Understanding language organization and change: the key role of Indo-European Studies. An introduction.

In this introductory chapter, we address the relationship between historical linguistics and Indo-European studies, by discussing different contributions on various ancient Indo-European languages. We show how these contributions share the question of the principles and mechanisms of language organization and change and address it from different perspectives and methods, building on the strict relationship between linguistics and philology. Taken together, they reflect the vibrancy of historical linguistics and reveal how research on ancient Indo-European languages not only is fundamental to the understanding of variation and contact and to the reconstruction of diachronic patterns, but also can shed new light on typologically natural tendencies and cognitive universals.