The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World

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OUP Oxford, 24 août 2006 - 760 pages
This book introduces Proto-Indo-European and explores what the language reveals about the people who spoke it. The Proto-Indo-Europeans lived somewhere in Europe or Asia between 5,500 and 8,000 years ago, and no text of their language survives. J. P. Mallory and Douglas Adams show how over the last two centuries scholars have reconstructed it from its descendant languages, the surviving examples of which comprise the world's largest language family. After a concise account of Proto-Indo-European grammar and a consideration of its discovery, they use the reconstructed language and related evidence from archaeology and natural history to examine the lives, thoughts, passions, culture, society, economy, history, and environment of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Our distant ancestors had used the wheel, were settled arable farmers, kept sheep and cattle, brewed beer, got married, made weapons, and had 27 verbs for the expression of strife. The subjects to which the authors devote chapters include fauna, flora, family and kinship, clothing and textiles, food and drink, space and time, emotions, mythology, religion, and the continuing quest to discover the Proto-Indo-European homeland. Proto-Indo-European-English and English-Proto-Indo-European vocabularies and full indexes conclude the book. Written in a clear, readable style and illustrated with maps, figures, and tables, this book is on a subject of great and enduring fascination. It will appeal to students of languages, classics, and the ancient world, as well as to general readers interested in the history of language and of early human societies.
 

Table des matières

1 Discovery
1
2 The Elements
12
3 Reconstructing ProtoIndoEuropean
39
4 The System
54
5 Relationships
71
6 A Place in Time
86
7 Reconstructing the ProtoIndoEuropeans
106
8 The Physical World
120
17 ProtoIndoEuropean Society
266
18 Space and Time
287
19 Number and Quantity
307
20 Mind Emotions and Sense Perception
321
21 Speech and Sound
352
22 Activities
368
23 Religion
408
24 Grammatical Elements
415

9 IndoEuropean Fauna
132
10 IndoEuropean Flora
156
11 Anatomy
173
12 Family and Kinship
203
13 Hearth and Home
219
14 Clothing and Textiles
230
15 Material Culture
239
16 Food and Drink
254
25 Comparative Mythology
423
26 OriginsThe NeverEnding Story
442
Appendices
464
References
565
Index of Languages
591
Index of Subjects and Places
619
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À propos de l'auteur (2006)

J. P. Mallory is Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the Queen's University of Belfast. He holds a PhD in Indo-European Studies (1975) from the University of California. His books include In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989) and, with Victor Mair, The Tarim Mummies: The Mystery of the First Westerners in Ancient China (2000). He is currently the editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies and was elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1996. D. Q. Adams is Professor of English at the University of Idaho. He holds a PhD in Linguistics (1972) from the University of Chicago (1972). His published work includes An Introduction to Tocharian Historical Morphology (1988), A Dictionary of Tocharian B (1999), and numerous articles on Indo-European and especially Tocharian topics. J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams are the co-editors of the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture (1997).

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