Οι Ινδοευρωπαίοι: Γλώσσα και Πολιτισμός [The Indo-Europeans: Language and Culture]

Who were the Indo-Europeans, where and when did they appear, what were their linguistic and cultural characteristics? How can we study their prehistory and how do we reconstruct their language? How realistic are the reconstructions of historical linguists? These are only some of the questions posed in the pages of the book. Among the issues addressed here are: linguistic and cultural reconstruction, linguistic paleontology, the relationship of linguistics to other sciences, the etymological research, the poetic language of the Indo-Europeans, the relationship of historical reconstruction to linguistic typology and historical reality, and the position of Greek within the Indo-European language family.

The method applied is the historical and comparative method, with all supplementary techniques, while the approach is interdisciplinary, i.e. an approach which attempts to establish criteria and principles for the cooperation of historical and comparative linguistics with related disciplines, such as archaeology, philology, ethnology, but also with sciences outside the traditional field of humanities, such as biology and genetics. Within this interdisciplinary framework, the possibility of combining linguistic, social and cultural material of the Indo-Europeans is investigated, as well as the terms and conditions determining this relationship.

G. Giannakis is professor of Historical Linguistics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.