Internal Reconstruction in Indo-European ─ Methods, Results, and Problems: Selected Papers from the XVI International Conference on Historical Linguistics University of Copenhagen, 11th-15th Au

The 18 papers, two in German, are from a session at the August 2003 International Conference on Historical Linguistics, its 16th sitting, in Copenhagen. They demonstrate what can be learned about various members of the Indo-European language group by looking at elements within that particular language at different times, particularly by positing a single earlier single form from variant later forms. The topics include the expression of spatio-temporal locations in late Proto-Indo-European, verbal categorization and the coding of valency in Tocharian, internal reconstruction versus external comparison in Indo-Uralic laryngeals, the aspect-tense system and quantitative ablaut, how many noun suffices Proto-Indo-European had, and new Latin evidence for the Indo-European long-vowel preterit. No index is provided. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)