Applying Contact Linguistics to Indo-European Comparative Linguistics

The present book describes the traces of linguistic hybridization in the grammatical structures of the most anciently attested Indo-European languages. It analyzes from an innovative vantage point the phonemic, morphophonemic and syntactic structures of each and every branch within the Indo-European language family. All those languages have created a balance between the Proto-Indo-European legacy and some linguistic dynamics that deeply differ from the Indo-European ones. Even languages that are deemed to have been very conservative like Sanskrit or Lithuanian display remarkable innovations that cannot be considered the mere result of the erosion of the linguistic structures or the consequence of inner change. The impact of the linguistic areas where those languages developed in contact with non-Indo-European surroundings can be viewed as a crucial factor in the process of diversification from a single origin. The analysis of the dynamics of language change within the inner structures of the various Indo-European languages also involves the reconstruction of the main linguistic areas where the glottogenesis of the most anciently attested Indo-European languages occurred. Lastly, this research delves into the traces of linguistic hybridization within the linguistic structures of Proto-Indo-European as it is reconstructed by Indo-Europeanists. Indeed some structural anomalies in the phonemic and morphological system of this reconstruction can be detected when one adopts a typological approach.