The Indo-European Language Family
A Phylogenetic Perspective

Bringing together research from a team of global scholars, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of the Indo-European language family.

Thomas Olander (Edited by)

9781108499798, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 September 2022

314 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2.2 cm, 0.6 kg

'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

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Oral history [HBTD], Historical & comparative linguistics [CFF]