Ranko Matasović: Slavic nominal word-formation: Proto-Indo-European origins and historical development

Abstract

The publication of a treatment of Slavic nominal word formation by Ranko Matasović (RM) is an important and welcome event for Slavicists and IndoEuropeanists alike. Among numerous other works spanning Slavic, IndoEuropean, and non-Indo-European linguistics, RM has authored the Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika (Matasović 2008), still the only historical grammar of a Slavic language significantly engaging the Proto-IndoEuropean background and compatible with the current state of knowledge about the latter (the importance of the connection with Indo-European linguistics is also emphasized in the extended title of the work under review). The current synthesis of historical Sl word formation—as we learn from the opening paragraphs (15)—grew out of RM’s work on the new, coauthored etymological dictionary of Croatian, the first volume of which has since appeared (ERHJ 1).

The book has already been the subject of three quite extensive reviews: by M. Mihaljević (2014), Ž. Ž. Varbot (2015), and Th. Olander and B. Nielsen Whitehead (2015). In order not to duplicate the effort of the aforementioned competent reviewers, every so often I shall refer the interested reader to their conclusions, particularly as regards those areas which they have dealt with at some length; in the present review, I concentrate on those aspects of the work regarding which more discussion is in order.