The Prehistory of the Glottalic Theory; THE GLOTTALIC THEORY: Classic Statements of the Theory; Critical Responses; Refinements & Additional Variants. IMPLICATIONS OF THE GLOTTALIC THEORY: Reformulating Some Laws of IE; Dialectal Developments; Distant Genetic Relationships; KEY ISSUES AND SOME MIDDLE GROUND: The Traditional Plain Voiced Series; The Traditional Voiced Aspirate Series; THE CHRONOLOGICAL SOLUTION: On the Role of Typology in Reconstruction; Theoretical Issues; Phonetics & Phonology in Reconstruction; A Note on Linguistic Methodology; Summary; Conclusion, and Outlook.

This book presents, for the first time in English, a complete critical survey of the theory and methodology of Indo-European linguistics, from its origins two centuries ago to the present day.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. It starts with a presentation of the languages of the family (from English and the other Germanic languages, the Celtic and Slavic languages, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit through Armenian and Albanian) and a discussion of the culture and origin of the Indo-Europeans, the speakers of the Indo-European proto-language.The reader is introduced into the nature of language change and the methods of reconstruction of older language stages, with many examples (from the Indo-European languages). A full description is given of the sound changes, which makes it possible to follow the origin of the different Indo-European languages step by step. This is followed by a discussion of the development of all the morphological categories of Proto-Indo-European. The book presents the latest in scholarly insights, like the laryngeal and glottalic theory, the accentuation, the ablaut patterns, and these are systematically integrated into the treatment. The text of this second edition has been corrected and updated by Michiel de Vaan. Sixty-six new exercises enable the student to practice the reconstruction of PIE phonology and morphology.

The languages belonging to the British subgroup of Celtic, i.e. Welsh, Cornish and Breton, have been the subject of thorough research for over a century now. Yet the phonological history of the prehistoric stages of these languages and the details of their connection with the other Celtic and Indo-European languages still present numerous unsolved issues. This volume aims to tackle the most acute problems of the historical phonology of British Celtic. Also it provides an up-to-date reference guide to British historical phonology in general, as well as a study of a large body of etymologies relevant to the correct evaluation of the historical phonology. This volume is of interest for the Celtologist, the Indo-Europeanist and the general historical linguist.

The 16 papers contained in this volume address a variety of phonological topics from different theoretical perspectives. Combined, they provide an excellent showcase for the diversity of the field. Topics considered include the place of allomorphy in grammar; Dutch clippings; the status of recursion in phonology; the role of contrast preservation in the Grimm-Verner push chain; the phonological specification of Dutch ‘tense’ and ‘lax’ monophthongs; the distribution of English vowels in a Strict CV framework; a dependency-based analysis of Germanic vowel shifts; a Radical CV Phonology approach to vowel harmony; emergentist vs. universalist perspectives on frequency effects in vowel harmony; the representation of Limburgian tonal accents; durational enhancement in Maastricht Limburguish high vowels; constraint conjunction in Mandarin Chinese; lexical tone association in Harmonic Serialism; a constraint-based account of the McGurk effect; a case study of the acquisition of liquids in early L1 Dutch; and the learnability of segmentation in Tibetan numerals.

This study is the first book-length examination of ejectives and their phonological patterning, deepening the empirical understanding of ejectives and contributing to both phonological theory and to typologies of sound change.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.