transactions of the Philological Society 92:103–178.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-968X.1994.tb00430.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Adams concludes that unstressed words in Classical Latin cliticize onto semantically important words, or “focus hosts,” as a result of a reinterpretation of Wackernagel’s Law and that a similar reinterpretation results in the proclisis of unstressed pronouns in Romance. Its conclusions overlap with Hale 1987 (cited in Proto-Indo-European Syntax) but are arrived at by an approach more empirical and pragmatic than rationalist and theoretical.
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Fortson, Benjamin. 2008. Language and rhythm in Plautus: Synchronic and diachronic studies. New York and Berlin: de Gruyter.
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A collection of studies on the relationship between Plautine meter and the interface between Latin syntax, phonology, and phonetics that treats underlying linguistic causes of the loss of the vowel in est following a vowel, final -m and final -s, brevis brevians, and violations of a number of metrical laws.
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Greek Dialectology

Each Greek dialect offers a range of archaisms and innovations that provide clues to the formation of the Greek language as a whole, and the use of dialect in texts serves as indirect evidence for the attitudes of speakers of different dialects toward other dialects. Colvin 2007 provides both diachronic and synchronic views of the Greek dialects that are also useful as a brief history and prehistory of the language in Antiquity.

Colvin, Stephen. 2007. A historical Greek reader: Mycenaean to the Koiné. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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A readable and compact introduction to the ancient Greek language and its development from PIE into the various dialects. The principles set forth in the introduction are reinforced and expanded in a collection of a number of texts in different dialects and of various ages, with commentary.
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Latin Dialectology and the Italic Languages

Latin is not divided into distinct dialects as Greek is, but there are some variations in spelling in inscriptions. There are also comments made by ancient authors that indicate some variation. Latin is also one of several closely related languages attested throughout ancient Italy. Vine 1993 (cited in Handbooks of Latin Linguistics) treats a great many variants in archaic Latin inscriptions that may be dialectal or may indicate the influence of other languages on Latin. The line between language and dialect in the study of the Italic languages is not always clearly defined, especially in the case of dialectal Latin. The claim that Faliscan is a dialect of Latin are countered in Joseph and Wallace 1991. The earlier chapters of Adams 2007 reexamine much of the same evidence as Vine 1993 (cited under Handbooks of Latin Linguistics). Wallace 1988 is a sociolinguistically informed examination of a single unexpected feature of a single Latin inscription in terms of bilingualism. Campanile 1993 explores the implications of extended contact between Latin and other languages spoken in central Italy before the rise of Roman hegemony.

Adams, J. N. 2007. The regional diversification of Latin: 200 B.C.–A.D. 600. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511482977Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An exhaustive treatment of the evidence for dialectal variation in Latin.
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Campanile, Enrico. 1993. L’uso storico della linguistica italica: L’Osco nel quadro della koiné mediterranea e della koiné italiana. In Oskisch-Umbrisch Texte und Grammatik: Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft und der Società Italiana di Glottologia vom 25. bis 28. September 1991 in Freiburg. Edited by Helmut Rix, 26–35. Wiesbaden, Germany: Verlag Ludwig Reichert.
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An examination of various formulaic expressions and terms in the Italic languages in light of the Mediterranean cultural koiné and a “more restricted and presumably more recent” central Italian koiné that brings to light the importance of history and cultural contact in the development of Latin and the other Italic languages.
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Joseph, Brian, and Rex Wallace. 1991. Is Faliscan a local Latin patois? Diachronica 8.2: 159–186.
DOI: 10.1075/dia.8.2.02josSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A demonstration that Faliscan, the language of ancient Falerii, is not a dialect of Latin but a closely related, yet separate, language.
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Wallace, Rex. 1988. Dialectal Latin fundatid, proiectatid, parentatid. Glotta 66:211–220.
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An explanation of the use of an Oscan morphological feature in an archaic Latin inscriptions, based on models of language contact.
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Linguistics and Philology

Although there is much overlap between traditional historical linguistics and philology, the two are not identical, and linguistic methodologies can be brought to bear on philological questions. Historical linguistic methodologies, such as the use of evidence from related languages (for example, Vedic Sanskrit), can often shed light on the formation of the epic dialect, resolve a particular impasse of Homeric philology, or reveal previously unsuspected problems. Chantraine 1953–1958 often discusses the prehistory of the Homeric dialect in his descriptive grammar. Rau 2008 uncovers an archaism long hidden in the manuscript readings of Homer and thus demonstrates that historical linguists still have much to offer the Homerist. On the other hand, Beckwith 1999 convincingly demonstrates that the reduplicated aorist in Homer is often the result of innovations based upon a few genuinely archaic examples. Livingston 2004 applies historical linguistic analyses to the diction of the fragments of Livius Andronicus.

Beckwith, Miles. 1999. Homeric (ek)lélathon. Historische Sprachforschung 112:78–85.
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A treatment of a reduplicated aorist that was created for metrical reasons and not inherited, and a testament to the pitfalls of Homeric philology as a tool for linguistic reconstruction. Note that Historische Sprachforschung has changed its name more than once and is sometimes abbreviated ZVS (for Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung) and more often KZ (for Kuhns Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung).
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Chaintraine, Pierre. 1953–1958. Grammaire homérique. 2 vols. Paris: Klincksieck.
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The classic historical grammar of the Homeric dialect. The first volume is especially rich in historical data and is still helpful for the underlying historical causes of certain metrical anomalies and the origins of Homeric inflectional morphology.
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Livingston, Ivy. 2004. A linguistic commentary on Livius Andronicus. New York and London: Routledge.
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A treatment of various phonological and morphological features of the language of Livius in commentary form, with an appendix on Latin –ulentus.
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Rau, Jeremy. 2008. Iliad 4.384 Tudê, Iliad 15.339 Mêkistê, and Odyssey 19.136 Odysê. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 104:1–18.
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An exemplary mix of textual criticism, metrics, and historical linguistics that adumbrates an archaic accusative ending and a testament to the value of Homeric philology for linguistic reconstruction.
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Linguistic Paleontology and the Classics

Even a hypothetical language implies speakers and a culture, and subjects such as the technology, kinship system, homeland, and even the poetry of the Indo-Europeans have fascinated specialists and nonspecialists alike. Few linguists would disagree that cultural reconstruction is possible in principle, and all agree that linguistic paleontology and cultural reconstruction are fraught with difficulties. If a consensus could be reached on even a few points of linguistic paleontology, these reconstructions could be employed to reconstruct the background of texts such as the Homeric poems or archaic Latin texts. The success of these reconstructions and their usefulness as evidence for literary interpretation are open questions. Benveniste 1973 collects a number of essays that offer promising avenues of comparative approaches to ancient semantics, but Arvidsson 2006 is an illustration of how arbitrary and politically charged linguistic paleontology has been since its inception.

Arvidsson, Stefan. 2006. Aryan idols: Indo-European mythology as ideology and science. Translated by Sofia Wichmann. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Both a history and a critique of various theories of Indo-European religion and mythology and the modern cognitive and political biases that informed them. Arvidsson’s critique is directed more toward sociological reconstructions rarely based on linguistics, but his point is still relevant for any form of linguistic paleontology.
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Benveniste, Émile. 1973. Indo-European language and society. Translated by Elizabeth Palmer. Coral Gables, FL: Univ. of Miami Press.
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A collection of essays on the reconstructed PIE vocabulary for the semantic fields of economy, kinship, society, politics, law, and religion, originally published in French in 1969.
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The Indo-European Homeland and Models of Dispersal

A number of theories have evolved concerning the place of origin of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), and these theories are closely tied to models of linguistic dispersal. It would be impossible to list every suggested “homeland,” although Mallory 1989 discusses some of the more plausible suggestions. There are essentially two competing models of linguistic dispersal. The Stammbaum, or cladistic, model posits a geographical breakup of PIE (or several diasporas of PIE over time) that became a series of proto-languages that engendered the various languages of a recognized branch of PIE. Wave theory rejects the neat breakup of PIE into smaller and smaller groups and instead posits a continuum of dialects of PIE that share similarities because of geographical contact, rather than a single ancestor. The relative dating of the existing branches of the Indo-European family, as discussed in Ringe, et al. 2002 is closely related to the question of linguistic dispersal.

Mallory, James. 1989. In search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, archeology and myth. London and New York: Thames & Hudson.
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A general introduction to Indo-European studies that is especially good on the archaeological evidence for cultures that may have been Indo-European; discusses migrations and possible homeland scenarios.
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Ringe, Don, Warnow, Tandy, and Taylor, Ann. 2002. Indo-European and computational cladistics. Transactions of the Philological Society 100.1: 59–129.
DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.00091Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A proposal for the relative dating of different subfamilies of PIE based on an algorithm that takes morphological and phonological innovations into account.
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Comparative Poetics and Metrics

There appears to be a finite number of ways to characterize an utterance as verbal art, as examined by Fabb 1997. The considerably more finite inventory of aspects common to the verbal art of many of the daughter languages suggests that something of the poetry of the Indo-Europeans may be recovered. West 2007 collects a number of verbal and thematic parallels that may be the result of a common Indo-European tradition. The origin for the poetic meters of the various daughter languages has been the subject of a number of studies over the years. Nagy 1974 is an especially interesting application of the comparative evidence to propose an origin of the Homeric hexameter. A number of collocations of two or more PIE roots that have reflexes in Greek, and sometimes Latin, texts suggest that some “formulae” of PIE date may have survived in the poetry composed in the various daughter languages. The most famous example is the expression kléos áphthiton in Iliad 9.413 and a number of cognate expressions in the Rig Veda (discussed in much detail in Nagy 1974). Watkins 1995 is a book-length treatment of one specific “formula,” preceded by a general introduction to Indo-European poetics. Matasovic 1996 explicitly examines the methodology of poetic reconstruction in light of the various possible reasons for these “correspondence sets” of phrases. The possible existence of such phrases in Latin is further complicated because of the abundant borrowing of poetic material from Greek, but as Dunkel 2001 argues, the possibility of an inherited PIE poetics in Latin cannot simply be dismissed.

Dunkel, George. 2001. Old Latin orality seen through Indo-European lenses. In ScriptOralia romana: Die römische Literatur zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. Edited by Lore Benz, 321-340. Tübingen, Germany: Narr.
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A discussion of the problems and possibilities of the PIE status of thematic and formulaic parallels in Latin poetry to other Indo-European languages.
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Fabb, Nigel. 1997. Linguistics and literature: Language in the verbal arts of the world. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.
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An introduction to the range of linguistic markers of verbal art around the world.
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Matasovic, Ranko. 1996. A theory of textual reconstruction in Indo-European linguistics. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
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An explicit theoretical examination of the often implicit principles of reconstruction of PIE “formulae,” analogous to Clackson’s “introduction” to PIE linguistics. Matasovic also discusses various reconstructions of PIE poetic terminology.
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Nagy, Gregory. 1974. Comparative studies in Greek and Indic meter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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The book proposes a derivation of the Greek hexameter from Greek lyric meters, and of Greek and Sanskrit meters in general from traditional formulae that predate both. The most purely linguistic of several studies of the language of Greek poetry by this influential scholar. Also available online.
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Schmitt, Rüdiger. 1967. Dichtung und Dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit. Wiesbaden, Germany: Otto Harrasowitz.
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An encyclopedic collection of proposed PIE “formulae” and the evidence for these collocations, the great majority of them in Greek and Vedic.
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Watkins, Calvert. 1995. How to kill a dragon: Aspects of Indo-European poetics. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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An examination of Indo-European poetics in general, followed by a specific treatment of the dragon-slaying myth. Somewhat glib in its use of the word “formula,” but a fascinating example of what the study of Indo-European poetics offers the student of classics.
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West, M. L. 2007. Indo-European poetry and myth. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199280759.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A “vista” of various aspects of PIE poetics and myth and the evidence for these reconstructions organized by topic. Despite its lack of a word index, it is the most accessible treatment of the topic for the general reader.
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