Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE:
Teachers of Latin Grammar have for a long time felt the need of a book which will exhibit the historical development of Latin Accidence and explain the anomalies of Latin Declension and Conjugation, which will explain, for example, how "itineris" became the Genitive of "iter," how "volo," "vis," "vult" differ from "lego," "legis," "legit," why the Comparative of "magnificus" should be "magnificentior," why the Preposition circum should have a by-form circa. In this "Short Historical Latin Grammar," designed for the Universities and the Higher Forms of Schools, I have tried to present this information in an intelligible and, if possible, interesting form. While making full use of the discoveries of Comparative Philology, which have in recent years added so much to our knowledge of Latin, I have avoided the technical vocabulary of that science, and in quoting parallels to Latin words have restricted myself to the Greek, to the exclusion of Sanskrit, Gothic, and the other Indo-European languages. It is true that each and every problem of the Latin language has not yet been solved, but for all that the stability of most of the results reached by the methods of Comparative Philology, is beyond question; and everyone who has studied the subject with any minuteness knows which results are certain and which may have to be modified by subsequent research. I have endeavored to steer a middle course between leaving difficulties untouched and offering explanations which may have to be discarded later. For a discussion of questions which are still "sub judice," and for a detailed account of the evidence on which judgments in this book are grounded, I refer the reader to my larger work, "The Latin Language."
-W. M. LINDSAY.
