Although the unattested language of Proto-Indo-European has been studied for over 200 years, the greater part of this literature has focused on its phonology and morphology, with comparatively little known of its syntax. This book aims to redress the balance by reconstructing the syntax of relative clauses. It examines evidence from a wide range of archaic Indo-European languages, analysing them through the lens of generative linguistic theory. It also explains the methodological challenges of syntactic reconstruction and how they may be tackled. Ram-Prasad also alights on a wide range of points of comparative interest, including pronominal morphology, discourse movement and Wackernagel's Law. This book will appeal to classicists interested in understanding the Latin and Greek languages in their Indo-European context, as well as to trained comparative philologists and historical linguists with particular interests in syntax and reconstruction.
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Tackles an understudied area of Proto-Indo-European through the lens of generative linguistic theory.
1. Introduction;
2. Syntactic reconstruction and proto-Indo-European;
3.
Relative clauses in minimalism and Indo-European;
4. The relative pronoun(s)
of Proto-Indo-European;
5. Clitics and the left periphery in
Proto-Indo-European;
6. Relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European;
7.
Conclusions; References; Index.
Krishnan J. Ram-Prasad teaches Classics at Radley College. He was previously a Junior Research Fellow in Classics and Linguistics at Merton College, Oxford. His Ph.D. thesis on relative clauses in Proto-Indo-European won the Hare Prize for best doctoral dissertation in Classics at the University of Cambridge.
