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date: 03 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Linguistic typology has come to play an important, multifaceted role in the long-established field of historical linguistics. Its manifestations within historical linguistic study are addressed. The examples chosen to illustrate these applications are drawn from Indo-European historical linguistics. A major interest of historical linguists in recent years has been the establishment of macrofamilies through the identification of distant linguistic relationships. Grammaticalization involves ‘an evolution whereby linguistic units lose in semantic complexity, pragmatic significance, syntactic freedom, and phonetic substance’. The exploration of linguistic prehistory is always a speculative enterprise. Although an important multifaceted role for linguistic typology within historical linguistics is now firmly established, differences of theoretical opinion remain among historical linguists regarding how current typological formulations are to be applied to the prehistoric linguistic structures posited by historical linguists.

Keywords: linguistic typology, historical linguistics, Indo-European family, grammaticalization, linguistic prehistory, historical linguists, prehistoric linguistic structures

Kenneth Shields

Kenneth Shields (Kenneth.Shields@millersville.edu) is Professor of English at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches a variety of linguistics courses. His research focus is Indo‐European linguistics, with frequent emphasis on the application of linguistic typology to the reconstruction of both Proto‐ and Pre‐Indo‐European. He also has special interest in the morphosyntax of the early Germanic and Anatolian subgroups. He has published widely in such journals as Diachronica, Folia Linguistica Historica, General Linguistics, Historische Sprachforschung, Indogermanische Forschungen, Journal of Indo‐European Studies, NOWELE, and Studi Micenei ed Egeo‐Anatolici. He is the author of A History of Indo‐European Verb Morphology (Benjamins, 1992) and Indo‐European Noun Inflection: A Developmental History (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1982), and he is currently working on a book about Indo‐European personal pronouns.

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