What do you think?
Rate this book
Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics
Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction
Indo-European Language and An Introduction provides a comprehensive overview of comparative Indo-European linguistics and the branches of the Indo-European language family, covering both linguistic and cultural material.
488 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
43 people are currently reading
491 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 20, 2021
REVIEW OF THE 2011 Kindle Edition
So yes, I am giving Benjamin W. Fortson IV’s Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction a full five stars as a rating (and indeed, I am reading and reviewing the 2011 Kindle edition, and I definitely do recommend this particular edition, as it is of course and naturally also the most recent, the most up to date). But my five star rating notwithstanding, I do in fact also realise and acknowledge that this book, that Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction is actually not universally loved and that some readers do seem to have found Fortson’s information, explanations and exercises on the linguistic specifics (phonology, morphology, syntax etc.) of in particular the proto languages a bit confusing and difficult. However, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction has been specifically and very obviously conceptualised as a university linguistics textbook, and in my humble opinion, as an undergraduate level introduction to the Indo-European languages, Benjamin J. Fortson IV’s text is in my humble opinion pretty much perfect (and academically delightful).
Now first and foremost, what I absolutely adore about Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction is the general set-up of the various chapters, that each specific section of Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction has ITS OWN set of bibliographical lists with suggestions for further reading, and happily so, that one can actually and easily also skip those areas of the book that one might find either too difficult or not that personally interesting and still textually obtain a pretty solid and decently informative understanding of Indo-European language and culture (for example, if a reader finds the specific linguistic information and details on PIE and its daughter languages either too confusing or not all that engaging, the modular organisation of Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction permits skipping this but thankfully not actually ever textually feeling a sense of incompleteness), and not to mention that what Benjamin W. Fortson IV points out in his preface to Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction regarding how his presented text is organised and the reasons for this, this is also what later is always to be encountered within the narrative proper (and with no nasty surprises either, as I have actually had more than a few cases of a university textbook in fact not practicing what is being preached in the preface, and indeed, this is always a huge and major annoyance and inconvenience).
And for two, I really do celebrate that Benjamin W. Fortson IV in my humble opinion and from my own previous readings of linguistics textbooks generally always manages to maintain a very appreciated and enjoyable to read textual balance with Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. In other words, Fortson always provides a simple enough text for most undergraduate students (and even for lay readers) but also not rendering his choice of vocabulary as so basic that Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction feels unacademic in scope and like trivial non fiction (such as for example many of the recent “biographies” of languages, books that basically often totally ignore linguistics and textually also seem to rather annoyingly for me make languages into active characters and persons, which really does for and to me get majorly silly, and I am definitely very pleased that with Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, Benjamin W. Fortson IV consistently avoids this and always keeps his narrative, his information on the Indo-European languages and culture totally serious, totally academic in scope and feel, and also thus never veering strangely off topic).
So yes, I am giving Benjamin W. Fortson IV’s Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction a full five stars as a rating (and indeed, I am reading and reviewing the 2011 Kindle edition, and I definitely do recommend this particular edition, as it is of course and naturally also the most recent, the most up to date). But my five star rating notwithstanding, I do in fact also realise and acknowledge that this book, that Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction is actually not universally loved and that some readers do seem to have found Fortson’s information, explanations and exercises on the linguistic specifics (phonology, morphology, syntax etc.) of in particular the proto languages a bit confusing and difficult. However, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction has been specifically and very obviously conceptualised as a university linguistics textbook, and in my humble opinion, as an undergraduate level introduction to the Indo-European languages, Benjamin J. Fortson IV’s text is in my humble opinion pretty much perfect (and academically delightful).
Now first and foremost, what I absolutely adore about Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction is the general set-up of the various chapters, that each specific section of Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction has ITS OWN set of bibliographical lists with suggestions for further reading, and happily so, that one can actually and easily also skip those areas of the book that one might find either too difficult or not that personally interesting and still textually obtain a pretty solid and decently informative understanding of Indo-European language and culture (for example, if a reader finds the specific linguistic information and details on PIE and its daughter languages either too confusing or not all that engaging, the modular organisation of Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction permits skipping this but thankfully not actually ever textually feeling a sense of incompleteness), and not to mention that what Benjamin W. Fortson IV points out in his preface to Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction regarding how his presented text is organised and the reasons for this, this is also what later is always to be encountered within the narrative proper (and with no nasty surprises either, as I have actually had more than a few cases of a university textbook in fact not practicing what is being preached in the preface, and indeed, this is always a huge and major annoyance and inconvenience).
And for two, I really do celebrate that Benjamin W. Fortson IV in my humble opinion and from my own previous readings of linguistics textbooks generally always manages to maintain a very appreciated and enjoyable to read textual balance with Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction. In other words, Fortson always provides a simple enough text for most undergraduate students (and even for lay readers) but also not rendering his choice of vocabulary as so basic that Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction feels unacademic in scope and like trivial non fiction (such as for example many of the recent “biographies” of languages, books that basically often totally ignore linguistics and textually also seem to rather annoyingly for me make languages into active characters and persons, which really does for and to me get majorly silly, and I am definitely very pleased that with Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, Benjamin W. Fortson IV consistently avoids this and always keeps his narrative, his information on the Indo-European languages and culture totally serious, totally academic in scope and feel, and also thus never veering strangely off topic).
December 8, 2019
Almost immediately upon publication, Prof. Fortson's survey of the Proto-Indo-European language and its daughter branches was recognized as the best introduction to the study in the English language. Now something like a decade after its first print and, to wit, this gateway has not been surpassed. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction is readily understood by the student with no background in historical linguistics and a valuable reference for those with a few notches on their belt.
Fortson is more of a Virgil than a Dante. He guides the reader through the facts and controversies of Indo-European studies, hitting all the major consensus points of the reconstructed language and providing a moderate's view when consensus cannot be found (which is often). He actively avoids inserting any of his own theories, instead providing a space for the newcomer to draw his or her own conclusions.
Historical linguistics can be a perniciously difficult field for newcomers. There are myriad publications examining only very narrow aspects of Proto-Indo-European and a paucity of big-picture looks. It doesn't help that a sizeable minority of the introductions cannot resist including the authors' pet theories of tenuous, or even outlandish, credulity. So thank goodness for Indo-European Langauge and Culture. Fortson's book was, and still is, a welcome lodestone.
Fortson is more of a Virgil than a Dante. He guides the reader through the facts and controversies of Indo-European studies, hitting all the major consensus points of the reconstructed language and providing a moderate's view when consensus cannot be found (which is often). He actively avoids inserting any of his own theories, instead providing a space for the newcomer to draw his or her own conclusions.
Historical linguistics can be a perniciously difficult field for newcomers. There are myriad publications examining only very narrow aspects of Proto-Indo-European and a paucity of big-picture looks. It doesn't help that a sizeable minority of the introductions cannot resist including the authors' pet theories of tenuous, or even outlandish, credulity. So thank goodness for Indo-European Langauge and Culture. Fortson's book was, and still is, a welcome lodestone.
December 13, 2012
A textbook of Indo-European studies; I've only read popular books on the subject previously; it is one of the textbooks used for UC Berkeley's Linguistics 234. The first 8 chapters reconstruct the proto-IE language (its phonology, verb morphology, noun morphology, syntax, the culture of the speakers etc.); the remaining 12 deal with its daughter subfamilies. Indo-Iranian is split into 2 chapters for Indic and Iranian, and Baltic and Slavic are lumped together; Greek, Albanian, Armenian etc. each merit a single chapter; the last chapter deals with ancient languages such as Phrygian and Thracian that are known to be Indo-European but are attested too poorly. For each subfamily, the chapter outlines its phonological evolution from proto-IE (Armenian changed *du into rk), and morphological and syntactic peculiarities of its member languages (Breton nouns can have a super-plural: "groups of children", "various different parks"; the Sanskrit Life of Buddha mentions a short-bed-blanket-covered-back stallion; Bulgarian has a special mood for retelling stories the speaker does not trust to be true). I was surprised that the Latin deus is related not to the Greek theos, but to Zeus; the suffix in the Czech divadlo (theater) and letadlo (airplane) also occurs in the English needle (the means of, respectively, watching plays, flying and sewing). The Latin phrase pater familias preserves the proto-IE genitive singular case ending for athematic nouns; with the regular ending it would have been pater familiae. The Latin femur (thigh) changes to femin- in oblique cases ("between thighs" is "inter femina" in Suetonius's story about Tiberius's recreational activities at Capri); in Hittite this r/n alternation is very common.
March 11, 2014
If Tocharian A excites you, wait 'til you see Tocharian B!
January 8, 2025
Very complete overview of all of the languages with some being discussed at quite a good length and others a bit less (though interestingly usually also containing a part about the modern history of the languages, something not always done)
August 25, 2015
Ik was in een ander boek aan het lezen, en daar werd gesproken over Indo-Europees, en dat het boek van Benjamin Fortson de moeite waard zou zijn.
Niét gelogen.
Dit is een machtig interessant werk. Zeer grote stukken gingen helemaal over mijn hoofd. Niet omdat het niet duidelijk was of onvolledig, maar zuiver omdat ik het boek gelezen heb als een boek, terwijl het even goed (of beter, eigenlijk) als een cursus gelezen kan worden. Ik vermoed dat mensen die dit moeten studeren op de universiteit niet enorm veel verder moeten zoeken om een uitstekende uitvalsbasis te vinden voor alles wat Indo-Europese taal en cultuur is.
Het begint met het boeiende verhaal van de reconstructie van (proto-)Indo-Europees, de taal, de cultuur, de regio van oorsprong, en gaat dan op alle takken van het Indo-Europees in. Met telkens voldoende informatie om meer dan op weg te zijn, een geannoteerde literatuurlijst, een lijst van termen zeker te onthouden en oefeningen en mogelijke examenvragen.
Ik ben er redelijk gerust in dat als ik dit als handboek had gelezen en er een paar maand over gedaan had in plaats van een paar dagen, ik ernstig veel zou geweten en onthouden hebben over de materie.
Ter illustratie: oefening één van hoofdstuk één:
Een oefening in het midden, over Latijn:
...en de laatste oefening van het laatste hoofstuk:
Serieus. Als ik gelijk vijfentwintig jaar jonger was, ik ging dit meteen studeren.
De tweede helft van het boek, waar de takken van het Indo-Europees apart besproken worden (niet alleen de vroegste vormen maar ook meer recente, trouwens), is trouwens hoofdstuk per hoofdstuk te lezen, en hoofdstuk per hoofdstuk machtig interessant. Met telkens geschiedenis en uitleg over de taal(familie), hoe ze geëvolueerd is uit het Proto-Indo-Europees (in fonologie, morfologie en syntax), met een overzicht van de verschillende talen in de familie (geschiedenis, grammatica, zwaar geannoteerde voorbeelden), en literatuurlijst.
Zeer zeer wijs. En een fijn boek om in huis te hebben qua naslagwerk.
Niét gelogen.
Dit is een machtig interessant werk. Zeer grote stukken gingen helemaal over mijn hoofd. Niet omdat het niet duidelijk was of onvolledig, maar zuiver omdat ik het boek gelezen heb als een boek, terwijl het even goed (of beter, eigenlijk) als een cursus gelezen kan worden. Ik vermoed dat mensen die dit moeten studeren op de universiteit niet enorm veel verder moeten zoeken om een uitstekende uitvalsbasis te vinden voor alles wat Indo-Europese taal en cultuur is.
Het begint met het boeiende verhaal van de reconstructie van (proto-)Indo-Europees, de taal, de cultuur, de regio van oorsprong, en gaat dan op alle takken van het Indo-Europees in. Met telkens voldoende informatie om meer dan op weg te zijn, een geannoteerde literatuurlijst, een lijst van termen zeker te onthouden en oefeningen en mogelijke examenvragen.
Ik ben er redelijk gerust in dat als ik dit als handboek had gelezen en er een paar maand over gedaan had in plaats van een paar dagen, ik ernstig veel zou geweten en onthouden hebben over de materie.
Ter illustratie: oefening één van hoofdstuk één:
Memorize the names of all the branches of the IE family, and the names and filiations of the extinct languages in figure 1.1
Een oefening in het midden, over Latijn:
Based on §13.13 and your knowledge of PIE and Latin sound changes, into which of the four conjugations would the following PIE athematic verbs have fallen?
*bleh1-ti 'weeps'
*bheh2-ti 'speaks'
*neh1-ti 'sew'
...en de laatste oefening van het laatste hoofstuk:
Imagine that you are the proud discoverer of a hitherto unknown ancient IE language belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of the family. Your task is to report your discovery to the scholarly world. Describe your language, including at least the following information:
The date of the texts) you have found and the place of discovery;
The outcomes of all the PIE sounds — consonants, vowels, and diphthongs – in your language. Include at least two sound changes that are conditioned, ie., that happened only in particular phonetic environments (some of the conditioned sound changes that weve talked about are rhotacism in Latin, umlaut in Germanic, Verners Law, and palatalization. Be sure to specify what the phonetic environments were (beginning of a word, between vowels, before a front vowel, wordfinally, etc. etc.);
The outcomes of these PIE forms: *ph2tḗr 'father', *mātēr 'mother', *bhrātēr ‘brother, *su̯esór 'sister', *pods, *ped 'foot', *mūs- 'mouse', *kwel- 'to turn', *h3erbh- 'transfer' to another sphere of ownership', *k̂léu̯os fame, *u̯lkwos 'wolf', *̑gheimōn 'winter', *sneigwh 'snow'
A brief description of the nominal system, including: what cases are preserved; what numbers; what genders; the general fate of athematic and thematic nouns;
A brief description of the verbal system, including: what tenses are preserved; what numbers; the general fate of athematic and thematic verbs, of the aorist, and of the perfect;
The paradigm in the singular and 3rd plural of the descendant of *h1es- 'be' in the present tense, *bher- 'carries' in the present tense, and *u̯oide 'knows';
A sample text in your language of a dozen words, including at least half that have an IE etymology and are different from the ones you give in (3) above;
Some brief remarks about the culture, mythology, society, etc. of the people that spoke your language.
Serieus. Als ik gelijk vijfentwintig jaar jonger was, ik ging dit meteen studeren.
De tweede helft van het boek, waar de takken van het Indo-Europees apart besproken worden (niet alleen de vroegste vormen maar ook meer recente, trouwens), is trouwens hoofdstuk per hoofdstuk te lezen, en hoofdstuk per hoofdstuk machtig interessant. Met telkens geschiedenis en uitleg over de taal(familie), hoe ze geëvolueerd is uit het Proto-Indo-Europees (in fonologie, morfologie en syntax), met een overzicht van de verschillende talen in de familie (geschiedenis, grammatica, zwaar geannoteerde voorbeelden), en literatuurlijst.
Zeer zeer wijs. En een fijn boek om in huis te hebben qua naslagwerk.
May 12, 2013
Brilliantly written; grounded solidly in current and credible theories regarding Proto-Indo-European; and incredibly useful, especially the chapters on each branch of the Indo-European language family.
June 19, 2020
This is the solid single-volume introduction to Indo-European studies I've been looking for. Mr. IV covers all the ground that you'd expect him to cover, precisely, concisely, and as uncontroversially as possible,† and including ground that other introductions really ought to have covered but mostly don't, like syntax and accent.
Though this means Indo-European Language and Culture has the most complete and useful reconstruction of PIE I've seen in a textbook written for its target audience by some distance, the thing that really sets it apart is its treatment of PIE's development in all of its daughter families, which takes up the last two thirds of the book. These chapters are necessarily cursory and some of the associated exercises are probably a bit optimistic unless you already have a prior interest in the specific language family they're about (especially since there's no answer key; the exercises for the earlier sections are all doable and useful), but they're immensely helpful in driving home the point that historical linguistics isn't just an idle intellectual exercise but actually has real explanatory and predictive power, as well as giving you a feel for what all of these languages look like. A lot of what he says about Dutch is nonsense.
Each chapter also has an associated Further Reading bibliography that's significant enough to be helpful but not so long as to be obviously bullshit, and it's gratifying that 1. I've already read many of the more recent entries, and 2. Fortson and I agree on which of them are particularly—as he diplomatically puts it—"idiosyncratic".
This will be the book I recommend to people looking to get into Indo-European historical linguistics going forward. It's not the only book you'll ever need to read, but it's an exceptionally good start.
--------
† Some controversy is unavoidable, but an introductory textbook has a duty to stay as close to consensus as possible regardless of the author's personal opinions. Where Mallory and Adams reconstruct *h₄ and Beekes and De Vaan come with all the Leiden School baggage in addition to everything else, the most out-there thing Fortson does is reconstruct *a and only two genders. And, notably, when there's significant variety of opinion he'll tell you.
Though this means Indo-European Language and Culture has the most complete and useful reconstruction of PIE I've seen in a textbook written for its target audience by some distance, the thing that really sets it apart is its treatment of PIE's development in all of its daughter families, which takes up the last two thirds of the book. These chapters are necessarily cursory and some of the associated exercises are probably a bit optimistic unless you already have a prior interest in the specific language family they're about (especially since there's no answer key; the exercises for the earlier sections are all doable and useful), but they're immensely helpful in driving home the point that historical linguistics isn't just an idle intellectual exercise but actually has real explanatory and predictive power, as well as giving you a feel for what all of these languages look like. A lot of what he says about Dutch is nonsense.
Each chapter also has an associated Further Reading bibliography that's significant enough to be helpful but not so long as to be obviously bullshit, and it's gratifying that 1. I've already read many of the more recent entries, and 2. Fortson and I agree on which of them are particularly—as he diplomatically puts it—"idiosyncratic".
This will be the book I recommend to people looking to get into Indo-European historical linguistics going forward. It's not the only book you'll ever need to read, but it's an exceptionally good start.
--------
† Some controversy is unavoidable, but an introductory textbook has a duty to stay as close to consensus as possible regardless of the author's personal opinions. Where Mallory and Adams reconstruct *h₄ and Beekes and De Vaan come with all the Leiden School baggage in addition to everything else, the most out-there thing Fortson does is reconstruct *a and only two genders. And, notably, when there's significant variety of opinion he'll tell you.
November 1, 2023
I believe this book one of best in its genre, especially for students.
January 11, 2013
This is a textbook, and while that is fine for Historical Indo-European 101, it is not what I was expecting. Now, if you are in the market for such a book (glossary terms in bold with definitions, etc.) as an intro to IE, this is a solid book. I should have known that by the title, but I found the description and reviews misleading in that regard.
If I had picked this up to use in teaching Indo-European, I might give it 4 or 5 stars!
If I had picked this up to use in teaching Indo-European, I might give it 4 or 5 stars!
July 4, 2011
Please see my review at Celtic Scholar
November 5, 2021
On the back, it says "Students and interested laypersons will find it indispensable". As an interested layperson, I can only confirm this. As a language geek, I have no idea how I've managed to muddle through life so far without this book! As someone who enjoys reading about languages, and particularly language history, it was pure enjoyment.
The book starts with the basics, so as long as you're motivated to learn, you really don't need that much previous knowledge. And it's modular - if you find some topics more interesting than others, it's easy to just skim or skip the bits that don't interest you. (I skipped the exercises.) Highly recommended for serious language geeks!
The book starts with the basics, so as long as you're motivated to learn, you really don't need that much previous knowledge. And it's modular - if you find some topics more interesting than others, it's easy to just skim or skip the bits that don't interest you. (I skipped the exercises.) Highly recommended for serious language geeks!
December 29, 2017
Una gran introducción. Destaca por su gran y detallada bibliografía.
Read
December 8, 2021I am brain dead.
April 3, 2022
Amazing introduction on all areas of this field.
May 25, 2023
Perfetto per iniziare ad approcciarsi a questa disciplina.
January 29, 2022
I started this book after finding the linguistic chapters in 'The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-European Culture' too terse to follow. I found this book a lot better in this respect and was able to follow the reconstructed Protocol-Indo-European phonology quite easily.
The most interesting part of this reconstruction was the theorization, and then later discovery, of the laryngeals. Sounds which didn't exist in any of the known (at the time) Indo-European languages, but whose existence would allow for regular sound changes to explain the observed cognates in the various daughter languages. Some years after this theory was proposed, records of Hittite were uncovered and it was found that not only was Hittite Indo-European but it had retained the hypothesized laryngeals. This resembles the process of science in many ways and serves as pretty strong Bayesian evidence that the comparative method indeed works as it claims it does.
The rest of the book included: a brief chapter on Proto-Indo-European culture (which while presented more compactly, doesn't compare to the 400+ pages devoted to this topic in the Oxford Introduction), detailed chapters on the grammar and syntax of Porto-Indo-European (which unfortunately went over my head) and a massive section devoted to tracing the exact route down the phylogenetic tree that all the important daughter languages followed.
The most interesting part of this reconstruction was the theorization, and then later discovery, of the laryngeals. Sounds which didn't exist in any of the known (at the time) Indo-European languages, but whose existence would allow for regular sound changes to explain the observed cognates in the various daughter languages. Some years after this theory was proposed, records of Hittite were uncovered and it was found that not only was Hittite Indo-European but it had retained the hypothesized laryngeals. This resembles the process of science in many ways and serves as pretty strong Bayesian evidence that the comparative method indeed works as it claims it does.
The rest of the book included: a brief chapter on Proto-Indo-European culture (which while presented more compactly, doesn't compare to the 400+ pages devoted to this topic in the Oxford Introduction), detailed chapters on the grammar and syntax of Porto-Indo-European (which unfortunately went over my head) and a massive section devoted to tracing the exact route down the phylogenetic tree that all the important daughter languages followed.
February 26, 2007
Ties together grammatical similarities between Persian, Hindi, Latin, Greek, German, Slavic, and English from the vantage point of the Indo-European hypothesis. While good, it is a textbook and is difficult to get past the whole 3-star thing.
Read
November 10, 2008Didn't finish.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews