An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages

Rating:
Summary: Cliff's Notes for Indo-European Languages
Review: This is a fantastic book! Baldi provides coverage of each of the subfamilies of Indo-European with a discussion of it's history, importance to Indo-European Linguistics, characteristics (morphology, phonology, syntax), a short sample text, a comparative analysis of important features, and discussion of any features or perspectives that make the individual group interesting or unique. If you're new to the field, this provides a wonderful introduction, if you're not--this is the Cliff's Notes--an overview of the highlight's and details you'd better have down cold if you claim to be an expert.

Rating:
Summary: An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages
Review: This is an extremely helpful introduction to Indo-European Languages. If you know nothing about Aryan languages, this is a very layman friendly book. A great overview. The author never tries to drown you with his PHd. This book is pretty Egghead free and that suits me. Not all of us have rich mommies and daddies who can pay our way through Yale. The author gets that. Thank the Gods!

Rating:
Summary: Well-presented, but not exactly a reference work.
Review: While rich with details on the discovery and identification processes for many of the languages and families discussed, this work is somewhat lacking in detailed information on the languages themselves. Where I was expecting paradigms, conjugations and comparisons, organised in a manner that was consistent between each family, I got instead a collection of loosely-related essays, that could easily have been written by different authors, each with a different purpose.

Additionally, Baldi seems to be somewhat outside the "conventional wisdom", in his opinion both of the structure of the Indo-european proto-language and in the relatedness of the languages descended from it. For example, in detailing the proto-language, he reconstructs a series of Voiceless Aspirates (in addition to the Plain, Voiced (or Glottalic) and Aspirated series), along with a series of four Laryngeals (rather than three) and an Eleven-part vocalic system (long and short 'a','e','i','o' and 'u', plus schwa). He seems happy to group together Armenian, Greek, Messapic, Raetic (sic) and Illyrian, but seems unwilling to support a well-established group like Italo-Celtic.

If you are prepared and able to see beyond (largely cosmetic) things like this, the book still makes a very worthwhile addition to any enthusiasts bookshelf. However, I'd caution students not to use this book as your primary source.