A Linguistic History of English: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (v)

This is a wonderful book for those readers who are heavily interested in historical linguistics and the origins of Proto-Germanic. It is probably not going to useful for your average dilettante, however. Ringe essentially assumes familiarity with Gothic, Old English, Greek, Latin, and Indo-European studies in general. For the right reader, however, it is a true gem. It's well written and does an exceptionally good job in presenting modern views both on Proto-Indo-European in general and on the origins of Proto-Germanic. I'm heavily familiar with both subjects and I still found this book incredibly eye-opening. One of the best features is the complete conjugation tables of PIE nouns and verbs and especially the enormous numbers of examples, illustrated with cognates from across the PIE spectrum (forms in Hittite, Avestan and Tocharian are especially welcome as these are generally under-represented elsewhere; the Hittite and Tocharian forms in particular go a long way in reducing the skepticism that I naturally had for some of the newer theories that he presents). My biggest complaint is the lack of a concept index. This can make it very tricky to find particular topics, esp. since Ringe presents the same material three times over in three different chapters -- from the PIE standpoint, from the diachronic PIE->PGerm standpoint, and from the synchronic PGerm standpoint. The individual chapters could also stand some better organization. For example, in discussing Proto-Germanic verb classes, Ringe presents the various classes in the order from easiest-to-understand to hardest. Although this is convenient, it makes it unnecessarily hard to locate. Similarly, the same subject may be broached in more than part of a chapter (e.g. once in the vowel section, once in the consonant section, and once in the morphology section). The cross-references are well-done, so if you find some part of the discussion in one place you can often find the other places, but the lack of an index can still entail a lot of unnecessary hunting around.

The Kindle edition of this magnificent book is almost unusable, because of the following factors: 1. Native Kindle searching does not work, because the book is "not enabled for searching" 2. Although the book has an extensive index, it refers to the page numbers of the original print book. Because of some kind of misguided digital purism, these page numbers have been removed from the actual text of the Kindle edition, so it's not possible to correlate the index references with the actual text. 3. It might have been possible to use the table of contents to estimate which section a page number refers to, but no: the page numbers here have also been removed. Taken together these factors mean that it's extremely difficult to use this book efficiently unless you're reading it straight through from start to finish. The kind of research I usually want to do involves searching for specific words or roots, which is almost impossible. An intensely frustrating experience.

I bought this book some time ago, and have read and re-read it multiple times. It's not for the faint of heart (i.e., those who aren't fairly well versed in Indo-European historical linguistics). But for those who do have a decent understanding of the basics, and especially for any budding Germanic historical linguists, this book is a superb treatment of the subject matter (and a must-read for the latter). It presents some of the latest research (sometimes controversial) in the field in a methodical manner. Ringe's command of the subject matter, his thorough research, and his unique background make this book one of the best I've read in the field. I highly recommend it for upper-class college and graduate students studying IE historical linguistics, and as an excellent resource for professors. For those seeking a more basic treatment of the subject matter, there are numerous books that are more apropos that deal with the history of English (this is definitely not a beginner's text). But for those with more advanced knowledge of IE historical linguistics, I can't recommend this book more highly. I for one look forward to Volume II with bated breath.

Superb, dense and accessible to a literate non-specialist audience with patience. I am a lay reader in Indoeuropean linguistics and, as a native English speaker, have a certain soft spot for Germanic linguistics. Much of this text is presented in dense prosody with scads of interesting examples of the sounds changes illustrated. My comment regarding this approach as a lay reader is that a schematic synoptic layer would usefully improve the overall perspective of the discussions. Otherwise, multiple readings or graduate level synopses are surely required to take full appreciation of the rich and deep nuances available here. The bibliography is deep and wide ranging. Anyone who has spent anytime reading in the field will appreciate the lacunae and cited materials while a general assessment may be given of its comprehensiveness and depth in a positive light. In general, an excellent synchronic approach to the current common view of PIE and its development to Proto-Germanic and its structural cohesiveness. Readers will certainly want to review the Volume 2 appendices et al. for Ringe's current thoughts: including the ordering of Grimm and Verner sound changes.

Ringe, professor of linguistics at U Penn., has achieved in the 300 pages of main text a welcome, lucid and compact examination (considering the complexities of the subject) of the development of Proto-Germanic (PG) from Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The first volume in the projected Linguistic History of English, Ringe's work launches the series quite effectively. Significantly influenced by the work of the late Warren Cowgill of Yale, Ringe offers a synthesis of contemporary understandings and well-supported reconstructions, notably in the areas of PIE and PG accent, nominal inflection and ablaut, verbal aspect, and details of some 40 phonological changes underlying these (particularly the eventual elimination of laryngeals) in the emergence of PG. More precisely, Ringe distinguishes between PIE proper, which includes Anatolian, principally represented by Hittite, and (North) Indo-European, which includes the outlier Tocharian. The general linguistics audience is well served by this book in seeking to identify the consensus views on PIE and PG. Where Ringe suggests any steps away from the mainstream, he explains his thinking with carefully reasoned and well-supported speculation; for me these instances constitute some of the most intriguing parts of his book. While acknowledging the lack of a current etymological dictionary of PIE, Ringe supplies a base PIE vocabulary of several hundred items with which to illustrate this diachronic study. Roughly the first quarter of the book treats PIE, leaving the remaining three-quarters to address PG specifically. In his introduction Ringe notes he presupposes a fair amount of prior linguistic knowledge "in order to keep the work within reasonable bounds": a basic grounding in modern linguistics, a general knowledge of phonology, morphology and traditional historical linguistics, and some familiarity with at least one older PIE language. He also notes that due to space constraints he does not "cite full evidence for the standard reconstructions offered here," directing interested readers to other texts which can supply ample documentation. Not surprisingly, a respect for established phonological law underpins his text and its examples: "since investigation of historically documented languages shows that sound change is overwhelmingly regular in statistical terms, it is a serious breach of the uniformitarian principle not to assume the same for prehistory." In sum, a balanced, needed and useful book.

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