Re: Does anyone here know of rules/laws/standards for going from Proto-Indo-European => Latin?

Neeraj Mathur wrote:

<jacksonscottsly@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1144616252.508956.223380@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
first off, sorry if a) I'm misusing this, and b) this topic isn't
appropriate for this group; I've got no experience on usenet and I
couldn't find a group relating to historical linguistics.

No worries - you're in exactly the right spot, and you're using it perfectly
correctly.

Now, as briefly as possible, my question. I'm looking for some way to
explain a consonant change from Proto-Indo-European to Latin (most
likely) to make a linguistics paper that I'm writing. At this point,
it's probably a little late to include any information that I find
(which would be peripheral to the paper anyway), but I'm still really
curious.

anyway, I'm basically looking for some kind of rules or standards
(similar to "Grimm's law") to explain morphological changes from PIE to
Latin.

You mean phonological, in this case, right?

For Indo-European in general, you'll probably find that the most useful
things are Sihler's *New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin* (1995) (but
with caution - it's easy to get wrong ideas from him) and Szemerenyi's
difficult classic *Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics* (1996). The
Latin parts of Sihler will probably be the most useful things available in
English.

How about the classic that Sihler was intended to replace, Buck's volume
with the same title minus "New"? Some reviewers prefer it.

For Latin phonology more specifically, you'll have to turn to French or
German. Niedermann's *Précis de phonétique historique du latin* (1959) is
quite useful, and couples well with Ernout's *Morphologie historique du
latin* (1953). This pair is brilliant and thorough, if slightly outdated;
Monteil covers much the same ground in *Eléments de phonétique et de
morphologie du latin* (1986). The most up-to-date is Meiser's *Historische
Laut- und Formenlehre der lateinischen Sprache* (1998), but I can only speak
for it second-hand - at the time I would have needed it, my German wasn't
good enough, and so I used the French sources (mostly Niedermann and
Ernout).

What's Phil Baldi's *Foundations of Latin* (de Gruyter, corrected pbk.
repr. 2003), chopped liver?

The sequel, an edited volume on syntax, is in preparation.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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