Historical Syntax of the Indo-European Languages

Part 1

Series: 

Author:
Daniel Petit
This book provides an introduction to the historical syntax of the Indo-European languages. It aims to provide an overview of the main issues concerning the comparison of syntactic structrures within the language family and the reconstruction of their common ancestor.

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Copyright Year:
2025
E-Book (PDF)
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-74199-7
Publication:
22 Sep 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73430-2
Publication:
25 Sep 2025
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Daniel Petit, PhD (1996), Habilitation (2002), is Professor of Historical Linguistics of the Indo-European languages at the Ecole normal supérieure (ENS) and Director of Studies at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), both in Paris (France). He has published monographs and articles on the Indo-European languages, with particular emphasis on Ancient Greek and Baltic languages.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

1 Introduction
 1 Historical Syntax and Indo-European Linguistics
 2 Accessing Indo-European
 3 The Uniformitarian Principle
 4 PIE Dialectology
 5 Theoretical Framework

2 What Is Syntax?
 1 Introduction
 2 Multiple Heads: Predicates over the Object in Indo-European
 3 Non-hierarchical Syntactic Relations: Coordination in Indo-European
 4 Double-Sided Relations: Nominal Apposition in Indo-European
 5 Genitive and Dative
 6 Conclusion

3 Historical Syntax and Its Mechanisms
 1 Introduction
 2 Reanalysis
 3 Extension
 4 Historical Syntax and Language Contact
 5 Conclusion

4 The Comparative Method: Internal Aspects
 1 Introduction
 2 Internal Description
 3 Internal Reconstruction
 4 Internal Comparison
 5 Conclusion

5 The Comparative Method: External Aspects
 1 External Comparison
 2 External Reconstruction
 3 External Description
 4 Conclusion

6 Historical Syntax and Morphological Marking
 1 Introduction
 2 The Submerged Genitive in Indo-European
 3 Demonstratives and Gender Attraction in Indo-European
 4 Non-Canonical Subjects in the Indo-European Languages
 5 Transitivity and Ergativity in Indo-European
 6 The Classical Armenian Perfect and Its Constructions
 7 Head-Marking: The Ezāfe-Construction in Iranian
 8 Adjectival Definiteness in Germanic
 9 Conclusion

7 Historical Syntax and Syntactic Autonomy
 1 Introduction
 2 Elliptical Genitives
 3 Elliptical Adjectives
 4 Adpositions and Verbal Constructions in Ancient Greek
 5 The Definite Article and Possession in Germanic and Celtic
 6 Subordination and Syntactic Autonomy
 7 Conclusion

8 Historical Syntax and Semantics
 1 Introduction
 2 The Meaning of Number in Indo-European
 3 Grammatical Gender
 4 Historical Syntax and Lexical Semantics
 5 Apudessives in Indo-European
 6 Cases and Semantic Roles
 7 The Evolution of Locative Roles in Indo-European
 8 Conclusion

9 Historical Syntax and Syntactic Linearity
 1 Introduction
 2 Verb-Initial in Indo-European
 3 Split Possession and Position Rules in Albanian
 4 Word Order Implications: Negations and Adverbs
 5 Indo-European Tmesis
 6 Conclusion

Conclusion
 1 Syntactic Analysis and Its Objects
 2 Causality in Historical Syntax
 3 Historical Syntax and the Comparative Method
 4 The Syntactic Profile of Indo-European
 5 A Retrospective Glance

Bibliography
Index notionum
Index linguarum
Index verborum
Index locorum
This book is aimed at linguists specializing in the historical linguistics of Indo-European languages, as well as at those in historical and general linguistics.
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