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Monday, February 01, 2021

Review of Coulter, How dead languages work

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: How dead languages work.
Coulter George, How dead languages work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. viii, 224. ISBN 9780198852827 $25.00.

Review by
Audrey Mathys, Chargée de recherches F.R.S.-FNRS, Université Libre de Bruxelles. audreymathys@gmail.com

The book under review is an introduction to seven Ancient and Medieval languages which are culturally relevant for English native speakers. Six of them are Indo-European—Ancient Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Old English, Old Irish and (Middle) Welsh—and the last one, Hebrew, belongs to the Semitic language family. As hinted by the title, the author aims at providing information on how these languages “work”, that is to say, how each of them is phonologically, morphologically and syntactically structured, and how this contrasts with Modern English.

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