Introduzione alla glottologia Indoeuropea (review)

Riccardo Ambrosini’s latest book sums up his life’s work as an historical linguist and provides a thorough, exhaustive, and reasoned introduction to the study of Indo-European comparative linguistics. The book is written in a magisterial prose whose tone is never didactic but succeeds in exciting the curiosity and interest of those who are not specialists in the subject. Unfortunately, the book has not been translated into English.

The Italian title of this work, Glottologia indoeuropea, suggests the scientific study of the historic relationships among the Indo-European languages, achieved in accordance with principles of regularity, verifiability, and consistency. Such a study also implies the presentation of hypotheses on the origin and diffusion of those languages that took place by means of ethnic migrations and other contacts that led generally to the supremacy of one language over another. On the contrary, glottologia without the adjective is the discipline that aims both to show (and, if possible, to describe) how the world’s languages developed and, in accordance with formal principles, to classify them into families, of which Indo-European is the most widespread.

The book is divided into five chapters, all of which are theoretically grounded, with the exception of the last one. Basically a descriptive didactic appendix entitled ‘Overview of some languages of today’s Europe’, this chapter also deals with the languages’ extensions into the other continents. The first two chapters deal with the history of the discoveries and findings that led comparative linguistics (maybe the more exact English translation of glottologia) to its current importance and profundity, and that allow us in some measure to know the history of countries lacking in written records. The third chapter begins with an analysis of relationships between language and society, which is necessary for giving a ‘living’ background to the linguistic hypotheses. The fourth chapter begins with a detailed account of the more important hypotheses on the initial settlements of the Indo-European peoples, their chronological stratifications, and their migrations across Eurasia, and finishes with a discussion of the hypotheses that our knowledge and scientific principles allow us to formulate today about the origin of human language.

The book is impressive because it reveals theories that are grounded in carefully sifted evidence and that are based on rigorous logical reasoning. The book will certainly stand well over time, and will become a classic on this subject. One is struck by the tremendous erudition of the author and also by his gifts as a communicator as he leads us on an adventurous journey without making us feel the perils of the adventure.