Robert Stephen Paul Beekes ['beikəs] (born in Haarlem in 1937) is Emeritus Professor of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at the University of Leiden and the author of many books about Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed parent language of most of the European languages and of the languages of Central Asia and India (includes many of the languages of Iran, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh). One of his more well-known books is Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction, a standard handbook on the Proto-Indo-European language. It treats the area of linguistic reconstruction thoroughly, but also features cultural reconstruction and comparative linguistic methods in general.

Professor Beekes is also a leading authority on the Etruscan language and co-author with L. B. Van der Meer of De Etrusken Spreken Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1991. He advocates the oriental origin theory for the Etruscans:^[1]

Currently, Beekes is working at Pre-Greek, the (non-Indo-European) language that was spoken in Greece before Greek came in, possibly around 2000 BC. Since this language was not written, Beekes gets his information from words in Classical Greek that clearly show a non-Greek structure and development.^[2]

[edit] Publications

Some of his notable books are:

• The Development of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Greek (Mouton, 1969)
• The Origins of the Indo-European Nominal Inflection (IBS, 1985)
• A Grammar of Gatha-Avestan (Brill, 1988)
• Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction (Benjamins, 1995)
• Etymological Dictionary of Greek (Brill, 2009)

[edit] References

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