Levin S. Semitic and Indo-European. Vol.I: The Principal Etymologies, with Observations on Afro-Asiatic. Vol.II: Comparative Morphology, Syntax and Phonetics

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995/2002 — 541+620 pp. — (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory). Исследование об ареальных чертах ИЕ и семитских языков Ближнего Востока, с предположением об их возможном родстве. Если первая часть рассматривает в основном материальные соответствия в поздней культурной лексике, то вторая дает весьма добротный структурный анализ морфологии и синтаксиса. Vol.I: This volume presents the key examples of morphological correspondences between Indo-European and Semitic languages, afforded by nouns, verbal roots, pronouns, prepositions, and numerals. Its focus is on shared morphology embodied in the cognate vocabulary. The facts that are brought out in this volume do not fit comfortably within either the Indo-Europeanists' or the Semitists' conception of the prehistoric development of their languages. Nonetheless they are so fundamental that many would take them for evidence of a single original source, 'Proto-Nostratic'. In this book, however, it is considered unsettled whether proto-IE and proto-Semitic had a common forerunner. But the IE-Semitic combinations testify at least to prehistoric language communities in truly intimate contact. Vol.II: This is a sequel to the author's "Semitic and Indo-European: The Principal Etymologies" (1995). That volume provided the key examples of morphological correspondences between the Semitic and the Indo-European languages. In this sequel, the author analyzes correspondences of structure, either within a certain group of languages or belonging to a distantly related group, by looking at inflectional morphology, case, grammar, and phonology. Thus are uncovered the prehistoric means of oral communication, linking the forerunners of ancient societies in Asia, Africa, and Europe, as they talked about livestock or revealed some inner sentiment.