Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction

Rating:
Summary: 5 stars !
Review: More than a classic, this book is a gift, expected for so long !
It is clearly an attempt to update the famous "Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes" by Antoine Meillet, which dates back to the 1930s for the first edition. Meillet's book remains a classic, but is of a more compact aspect, less technical, written in long sentences, and is full of digressions and anecdotes: it can be read fluently.
Beekes's book aims at being sharper, written with more concise but relevant sentences; it is a handbook more than a book, technical and complete.
Definetly an indispensable reference.

Rating:
Summary: 5 stars !
Review: More than a classic, this book is a gift, expected for so long !
It is clearly an attempt to update the famous "Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes" by Antoine Meillet, which dates back to the 1930s for the first edition. Meillet's book remains a classic, but is of a more compact aspect, less technical, written in long sentences, and is full of digressions and anecdotes: it can be read fluently.
Beekes's book aims at being sharper, written with more concise but relevant sentences; it is a handbook more than a book, technical and complete.
Definetly an indispensable reference.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview!
Review: Two minor gripes:

Beekes uses his own (slightly) wierd transcription system, which appears to be partly based on the orthography (or romanisations) of the languages in question and partly an invented non-IPA phonetic system. This makes it harder to read than it needs to be.

The book has a fair number of typographic errors. Sometimes, these are nice and obvious, so the reader can see the error and automatically determine what was meant. Other times, however, the errors aren't immediately apparent, again making the book harder to read than it needs to be.

However: The quality and density of information, coupled with the way the information is generally presented make this an outstanding "second step" into the field of Indo-european linguistics for a student, and a top-class reference work for the enthusiast.

The subtitle "An Introduction" is perhaps a little over-optimistic, as a knowledge of basic linguistic terms is a definate pre-requisite. If you know your Dative from your Medio-passive, and you want a good, broad base of Indo-european, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: Detailed treatment of important family
Review: Well written and detailed treatment of Indo-European comparative linguistics, discussing the many grammatical features and lexical similarities that tie this important group of languages together. The Indo-European languages are notable for the complex verb tense system which allows many fine distinctions in discussing time, as opposed to aspect and mood, which other language families excel at. For example, Japanese in the Ural-Altaic group lacks a true future tense, but is much more complex than most Indo-European languages in terms of modal verb constructions (the subjunctive mood is an example of that, for those whose formal grammar is a bit rusty), which express such concepts as probability, conditionality, potential, the attitude of the speaker towards the subject, and so on.

I note the comment one reviewer made here about some typos, but overall, this is an excellent treatment of the subject. It's not exactly a beginner's book, requiring a good foundation in comparative and structural linguistics to read it. If you need to bone up on that before reading this, I would recommend Zellig Harris's classic book, Structural Linguistics, or the chapters on comparative and structural linguistics and grammar in John Lyon's great book, Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. I can also recommend the amazingly well done articles on comparative linguistics and on the Indo-European family in the Encyclopedia Britannica if you can't get ahold of those, since the Lyons book and possibly Harris's book are out of print.