A Grammar of Modern Indo-European is a complete reference guide to a living Indo-European language. It contains a comprehensive description of Proto-Indo-European grammar, and offers an analysis of the complexities of the prehistoric language and its reconstruction from its descendant languages. Written in a fresh and accessible style, and illustrated with maps, figures and tables, this book focusses on the real patterns of use of Late Indo-European. The book is well organised and is filled with full, clear explanations of areas of confusion and difficulty. It also contains an extensive English - Indo-European, Indo-European - English vocabulary, as well as detailed etymological notes, designed to provide readers with an easy access to the information they require. An essential reference source for the student of Indo-European as a learned and living language, this work will appeal to students of languages, classics, and the ancient world, as well as to general readers interested in the history of language, and in speaking the direct ancestor of the world's largest language family. In this special Prometheus edition, the language of the Engineers is fully analysed with texts from the original script, and its features are explained as another Proto-Indo-European dialect, relating it to its most likely source: the Late Indo-European branch. An essential book for fans of the fiction universe shared by Prometheus, Alien, Predator and Terminator franchises.

A Grammar of Modern Indo-European is a complete reference guide to a living Indo-European language. It contains a comprehensive description of Proto-Indo-European grammar, and offers an analysis of the complexities of the prehistoric language and its reconstruction from its descendant languages. Written in a fresh and accessible style, and illustrated with maps, figures and tables, this book focusses on the real patterns of use of Late Indo-European. The book is well organised and is filled with full, clear explanations of areas of confusion and difficulty. It also contains an extensive English - Indo-European, Indo-European - English vocabulary, as well as detailed etymological notes, designed to provide readers with an easy access to the information they require.An essential reference source for the student of Indo-European as a learned and living language, this work will appeal to students of languages, classics, and the ancient world, as well as to general readers interested in the history of language, and in speaking the direct ancestor of the world's largest language family.

What was initially described by Krahe as an Old European community based on studies of European hydronymy, and what has been described through comparative grammar as a North-West Indo-European dialect continuum - sharing common lexical and grammatical traits -, is now more clearly defined as an ancient Indo-European proto-language that expanded at least twice, from two small European regions during the third millennium: from the North Pontic steppe to the Carpathian basin in the first half, and from the Middle Danube to the rest of Europe in the second half. This book deals with that matter from a linguistic point of view and, as a consequence, with the reconstruction of different Proto-Indo-European stages and dialects, as well as neighbouring languages, including especially Uralic and its dialects.

In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that stretch as far back as the original common language. Thus, Watkins reveals the antiquity and tenacity of the Indo-European poetic tradition. Watkins begins this study with an introduction to the field of comparative Indo-European poetics; he explores the Saussurian notions of synchrony and diachrony, and locates the various Indo-European traditions and ideologies of the spoken word. Further, his overview presents case studies on the forms of verbal art, with selected texts drawn from Indic, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Armenian, Celtic, and Germanic languages. In the remainder of the book, Watkins examines in detail the structure of the dragon/serpent-slaying myths, which recur in various guises throughout the Indo-European poetic tradition. He finds the "signature" formula for the myth--the divine hero who slays the serpent or overcomes adversaries--occurs in the same linguistic form in a wide range of sources and over millennia, including Old and Middle Iranian holy books, Greek epic, Celtic and Germanic sagas, down to Armenian oral folk epic of the last century. Watkins argues that this formula is the vehicle for the central theme of a proto-text, and a central part of the symbolic culture of speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language: the relation of humans to their universe, the values and expectations of their society. Therefore, he further argues, poetry was a social necessity for Indo- European society, where the poet could confer on patrons what they and their culture valued above all else: "imperishable fame."

A dictionary of cognate words in 32 Indo-European languages.

Nahuatl is the language used by the ancient Aztecs and the Nahua Indians of Central Mexico. This text introduces the language using an anthropological approach, teaching learners to understand Nahuatl according to its own distinctive grammar and to reject translationalist descriptions based on English or Spanish notions of grammar. In particular, the author emphasizes the nonexistence of words in Nahuatl (except for the few so-called particles) and stresses the nuclear clause as the basis for Nahuatl linguistic organization.