new edition of AHDIER

[Your Name]

I hope it will not violate the spirit of the ADS listserve to use it to
announce the publication of a second edition of The American Heritage
Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

 While this is not a title directly related to American dialects, I have
received a number of inquiries from ADS members over the years about the
possiblity of our publishing a revised edition of this book (the first
edition of which went out of print in the early 1990s).  So by way of
providing a definitive answer, I post the "official" announcement of this
book.

Note that it is available in both hardback and paperback and that it has
more than twice as many roots (1350 to 604) as AHD4's Appendix of
Indo-European Roots.

Joe Pickett
Executive Editor




                          BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

                            ANNOUNCING THE NEW

                       AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY
                          OF INDO-EUROPEAN ROOTS

                              Second Edition
                   Revised and edited by Calvert Watkins

                        Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000
             ISBN 0-395-98610-9 (cloth), 0-618-08250-6 (pbk.)
                    cloth: $28.00    paperback: $18.00

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is an indispensable
resource for anyone interested in the history of English, its place in the
Indo-European language family, and Indo-European comparative linguistics.
Fully revised and updated, the 2nd edition contains more than 13,000
English words that are traced to their origins in Proto-Indo-European, the
reconstructed prehistoric ancestor of English that was spoken before the
advent of writing.
   A unique reference work making the fruits of scholarly research
accessible to a wide audience, the Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is now
even more useful for both students and specialists in many areas. Its
features include:

·    Over 1300 reconstructed roots (twice as many as in the Appendix of The
American Heritage Dictionary of English)
·    New design for easier use, clarity, and visual friendliness
·    Revised and expanded introduction, now with map and illustrations
·    Etymologies of selected English personal and place names
·    25 new "Language and Culture Notes" at selected entries
·    Full index of the more than 13,000 English words treated
·    New features for specialists: laryngeals, palatal velars, and suffix
entries
·    Table of basic Indo-European sound correspondences and full family
tree

The introductory essay shows how words in an unrecorded ancient language
can be reconstructed and offers a wealth of fascinating information about
Proto-Indo-European culture and society. Each individual root entry
provides detailed information about the stages of development of English
vocabulary and the prehistoric  relationships among words.



Calvert Watkins is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Linguistics and the
Classics at Harvard University and a leading expert in Indo-European
studies. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, he is the author of
several books, including the critically acclaimed How to Kill a Dragon:
Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (1995).

Visit Houghton Mifflin Co.'s website at http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com