Required texts:
Benjamin W. Fortson, IV. Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction ($50).
Carl Darling Buck. Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin ($30; may be out of print).
Calvert Watkins. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots ($20).
--------. How To Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics ($35).

Recommended texts:
N. E. Collinge. The Laws of Indo-European ($40).
J. P. Mallory. In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology, and Myth ($30).
Geoffrey Finch. How to Study Linguistics: A Guide to Understanding Language ($30).
Andrew Sihler. New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin ($75).

All of these texts will be available in the Tufts Bookstore and in the library (on reserve or in the reference collection).

Other resources:
Course web page, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/~amahoney/cl184_s07.html

Goals for the semester:
Students will learn the basic principles of historical linguistics and the comparative method, with application to the Indo-European language family. We will focus on Greek, Latin, and English as examples, but will consider the rest of the family as well.

Pre-requisite for this course is either Greek 7 or Latin 3, ideally with a year or more of the other language as well.

Workload and grading:
You will have a written assignment for each class, generally a "problem set" rather than an essay. A longer problem set will take the place of a final exam, and will be due Thursday, 10 May (the date the final would have been held). There will be no paper.

General policies:
You should complete the reading assigned for each class before that day's class. You do not need to bring the textbooks to class but probably will want to bring your notes on the readings. Problem sets will be assigned in class based on the day's discussion.

Attendance and participation count significantly towards final grades; see above. If you must occasionally miss class for a legitimate reason, I will assume you will get notes from a classmate and keep up with the work.

Written assignments are due in the next class, unless otherwise specified. Homework scores will be reduced for late work.

I call your attention to University policy against plagiarism and other forms of cheating. Please refer to the Bulletin of Tufts University for details: "Absolute honesty on the part of every college student is and always shall be an integral part of the plan of higher education at Tufts University."

Please note that except in the most extraordinary circumstances, I will not give "incomplete" grades.

No extra credit work is permitted, and grades in this course are not "curved."

Topics and reading assignments by class:
1. Thursday 18 January. Introduction; policies and procedures.
2. Monday 22 January. The comparative method. Fortson ch. 1, Watkins Dragon ch. 1
3. Tuesday 23 January. The Indo-European language family. Language families in general. Working with reconstructed languages. Buck introduction (sections 1-63); Sihler inroduction (sections 1-35)
4. Thursday 25 January. IE culture and society. Fortson ch. 2, Watkins Roots introduction.
5. Monday 29 January. Archaeology and the IE speakers.
6. Tuesday 30 January. IE phonology. Fortson ch. 3, Buck sections 72-73, 117-127, 128-133, Sihler sections 36, 110-116, 130-134, 165-167
7. Thursday 1 February. Major sound shifts; recognizing cognates.
8. Monday 5 February. Phonology: conclusions.
9. Tuesday 6 February. IE morphology. Fortson ch. 4, Buck sections 224-225, Sihler sections 249-250, 407-412
10. Thursday 8 February. Morphology of the verb. Fortson ch. 5, Buck sections 325-329, 353-357, Sihler sections 413-418, 509-514, 532-533, 551
11. Monday 12 February. The verb continued.
12. Tuesday 13 February. Morphology of the noun. Fortson ch. 6, Buck sections 226-230, Sihler sections 251-257.
13. Thursday 15 February. The noun continued.
14. Tuesday 20 February. Morphology of the pronoun. Fortson ch. 7, Buck sections 297-311, Sihler sections 360-370.
15. Thursday 22 February. Numbers. Buck sections 312-323, Sihler sections 386-389
16. Monday 26 February. IE syntax. Fortson ch. 8.
17. Tuesday 27 February. Syntax continued.
18. Thursday 1 March. Greek as an IE language. Fortson ch. 12, relevant sections from Buck and Sihler.
19. Monday 5 March. Greek continued.
20. Tuesday 6 March. Latin as an IE language. Fortson ch. 13, relevant sections from Buck and Sihler.
21. Thursday 8 March. Latin continued.
22. Monday 12 March. Other Italic languages.
23. Tuesday 13 March. Greek and Latin: summary.
24. Thursday 15 March. English as an IE language. Fortson ch. 15.
25. Monday 26 March. English continued.
26. Tuesday 27 March. Hittite and other Anatolian languages. Fortson ch. 9.
27. Thursday 29 March. Sanskrit and other Indic languages. Fortson ch. 10.
28. Monday 2 April. Iranian languages. Fortson ch. 11.
29. Tuesday 3 April. Irish and other Celtic languages. Fortson ch. 14.
30. Thursday 5 April. Armenian. Fortson ch. 16.
31. Monday 9 April. Tocharian. Fortson ch. 17.
32. Tuesday 10 April. Russian and other Balto-Slavic languages. Fortson ch. 18.
33. Thursday 12 April. Albanian. Fortson ch. 19.
34. Tuesday 17 April. Less well attested languages. Fortson ch. 20.
35. Thursday 19 April. IE poetics: introduction. Watkins Dragon ch. 2-6.
36. Monday 23 April. Reconstructing the poetic system. Watkins Dragon ch. 7, 10, 17-20
37. Tuesday 24 April. Formulas. Watkins Dragon ch. 12-16, 27, 31, 35-39
38. Thursday 26 April. Meter.
39. Monday 30 April. Review and summary.
40. Thursday 10 May. Final assignment due.

Selected bibliography:

This list supplements the excellent bibliographies of Fortson's text.
Anthony Arlotto. Introduction to Historical Linguistics. Lanham: 1972.
Emile Benveniste. Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes. Paris: 1969.
Enrico Campanile. La ricostruzione della cultura indoeuropea. Pisa: 1990.
George Cardona, Henry M. Hoenigswald, Alfred Senn. Indo-European and Indo-Europeans. Philadelphia: 1970.
Peter Daniels and William Bright. The World's Writing Systems. New York: 1996.
Georges Dumézil. Camillus: a Study of Indo-European Religion as Roman History. Berkeley: 1980.
-----. Mythe et épopée. Paris: 1968-1973 (3 volumes).
Paul Friedrich. Proto-Indo-European Trees: the Arboreal System of a Prehistoric People. Chicago: 1970.
M. L. Gasparov. A History of European Versification, trans. G. S. Smith and Marina Tarlinskaja. Oxford: 1996.
Stephanie W. Jamison. The Ravenous Hyenas and the Wounded Sun: Myth and Ritual in Ancient India. Ithaca: 1991.
-----. Sacrificed Wife/Sacrificer's Wife: Women, Ritual, and Hospitality in Ancient India. New York: 1996.
Winfred P. Lehmann. Proto-Indo-European Phonology. Austin: 1952.
-----. Proto-Indo-European Syntax. Austin: 1974.
Antoine Meillet. Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes. Paris: 1934, with reprints.
Gregory Nagy. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. 2nd edition, Baltimore: 1999.
-----. Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter. Cambridge: 1974.
-----. Pindar's Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore: 1990.
Nicholas Ostler. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. New York: 2005.
Ferdinand de Saussure. Mémoire sur la système primitive des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes. Leipzig: 1879; rpt. Hildesheim, 1968.
Rüdiger Schmitt. Dichtung und dichtersprache in indogermanischer Zeit. Wiesbaden: 1967.
Oswald Szemerényi. Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics. Oxford: 1996.
Roger Woodard. Indo-European Sacred Space. Urbana: 2006.

On-line resources
TITUS, Thesaurus Indo-germanischer Text- Und Sprachmaterialen
Indo-European Documentation Center at U. Texas at Austin
Electronic resources for Indo-European and related fields
Dictionary database at Leiden University, collection of etymological dictionaries
Ethnologue, catalog of the languages of the world
Rosetta Project, another catalog
Linguist List, mailing list and extensive archive
Introduction to Old English
Indian languages meta-page
Online Sanskrit Dictionary, in various formats, with links to additional dictionaries
Greek grammar, extensive meta-page
Irish on the Web (Gaelige ar an Ghréasán, English index)
Bibliographica Linguistica, analogous to L'Année Philologique
Georges Dumézil In Memoriam, full bibliography and selected texts on line
International Phonetic Alphabet
Ancient World Mapping Center, an excellent source for maps
Unicode for classics and linguistics, with information about fonts and other tools
Events calendar for the Harvard linguistics department
Schedule of colloquia in the MIT linguistics program
Speculative Grammarian, linguistic parody journal