LINGUIST List 11.2510

Tue Nov 21 2000

Books: Historical Linguistics

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Historical Ling: Greek and Indo-European Etymology in Action, Anttila

John Benjamins Publishing announces this new work in Historical Linguistics:

Greek and Indo-European Etymology in Action.
Proto-Indo-European *a-.
Raimo ANTTILA (UCLA)
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 200
US & Canada: 1 55619 978 3 / USD 79.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 3707 7 / NLG 158.00 (Hardcover)

This study resurrects the genre of Wortstudien contributions or lexilogus
treatments, the core of historical lexical semantics. Such studies used to
be quite popular, and interest in lexical matters is again rising. The
word family around the Indo-European root *a(g+acute)- 'drive' is placed
against its Germanic replacement drive as a typological parallel. Many
long-standing problems can now be solved, and new hypotheses emerge.

Starting with the still important sports and games aspect of social life,
new morphology is resurrected (ag(o macron+acute)n 'games' as an original
plural; �2), and a strongly social meaning for 'good' (agath�s; �3).
Agan�s finds its solution that combines the 'mild' and plant readings in a
natural way (�4). Hunting-and-gathering considerations establish new
possibilities or certainties for some 'wealth' words (�6), and all around
religion is involved (�7). Comparable Baltic Finnic evidence is drawn in
(�8), and such evidence is used to discuss cases on both sides. This way
explanations for the Indo-European material are strengthened, or even made
possible in the first place, and scores of Baltic Finnic words find
attractive (driving) loan hypotheses as their etymologies.



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