BMCR 2009.06.34: Simon on Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (Paperback reprint of 1995 edition)

Andrew L. Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (Paperback
reprint of 1995 edition).  Oxford/New York:  Oxford University Press,
2008.  Pp. xxii, 686.  ISBN 9780195373363.  $45.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Zsolt Simon, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
([email protected])
Word count:  1600 words
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The hardback edition of the book being reviewed here appeared in 1995
and filled an existing gap at that time. Not only were comparative
grammars of Greek and Latin written in English lacking since the
publication of Buck's handbook,[[1]] but there was also no up-to-date
Latin comparative grammar. It was not only a technical problem that
there were no textbooks for students, but also a scholarly one, since
Buck's handbook included neither the laryngeals nor Mycenaean (the
latter unknown at the time), and therefore his book was highly
outdated. On the other hand, after such seminal works as Rix' book on
Greek comparative grammar based on laryngeal theory or Schrijver's
treatment of the Latin reflexes of the laryngeals,[[2]] the time was
ripe for writing a new comparative grammar of these languages.

Since Sihler's goal was a revision of Buck's handbook intended both as
a reference work and as a handbook for students, its layout generally
follows the structure of Buck's work except for the omission of
derivational morphology. In other words, it has the well-known
structure of comparative grammars (Introduction (pp. 1-34),[[3]]
Phonology (pp. 35-242), Declension (pp. 243-368), Pronouns (pp.
369-401), Numerals (pp. 402-441), Conjugation (pp. 443-629) and Indexes
of cited forms (pp. 631-686)), where, however, Latin and Greek data are
presented side by side within each chapter rather than separately from
each other.

Sihler's attempt to rewrite Buck's handbook in light of contemporary
knowledge has the welcome side effect of discussing the
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) data and that of its descendants other than
Greek and Latin (especially Vedic, Avestan, Gothic, Lithuanian, Old
Church Slavic and Hittite) in more detail than earlier treatments,
thereby providing insight for classicists into the evidence on which
the comparative grammar of these languages has been built. Another
welcome feature is that in most cases Sihler discusses in detail the
meticulous investigations that lead from the data to particular
theories and assumptions, illustrating very well the methodology of
Indo-European linguistics, and he does this in an entertaining style
that is unfortunately very foreign to such a technical topic,.

Sihler's new comparative grammar aroused much scholarly appreciation.
All of the detailed reviews underlined its usefulness, though some of
them called attention to the fact that the book is sometimes
idiosyncratic (cf. below).[[4]] A perplexing characteristic of the book
was that it lacked any kind of reference or bibliography except for
frequent formulae like "some authorities maintain".[[5]] Though
scholars of the field can recognize the underlying publications in most
cases, students surely would not (and cannot be expected to); and this
approach becomes even stranger in the case of such dubious statements
as "Italic scripts might rather have the same source as the Greek" (p.
18, cf. p. 20 n. 1.). This sad fact, however, evidently leads to the
conclusion that this book, despite its undoubted virtues, can serve
neither as a handbook for students nor as a "vade-mecum" (p. viii) for
Indo-European studies.

The book under review is the paperback edition of this volume, thirteen
(!) years later, without any change in the text (including
misprints).[[6]] Unfortunately, this applies to the missing references
too, though a paperback edition would have offered a good chance to add
at least selected references or list of works "cited". Paperback
editions are always welcome since they make the results of science more
available to a wider audience including, especially, students, but the
interval between the two editions is not immaterial: the more time
passes between the two editions, the greater are the chances of
producing an out-dated volume. In general, Latin and Greek are not
languages the comparative grammars of which are in need of substantial
revision; nevertheless, small but important changes from the research
of the past thirteen years affect all parts of their comparative
grammars. Let me cite some examples from the history of Latin (aside
from etymological research):

First, the discovery of the Garigliano bowl now provides clear
inscriptional evidence for dat. pl. of o-stems, MEOIS SOKIOIS (cf. p.
263) and for ESOM, the pre-classical form of sum widely held until then
as a fabrication of Varro. This evidence not only serves to remove
Sihler's asterisk before esom, but also renews the discussion of its
history (cf. pp. 549-550).[[7]]

Second, recent investigations have shown that Proto-Italic maintained
the Proto-Indo-European position of the accent.[[8]] This observation
should have a place in a comparative grammar (p. 239) and invalidates
some of Sihler's suggestions (e. g. that the initial-syllable accent of
Italic as a common innovation with Proto-Germanic and Proto-Celtic, p.
60).

Third, Sihler refers to some "recent investigations" suggesting that
the Praenestine Fibula is a modern forgery (p. 15): thus he was forced
to analyse the sign [F] in a peculiar way (p. 21) and to delete e.g.
the forms NVMASIOI and FHEFHAKED as inscriptional evidence for the
Archaic Latin dat. sg. of o-stems and final -d for secondary *-t  among
verbal endings, respectively (p. 58-59, 461). Meanwhile, more recent
investigations have shown that neither the fibula nor the inscription
are forgeries,[[9]] and thus Sihler's analyses must be revised.

Finally, as with other comparative grammars, Sihler's work does not
distinguish between sound laws that operated before and during the
written phase of Latin, though our knowledge now allows us to present
the sound laws according to various stages of the history of Latin, at
least tentatively.[[10]]

These developments have widened the already existing divide between
contemporary knowledge and Sihler's work.[[11] The reason for the
original gap was the partial idiosyncrasy already called attention to
by reviewers of the hardback edition. Such idiosyncratic points
include, for example, the notion that satem languages constitute a real
subbranch of Indo-European (p. 7), that all IE languages require only
two tectal series of PIE consonants (p. 136, cf. 152-154),[[12]] that
*h2o becomes a in Greek and Latin (pp. 45-46) or that a Greek prothetic
vowel does not automatically point to a PIE laryngeal, especially
before resonants (p. 85-88)--all of these being assumptions that
distort many of Sihler's PIE reconstructions. (For further, more minor,
quibbles, see below.)

Despite these problems the usefulness of Sihler's book is beyond doubt.
Nonetheless it would have been better to present a revised second
edition rather than a paperback reprint; for one thing, until such a
revision appears, the book can be used only with the help of an
instructor who can explain the contemporary knowledge hidden behind the
idiosyncrasies and numerous minor problems that would go unnoticed by
students. Moreover, the book does not solve the problem of the lack of
an up-to-date comparative grammar of the classical languages in
English, though the case of Latin will hopefully be solved in the near
future.[[13]]

Some minor quibbles not quoted by earlier reviewers:

p. 1-7. Phrygian is missing from the list of IE languages (as well as
some other fragmentarily attested languages, like Messapic).

p. 2. n. 1. There is so far no linguistically established connection
between the Hittites' name and the name of their capital, Hattusa. The
Hittites did not call themselves "Nesis" but rather nesumenes 'men from
the city of Nesa', or, in Anglicised form, "Nesites".

p. 4. The records of Albanian from the 16th and 17th c. are not meagre;
this is true rather of  the earlier records.[[14]]

p. 8-9. Sihler's PIE prehistory--with three Kurgan incursions
coinciding with the collapse of "Old European" culture--would cause
some raising of eyebrows even among followers of the
Kurgan-hypothesis.[[15]]

p. 16. Among the ancient languages of Italy not only Latin and Oscan
were still spoken by 100 B.C. but also Etruscan.

p. 16. That Latin would have been the official language of
administration in the Eastern Empire is a serious oversimplification,
and actually false for certain periods (cf. so-called bilateral
unilingualism).[[16]]

p. 30. It is not only "hardly conceivable" that the Hittite spelling of
the 1pl. ending -um-me-ni represents a long consonant (p. 30), in fact
it does not represent a long consonant: the consistent Old and Middle
Script spellings in Cu-me-(e)-ni show that this is not really long and
reflects only a change in the phonetic value of the (C)Vm signs caused
by a contemporary change in Akkadian pronunciation.[[17]]

p. 57. The statement "H drops in PIE after s" is contradicted by
Hittite data with preserved -sH- clusters, e. g. isha- 'master, lord',
ishai- 'to bind', ishamai- 'to sing', ishuwai- 'to throw, to
pour'.[[18]]

p. 178. The loss of *w and the labial component of *kw before o could
not have taken place "in prehistoric times" since they are attested in
Archaic and Old Latin too, see e.g. DEIVOS on the Duenos Inscription,
SVODALES on the Lapis Satricanus, and QVOIVS on the epitaph of Scipio
Barbatus cited by Sihler himself (p. 387, cf. p. 388, 398-399). For the
date of the change cf. the hypercorrect OQVOLTOD instead of *OC(C)OLTO
in the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus, 15.[[19]]

p. 299. The Hittite word for 'water' was never spelled u/-wa-a-tar, but
only wa-a-tar. The former means 'inspection'.[[20]]

p. 343. To call nouns of variable declension "heteroclites" is an
unfortunate use of the term, which refers to a regular type of
declension.

The alleged forms of Hittite accented personal pronouns with -a
extensions (u/-ug-ga, p. 370, tu-ga, p. 371) are in fact the pronoun +
the clitics 'but' or 'and'.[[21]]

p. 405. n. 1. Farsi yak 'one' (recte yek) is not a borrowing from
Turkic (cf. Turkish bir 'one'!), but a reflex of Old Iranian *aywa-ka-
(cf. Middle Persian e^wak).[[22]]

p. 430. Though Hittite duyanalli- is a hapax, its meaning is clearly
not 'man of the 4th rank' but 'second in rank' on the basis of the
context (IBoT 1.36 I 38 & 39).[[23]]


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Notes:


1.   C. D. Buck: Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Chicago, 1933.

2.   H. Rix: Historische Grammatik des Griechischen. Laut- und
Formenlehre. Darmstadt, 1976; P. Schrijver: The Reflexes of the
Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Latin. Amsterdam; Atlanta, 1991.

3.   Including an overview of the Indo-European family of languages, a
general history of Greek and Latin, their writing systems and some
technical topics.

4.   W. F. Wyatt: Minos 29-30 (1994-1995) 389ff. (esp. on Greek data);
E. C. Polome/: JIES 23 (1995) 463ff; J. Clackson: CR 46 (1996) 297ff.
(esp. on minor quibbles); M. Weiss: AJPh 117 (1996) 670ff. (esp. on
laryngeals); G. A. Sheets: CJ 93 (1997) 88ff. (esp. on morphology).

5.   Instead, there is a long list of scholars who influenced the book
(and who, for the most part, were still alive at the time of writing),
and a special emphasis (p. viii-ix) of the role of Warren Cowgill and
Oswald Szemere/nyi whose ideas can often be detected throughout the
book.

6.   E. g. "predominates in in mss." (p. 28), Enumakartidas (p. 87),
largyngeals (p. 106), larynageals (p. 136), "9ayin" (p. 166), read 12
instead of 11 on p. 306 in the notes to the table; seeminlgy (p. 412).
In general, however, the book is well proofread, despite the
complicated text.

7.   For the latest treatment with detailed references see Zs. Simon:
Zur Geschichte des lat. sum. In: G. Vire/ (ed.): Autour du lexique
latin. Communications faites lors du XIIIe Colloque international de
linguistique latine, Bruxelles, 4 au 9 avril 2005. Collection Latomus
316. Bruxelles, 2008, 267ff.

8.   B. Vine: On "Thurneysen-Havet's Law" in Latin and Italic. HS 119
(2006) 211ff. This paper refutes the view of Sihler that *ov
sporadically becomes av (p. 44).

9.   E. Formigli: Indagini archeometriche sull'autenticita\ della
Fibula Praenestina. MDAI(R) 99 (1992) 329ff; R. Wachter: Altlateinische
Inschriften. Sprachliche und epigraphische Untersuchungen zu den
Dokumenten bis 150 v. Chr. Bern, 1987, 55ff., resp., cf.  M. Hartmann:
Die fruehlateinischen Inschriften und ihre Datierung. Eine
linguistisch-archaeologisch-palaeographische Untersuchung. Bremen,
2005, 67ff.

10.   Cf. similarly the remark of Wyatt (n. 4) 390. See the recent
attempt of M. de Vaan: Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other
Italic Languages. Leiden; Boston, 2008, 5ff.

11.   Not to mention--to turn to Latin again--the abundance of recent
handbooks of the history of Latin (e. g. G. Meiser: Historische Laut-
und Formenlehre der latenischen Sprache. Darmstadt, 1998 or Hartmann
(n. 9.)) whose views must be treated in some way in a handbook like
this one.

12.   Dismissing the Anatolian (more precisely, Luwic) evidence for
three tectal series by saying that "the crucial evidence in (...)
Anatolian seems to hinge upon especially difficult or vague or
otherwise dubious etymologies" (p. 154) is simply false, see the
classic detailed argumentation of H. Cr. Melchert: PIE Velars in
Luvian. In: C. Watkins (ed.): Studies in Memory of Warren Cowgill.
Berlin; New York, 1987, 182ff; New Luvo-Lycian Isoglosses. HS 102
(1989) 23ff., a position that can now be supported even by Carian data
(I. J. Adiego: The Carian Language. HdO 86. Leiden; Boston, 2007, 259).

13.   I refer to M. Weiss' forthcoming book.

14.   Cf. now the overview of J. Matzinger: Der Altalbanische Text
Mbsuame e Kre+shtere+ (Dottrina cristiana) des Leke+ Matre+nga von
1592. Eine Einfuehrung in die albanische Sprachwissenschaft.
Dettelbach, 2006, 34ff.

15.   For an excellent critical overview written by one of the
followers of this theory see J. P. Mallory: The homelands of the
Indo-Europeans. In: R. Blench and M. Spriggs (eds.): Archaeology and
Language I. Theoretical and Methodological Orientations. London--New
York, 1997, 93ff.

16.   J. Kaimio: The Romans and the Greek Language. Helsinki, 1979,
319f. Cf. the illustrative graphic representations in B. Adamik: Zur
Geschichte des offiziellen Gebrauchs der lateinischen Sprache.
Justinians Reform. AAntHung 43 (2003) 230, 239 and Offizielles
Kommunikationssystem und Romanisierung. In: C. Arias Abellan (ed.):
Latin vulgaire--latin tardif VII. Actes du VIIe\me Colloque
international sur le latin vulgaire et tardif, Se/ville, 2-6 septembre
2003. Sevilla, 2006, 17ff.

17.   H. Cr. Melchert: Anatolian Historical Phonology. Amsterdam;
Atlanta, 1994, 24 with earlier references.

18.   For etymological treatments of these items see now A. Kloekhorst:
The Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon. Leiden,
2008, ss. vv.

19.   Meiser (n. 11.) 92.

20.   See now Kloekhorst (n. 18) ss. vv.

21.   See already P. H. J. Houwink ten Cate: The Particle -a and its
Usage with Respect to the Personal Pronouns. In: E. Neu and C. Ruester
(eds.): Festschrift Heinrich Otten. Wiesbaden, 1973, 119ff.

22.   See already P. Horn: Grundriss der neupersischen Etymologie.
Strassburg, 1893, 252.

23.   See already H. G. Gueterbock: Lexicographical notes. RHA 15
(1957) 2f.