First published in 1903, Antoine Meillet's Introduction a l'Étude comparative des langues Indo-Européennes exemplifies the key methodologies and insights of early twentieth-century comparative linguistics. Its primary aim, as Meillet states, was 'très limité': to provide a brief but comprehensive overview of the Indo-European languages and their shared linguistic structures. He accomplished this object and more in his Introduction, outlining a theory of language change that would influence a generation of linguists, including his students Émile Benveniste and André Martinet. Meillet's debt to his own mentor, Ferdinand de Saussure, is evident in his conception of language as simultaneously social and structural, a lived reality and a constantly evolving grammatical system. This second edition (1908) includes Meillet's extensive revisions and a new chapter on the development of Indo-European dialects. It remains a valuable introduction to the phonology, morphology, and grammar of the Indo-European language family.
In this classic introduction, Antoine Meillet analyses the shared linguistic features of the Indo-European languages, tracing their origins to a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. This key work, extensively revised for the 1908 edition reissued here, discusses individual languages and proposes a comprehensive theory of Indo-European linguistic development.
