PREFACE. XV
extraordinarily difficult in languages not now thoroughly understood to hit on the right divisions, and to distinguish apparent terminations from true. I have never attempted to conceal these difficulties from the reader, but always to remove them from his path.
The High German, especially in its oldest period (from the eighth to the eleventh century), I have only mentioned in the general description of forms when it contributes something of importance. The juxta-position of it in its three main periods with the Gothic, grammatically explained at the close of each chapter, is sufficient, with a reference also to the treatise on sounds intended to prepare and facilitate my whole Grammar, after the model of my Sanskrit Grammar. Wherever, in addition, explanatory remarks are necessary, they are given. The second part will thus begin with the comparative view of the Germanic declensions, and I shall then proceed to the adjectives, in order to describe their formations of gender and degrees of comparison; from these to the pronouns.
As the peculiarities of inflection of the latter must have, for the most part, already been discussed in the doctrine of the universal formation of the cases, inasmuch as they are intimately connected and mutually illustrative, what will remain to be said on their behalf will claim the less space, and the main compass of the second division will remain for the verb. To the formation and comparison of words it is my intention to devote a separate work, which may be considered as a completion of its antecedent. In this latter the particles, conjunctions, and original prepositions, will find their place, being, I consider, partly offshoots of pronominal roots, and partly naked roots of
definitions, while with Grimm it has a dynamic signification. A comparison with the Greek and Latin vocalism, without a steady reference to the Sanskrit, is, in my opinion, for the German more confusing than enlightening, as the Gothic is generally more original in its vocal system, and at least more consistent than the Greek and Latin, which latter spends its whole wealth of vowels, although not without pervading rules, in merely responding to a solitary Indian a (septimus for septamas, quatuor for chatvâr-as τέσσαρ-ες, momordi for mamarda).
