¡Descarga A Linguistic History of English: Volume I - From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic y más Ejercicios en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! Folia Linguistica Historica 28/1–2 (2007), 279–283. ISSN 0165–4004, E-ISSN 1614–7308 © Mouton de Gruyter – Societas Linguistica Europaea Don Ringe. 2006. A Linguistic History of English. Volume I. From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. x + 355. ISBN: 0–19–928413–X; 978–0–19–928413–9. Reviewed by MARC PIERCE, The University of Texas at Austin This book is the first in a projected multi-volume work dealing with the history of the English language, and considers the very earliest (reconstructed) stages of English. In many ways, it is not a traditional handbook of the history of English (as Ringe indeed notes), which tends to start with a chapter on Indo-European, segues from there to a discussion of Germanic, and then discusses the various (attested) stages of the history of English in chronological order, beginning with Old English and progressing into the modern era. Instead, this book is intended as “a coherent description of various stages in the prehistory of English and of the changes that transformed one stage into the next” (p. 1), and is aimed at “those who have not undertaken serious study of Indo-European or comparative Germanic linguistics, nor of the history of English, but want reliable information on what specialists in those disciplines have collectively learned over the past century and a half” (p. 1). A background in both modern linguistics and historical linguistics would be useful, although knowledge of the most current theoretical trends is unnecessary. In addition, although Ringe hopes that “a knowledge of some ancient (or at least archaic) lndo-European language will not be necessary to make this volume intelligible, there is no denying that it would be helpful” (p. 3); he also suggests that knowledge of Modern German or Russian might suffice. After a brief ‘General Introduction’ (pp. 1–3) outlining the book’s goals and expectations, the work proper gets underway with a chapter on ‘Proto- Indo-European’ (pp. 4–66). Ringe first defines Proto-Indo-European and briefly discusses some relevant issues (e.g. subgrouping and the reconstruction of various aspects of Proto-Indo-European grammar) and then turns to Proto-Indo-European phonology, basing his reconstruction largely on that of Mayrhofer (1986). The Proto-Indo-European phonological system, which in Ringe’s view included three series of stops (voiceless, plain voiced, and voiced aspirated) and three laryngeals, is outlined. Ringe then examines some important Proto-Indo-European phonological phenomena, Brought to you by | Universidad de Granada Authenticated Download Date | 2/19/18 5:35 PM 280 Book reviews including the syllabification of sonorants, various generalizations involving ablaut, and the Proto-Indo-European Auslautgesetze, among others, and the phonology section closes with a brief discussion of Proto-Indo-European accent. The next section deals with Proto-Indo-European inflectional morphology. It begins with a review of Proto-Indo-European inflectional categories and their formal expression, and then discusses the inflection of Proto-Indo-European verbs (generally the Cowgill-Rix system, cf. Rix et al. [200l]), nouns, adjectives, and other nominals (e.g. personal pronouns and determiners). A condensed review of Proto-Indo-European derivational morphology is presented; Ringe notes that Proto-Indo-European had a “very elaborate” (p. 58) system of word formation (see the various papers collected in Clackson and Olson [2004] for some relevant recent discussion), and therefore restricts himself to “only some of the most important derivational types, together with a few that would later prove important in the development of Germanic” (p. 58). The focus here is on compounding and derivational suffixes, i.e. on topics like exocentric compounds, agentive nominal compounds, and the Caland system. The chapter concludes with brief discussions of Proto-Indo-European syntax and the Proto-Indo- European lexicon. Chapter 3, ‘The Development of Proto-Germanic’ (pp. 67–212), reviews the linguistic developments that took place from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic and follows the same general pattern as the previous chapter. The first, and by far the longest, thematic section of the chapter tackles phonological changes, beginning with various developments affecting the laryngeals and related vocalic developments, e.g. the loss of intervocalic laryngeals and the resulting contraction of the vowels. This is followed by discussions of changes affecting sonorants and obstruents, Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws, Sievers’ Law, various other changes (some of which might have “occurred after the unity of Proto-Germanic had begun to disintegrate” [p. 145]), and a handy chronological overview of the various changes is given in a chart (p. 152). The next section deals with changes in the inflectional morphology, with a focus on what Ringe sees as the two major developments in this area from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, namely the restructuring of the Proto-Indo-European verbal system (e.g. the shift from aspect to tense, the elimination of the aorist indicative, etc.), and the emergence of a double paradigm of adjectives (one vowel-stem paradigm with pronominal endings and one n-stem paradigm, traditionally called ‘strong’ and ‘weak’, respectively). Following the discussion of these Brought to you by | Universidad de Granada Authenticated Download Date | 2/19/18 5:35 PM
