Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages: Papers presented at the workshop on Indo-European Linguistics at the XVIIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 2007(305 Current Issues in Linguistic Theory)

The product of a group of scholars who have been working on new directions in Historical Linguistics, this book is focused on questions of grammatical change, and the central issue of grammaticalization in Indo-European languages. Several studies examine particular problems in specific languages, but often with implications for the IE phylum as a whole. Given the historical scope of the data (over a period of four millennia) long range grammatical changes such as the development of gender differences, strategies of definiteness, the prepositional phrase, or of the syntax of the verbal diathesis and aspect, are also treated. The shifting relevance of morphology to syntax, and syntax to morphology, a central motif of this research, has provoked lively debate in the discipline of Historical Linguistics.

Table of Contents:
1. Editors' Foreword, pix-xviii; 2. My memories of Carol Justus, pxix-xx; 3. Section A. Gender, animacy and number; 4. The origin of the feminine gender in PIE: An old problem in a new perspective (by Luraghi, Silvia), p3-13; 5. The animacy fallacy: Cognitive categories and noun classification (by Manoliu, Maria M.), p15-28; 6. Default, animacy, avoidance: Diachronic and synchronic agreement variations with mixed-gender antecedents (by Hock, Hans Henrich), p29-42; 7. The early development of animacy in Novgorod: Evoking the vocative anew (by Kwon, Kyongjoon), p43-53; 8. The development of mass/count distinctions in Indo-European varieties (by Fernandez-Ordonez, Inez), p55-68; 9. Section B. Definiteness, case and prepostions; 10. Strategies of definiteness in Latin: Implications for early Indo-European (by Bauer, Brigitte L.M.), p71-87; 11. The rise and development of the possessive construction in Middle Iranian with parallels in Albanian (by Bubenik, Vit), p89-101; 12. Does Homeric Greek have prepositions? Or local adverbs? (And what's the difference anyway?) (by Haug, Dag T.), p103-120; 13. Section C. Tense/aspect and diathesis; 14. On the origin of the Slavic aspects: Questions of chronology (by Andersen, Henning), p123-140; 15. The *-to-/-no- construction of Indo-European: Verbal adjective or past passive participle? (by Drinka, Bridget), p141-158; 16. Grammaticalization of the verbal diathesis in Germanic (by Hewson, John), p159-167; 17. The origin and meaning of the first person singular consonantal markers of the Hittite hi/mi conjugations (by Rose, Sarah), p169-176; 18. Section D. Morphosyntax; 19. The origin of the oblique-subject construction: An Indo-European comparison (by Barddal, Johanna), p179-193; 20. Morphosyntactic changes in Persian and their effects on syntax (by Estaji, Azam), p195-206; 21. Possessive subjects, nominalization and ergativity in North Russian (by Jung, Hakyung), p207-220; 22. On the grammaticalization of *kw i-/kw o- relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European (by Lujan, Eugenio R.), p221-234; 23. Section E. Reconstruction of inflectional categories in Indo-European; 24. Formal correspondences, different functions: On the reconstruction of inflectional categories of Indo-European (by Garcia-Ramon, Jose Luis), p237-250; 25. Author index, p251-253; 26. Index of languages and dialects, p255-257; 27. Index of subjects, p259-262

Review :
C'est un volume d'une très grande qualité qui nous est ici proposé. Dans le monde actuel [...] on est souvent submergé d'articles écrits à la hâte et qui n'apportent rien de nouveau. Tel n'est pas le cas ici. On ne saurait trop conseiller la lecture de ce bel ouvrage à tous les collègues intéressés par la linguistique historique.