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  • Indo-European word Formation: Proceedings of the Conference Held at the University of Copenhagen, October 20–22, 2000 ed. by James Clackson And Birgit Anette Olsen
  • Andrew Byrd
Indo-European word Formation: Proceedings of the Conference Held at the University of Copenhagen, October 20–22, 2000. Ed. by James Clackson And Birgit Anette Olsen. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Pp. 442. ISBN 8772898216. $75 (Hb).

It has been over twenty-five years since the publication of the proceedings of the Regensburger Fachtagung, Flexion und Wortbildung, a volume that marked a significant step forward in our understanding of Indo-European morphology. Recognizing the need for another such conference, the University of Copenhagen held one in the fall of 2000. The conference proved successful; numerous great minds of many schools from both the New World and the Old participated. Unfortunately, the conference proceedings do not include all of the scholars who presented (Alexander Lubotsky, Alan Nussbaum, Karin Stüber, and Clackson himself are not included), but this does not detract from the quality of the book.

Most of the papers found in this book deal with nominal morphology. Konstantin Krasukhin looks at the τóμoς : τoμóς type so prevalent in Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Greek and its position within the rest of the Indo-European family. The volume contains two important papers on *-tV- formations in Indo-European: Britta Irslinger, who provides a very thorough and extensive analysis of -tu- and -ti- stems, primarily deals with the Celtic evidence, while Brent Vine looks at the Indo-European situation as a whole. Finally, Birgit Olsen revisits the topic of the so-called Hoffmann suffix. Demonstrating the suffix to be more widespread than previously thought, Olsen postulates that it was not originally a possessive suffix as Hoffmann believed it to be, but rather a compositional element built to the PIE root *h3on- ‘load, burden’ (following George Dunkel), a root that is continued through Lat. onus ‘id.’.

George Dunkel has contributed one of the few papers in the volume that deals with verbal morphology. He examines the standing problem of the κα-aorist and κα-perfect in Ancient Greek and proposes that the solution lies not in a root extension (which explains very little), an analogical spread of -k-, or a phonological development (such as the laryngeal ‘hardening’ of *-Hh2- to -k-), but rather the univerbation of an original verb with the near-deixis particle *k̑e. This is also a feature seen in collocations in other Mediterranean Indo-European languages such as Oscan (e.g. ce-bnust ‘will have come hither’) and Latin (e.g. cēdō ‘approach’ < PIE *k̑e-sd-).

Other papers deal with the Indo-European language family only indirectly, with the authors choosing to tackle issues outside the canonical realm of IE linguistics. Gordon Whittaker, for example, discusses the possible Indo-European origin of words in ancient Near-Eastern languages such as Sumerian and Akkadian. He derives their origin from a language he calls Euphratic, named for the region in which he claims it was spoken. Whittaker cites examples such as Sumerian pihu ‘beer jug’ (< PIE *pih3-u̯o-, cf. OCS pivo ‘drink, beer’), Sumerian nirah/nerah ‘snake, adder; snake deity’ (< PIE *neh1-tr-ah2), and Akkadian birihhu ‘bundle’ (cf. PIE *bhr̥-t-i-h2 ‘burden’).

At a relatively low price of $75, Indo-European word formation is a good buy. The book itself is of high quality and is well bound and laid out nicely. The editors have used a very attractive and legible font, and there are relatively few and minor typographical errors. [End Page 217]

Andrew Byrd
University of California, Los Angeles
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