Section Papers from the XVI International Conference on Historical Linguistics held at the University of Copenhagen in 2003.

The articles in the book are thematically linked, and discuss the perspectives as well as the problems related to the method of internal reconstruction. In this way, the book offers a rich overview of one of the most important fields in historical linguistics today.

The authors are 18 renowned scholars from 6 different countries, united in the ambition to shed light on the possibility to uncover the older stages of the history of a language through algebraic analysis and without the comparison to other languages.

The collection of articles shows the strength of this technique concerning a range of classical problem fields within each Indo-European language and language group (Greek, Latin, Germanic, Old Irish, Tokharian), and also in the analysis of the Indo-European proto-language. Among other things the articles discuss the possibility of observing similarities with other language families.

Jens Elmegård Rasmussen, Associate Professor at the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen. With the project ‘The Roots of Europe – Language, Culture and Migrations’ he is one of the scholars in the ‘Programme of Excellence’ which aims to strengthen the University’s research.

Thomas Olander, Post doc. at the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen.