My own favourite handbooks are
probably far from being the most popular ones:
Anttila, Raimo. 1972. _An Introduction to
Historical and Comparative Linguistics_. New York: Macmillan.
Hock, Hans Heinrich. 1984 (2nd ed. 1991).
_Principles of Historical Linguistics_. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de
Gruyter.
Needless to say, you won't learn it all
from handbooks, but once you get the hang of the principles you will be able to
learn by example.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 5:09 PM
Subject: [tied] help
Could someone suggest a good book in order to learn methodically the basics
of comparative historical linguistics?
Guto