way to treat the historical bases for their development is to begin with Proto-Indo-European. The only way to make a reconstructed language like Proto-Indo-European intelligible and intellectually defensible is
to present at least some of the basis for reconstructing its features and, in the process, to discuss reasoning and methodology of reconstruction (including a weighing of alternative reconstructions). The result is a compendious handbook of Indo-European phonology and morphology, and a vade mecum of Indo-European linguistics--the focus always remaining on Greek and Latin. The non-classical sources for historical discussion are mainly Vedic Sanskrit, Hittite, and Germanic, with occasional but
crucial contributions from Old Irish, Avestan, Baltic, and Slavic.
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