Christopher Culver’s Linguistics Weblog

For those who have not yet heard of it, and who are really missing out, I thought I should mention the Cybalist mailing list, dedicated to IE studies. I shall let its main page speak for itself:

CYBALIST is a forum devoted to discussing Indo-European (IE) linguistics and related topics concerning the history and and culture of IE-speaking peoples. It is the ambition of the owners and moderators of this list to promote and popularise sound linguistic and historical knowledge, and to make our group a hospitable club where professional researchers in IE studies and amateurs with a serious interest in the field can meet and exchange ideas.

Cybalist is named after its founder, Cyril Babaev, who started the group in 1999.

Because one can post questions and get gentle and informative responses, this list has been a lifesaver for me, a student interested in comparative Indo-European linguistics who is for the moment stuck with a faculty with little knowledge or passion about IE studies. The only downside of the list is that it tends to occasionally degenerate into discussions of Albanian or Romanian issues that go nowhere. Still, don’t let that stop you from subscribing posthaste.

I think the most interesting recent discussion is that about Slavic accentology kicked off by Miguel Cassaquer-Vidal in message 38532.

I had long planned to obtain a copy of Winfred Lehmann’s A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical Indo-European Linguistics (Indiana University Press, 1967) but my university library does not possess it and I kept forgetting to request it through inter-library loan. Imagine my joy in finding an online version of the work kindly provided by the IE studies department at University of Texas at Austin where Lehmann is professor emeritus. From Jones’ influential speech through the first and clumsy generation of Grimm, Bopp, and Rask, to the greatly productive era of Grassman, Bruggman, and Verner, Lehmann’s reader gives you a wide perspective on the growth of the field through the nineteenth century. It’s a bit disconcerting diving into the writings of the pre-laryngeal epoch, though.

Since online works have the advantage of being easily expandable, it would be nice to see the original-language version of each selection added, so that one doesn’t have to necessarily rely on a translation.