This work is meant to be an elementary handbook for lectures and self-instruction. The want of such a work has been hitherto widely felt. The state of Indo-European Philology is now such that it has become possible to write a compendium of the comparative grammar of the Indo-European languages. After we have discarded that part which is still doubtful, there remains a large store of knowledge, embracing the different sides which language offers to scientific treatment: this knowledge will, in my opinion, stand unshaken for all time. The chief object of a compendium of the Indo-European languages is to collect and arrange in a short and appropriate form, and yet in an intelligible manner, these results of Indo-European Philology. Where, however, it is impossible to avoid mentioning what is obscure and doubtful, it will be expressly characterized as such.

It is no slight task to compose a first handbook of this kind treating of the formation of the Indo-European languages: whether the writer of the present work has succeeded in temporarily satisfying the want, others must decide; but he begs them to take it into consideration that his book is a first essay in the direction pointed out.

This book is a translation of those parts of Schleicher's Compendium der ver-gleichenden Grammatik der Indo-germanischen Sprachen which treat directly of the Indo-European original language, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. (From the preface and the translator’s note).

This re-edition has been published as no. 01 in the LINCOM Classica (LinCL) series (originally published 1874, 1877. London: Trübner & Co.).

Table of Contents:

Introduction Phonology Morphology (The form of the Indo-European word)