Excavating Language

The volume represents a cohesive yet multifaceted approach to themes, issues, and controversies concerning the role that Latin and Greek played in providing a template for the structural patterns and lexicon of the modern-day European languages. The authors engage in a careful examination of the evidence from the classical languages, tracing the origins of such structures as negation patterns from Latin, or request verbs from Greek. Among many other structures, they observe the continuing influence that Latin exerts upon learned structures and lexicon through time, but also its interaction with vernacular tendencies. At the same time, they provide valuable insight into the operation and motivation for change, in general.