A  Comparative  Grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian Family of Languages

RT. Rev. Robert Caldwell, D.D., LL.D.

The idioms which are included under the general term ‘Dravidian’, constitute the vernacular speech of the great majority of the inhabitants of Southern India. It is the object of the following work to examine and compare the grammatical principles and forms of the various Dravidian languages. In pursuing this object, it will be the writer’s endeavour to point out everything which appears likely to throw any light on the question of the relation which the family of languages bears to the principal families or groups into which the languages of Europe and Asia have been divided (from the Introduction of the 3rd edition, 1913, London)

Contents:

Use of the Common Term ‘Dravidian’

Enumeration of Dravidian Languages (Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Canarese, Tulu, Kudagu or Coorg, Tuda, Kôta, Gond, Khond or Ku, Oraon)

Comparative Grammar:
Part I : Sounds (Alphabet, system of sounds)
Part II: Roots
Part III: The Noun
Part IV: The Numerals
Part V: The Pronoun
Part VI: The Verb
Part VII: Glossarial Afinities


This re-edition has been published as no. 14 in the LINCOM Gramatica (LINGram) series (originally published 1913, 3rd edition, written in English).

ISBN 9783895861352. LINCOM Gramatica 14. 686pp. 2010.

A Complete Grammar of Volapük

Containing a lecture, grammar with numerous examples, exercises, stories, letters, with key; also conversation, and a vocabulary of 5,000 words.

Heinrich Maria Hain

Let it be distinctly understood that Volapük is intended to be viewed as an international, and not as a universal language, save in the sense of its being used in all places where people speak a different language.

Each man's mother-tongue will always be the one best to use when speaking or writing to his fellow-countrymen on all subjects appertaining to the ordinary social relations of life, whatever the language in which, by birth, he may happen to speak. The acquired, or foreign, can never stand in the place of the naturally instilled mother-tongue of baby-life. There are nationalisms and peculiarities and verbal idiosyncrasies about one's own tongue which will always place a foreigner at a disadvantage, how long soever he may have studied, written and spoken it; and this is the case with every native language and with the people of every nation. Diversity of language is felt to be a great barrier to international intercourse. Volapük, however, is not intended to destroy that diversity, but to supplement it by the introduction of a neutral or unnatural language which the people of all nations may learn without wounded pride or national jealousy. Its intention was never meant to supersede any present dominant living language, but to be acquired in addition the mother-tongue of every people (adapted from the preface).

The grammar contains chapters on orthography and pronunciation, nominal morphology (gender, declension, numeral verbs, pronouns, etc) and verbal morphology (active, passive, gerund, conditional, subjunctive, etc.), syntax, and exercises (re-edition; originally published 1888, London).

ISBN 9783895861536. LINCOM Gramatica 16. 221pp. 2010.

An Elementary Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Language in the Hieroglyphic Type

P. Le Page Renouf

The Elementary Grammar contained in this volume is available for all hieroglyphic texts written whilst the old Egyptian was still a living language, and the hieroglyphic system of writing continued in its original purity. It is of the utmost importance that the student should begin with these texts, for although the vocabulary and grammar of the later inscriptions resemble those of the better period, as closely as modern Latin does that of the ancient, and although the contents of these inscriptions are often of the highest historical and archeological interest, the hieroglyphic system which they exhibit is extremely corrupt, particularly in the Roman period; it confounds articulations which the ancient Egyptians scrupulously distinguished, signs originally syllabic are used with purely alphabetic values, the ancient values are sometimes ignored and entirely new ones substituted. When the original System is more thoroughly known, the corruptions which it has suffered will be readily learnt (from the preface of the 1875 edition).

Contents: Hieroglyphic Signs, Hieroglyphic Vocabulary, Nouns and Adjectives, Numbers, Ordinals, Pronouns Prepositions, Adverbs and Conjunctions, Intcrjections, Verbs.

This re-edition has been published as no. 18 in the LINCOM Gramatica (LINGram) series (originally published 1875, London: Samuel Bagster and Sons).

ISBN 9783895861574. LINCOM Gramatica 18. 140pp. 2010.

A Grammar of the Khassi Language

H. Roberts

We would particularly call attention to two prominent features of the work: complete paradigms for the conjugation of all verbs and a detailed treatment of the article, subjects in regard to which the Khassi language possesses features altogether its own, as compared with other members of the Sub-Himalayan group. The number of people speaking the language may roughly estimated at 250,000. Their area is situated in the very centre of the Province of Assam (adopted from the preface).

The grammar contains chapters on orthography, nominal morphology (noun, pronoun, adjectives), verbal morphology (moods and tenses, conjugations, active, passive voice), adverbs, preposition, and syntax. (Re-edition; originally published 1891 in London; written in English)

ISBN 978 3 86290 003 9. LINCOM Gramatica 20. 227pp. 2011.

Old English Grammar

Joseph Wright & Elisabeth Wright

The student who throughly masters the book will not only have gained a comprehensive knowledge of Old English, but will also have acquired the elements of Comparative Germanic grammar. Although this grammar makes no pretence of being an exhaustive work, yet it is by far the most complete Grammar that has hitherto been written in English, and the first to deal with the subject in a strictly scientific manner (from the preface). Contents: Contents: Orthography and pro-nunciation, the prim.

Germanic Equivalents of the Indo-Germanic vowel-sounds, the prim. Germanic vowel-system, the OE. development of the prim. Germanic vowels and accentuated syllables, the prim. Germanic equivalents of the OE. vowwels and accented syllables, the OE. development of the prim. Germanic vowels and unaccentuated syllables, ablaut, the first sound-shifting, Verner’s law, and other consonant changes which took place in the prim. Germanic language, special West Germanic modifications of the general Germanic consonat-system, the OE. development of the General Germanic consonant-system, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, word-formation, index.

(Re-edition; originally published 1914 in Humphrey Milford; written in English)

ISBN 978 3 89586 167 3. LINCOM Gramatica 21. 377pp. 2011.

Éléments de Grammaire Basque

Dialecte Souletin
suivis d´un Vocabulaire Basque-Français & Français- Basque

Louis Gèze

J'ai voulu apprendre le basque. Dès les premières recherches, j'ai été frappé de l'absence, pour les dialectes français, d'un traité qui embrassât méthodique-ment les diverses parties de la grammaire et qui fût pour le basque ce qu'est la grammaire de Lhomond pour le latin. On trouve d'excellents traités spéciaux, mais aucun d'eux n'a eu pour but d'exposer l'ensemble de la langue; aucun ne suffit. Persuadé que les études méthodiques peuvent seules rendre la mémoire sûre, j'ai réuni les règles disséminées dans ces ouvrages, re-cherché celles qui me paraissaient résulter de la lecture des auteurs et tâché de donner de l'unité à l'ensemble de ces notes. J'ai reconnu que, pour ne pas me perdre dans les détails, je devais me borner à l'explication d'un dialecte. Le souletin m'a paru offrir les formes verbales les mieux conservées et les plus complètes (de la préface de l'édition 1875).

Table des matières: Orthographe - accent - des parties du discours - du genre - des nombres - des cas- du substantif - de la préposition - des adjectives - du pronom - du verbe - de l'adverbe - de la conjonction - de l'interjecton - vocabulaire basque-français - vocabulaire français- basque. In his grammar on the Souletin dialect of Basque Louis Gèze mainly focuses on the complex verb forms which íncorporate absolutive, ergative, dative and allocutive markers, various tense-aspect-mood markers and number markers resulting in thousands of more or less regular verb and auxiliary forms. This re-edition has been published as no. 22 in the LINCOM Gramatica (LINGram) series (originally published 1875, Bayonne: Lamaignère, written in French).

ISBN 9783895861956. LINCOM Gramatica 22. 370pp. 2010.

Hausa Grammar

Charles H. Robinson

Hause is probably the most widely-spoken language on the continent of Africa. The country inhabited by the Hausas, extending, roughly speaking, from lat. 8 N. to 14 N., and from long. 4 E. to 11 E., and including about half a million square miles, contains a population which is estimated at twenty-five millions. Of these, about fifteen millions are believed to speak the Hausa language, or, in other words, the Hausa-speaking people form one per Cent, of the whole population of the world. Hausa, moreover, acts as a sort of lingua franca and as the language of trade, far outside the actual limits of Hausaland. Settlements of Hausa-speaking people are to be found in places as far separated from one another as Suakim, Alexandria, Tripoli, Tunis, and Lagos; and Hausa Caravans are constantly passing to and fro between all these places and Hausaland proper.

Contents: The personal pronouns, the verbs " to be " and " to have" ; demonstrative, relative, and interrogative pronouns, formation of the genitive, the negative; Indefinite, reciprocal, and reflexive pronouns, the noun-agent, uses of mai and ma; the possessive pronouns, separable and inseparable forms ; the verb: tense formations, the verbal substantive; the future tense, the Infinitive, uses of kan and sai; the passive voice, the imperative mood of the active and passive voices, the negative of the subjunctive, and the imperative, participles in ehe and she; the terminal vowels of Hausa verbs, various verbal suffixes, reduplication of verbal forms; prepositions, various meanings of the word da; formation of the plural, patronymics, substantives ending in chi or ta ; the numerals; Hausa genders, list of simple adjectives, past participles used äs adjectives, degrees of comparison; adverbs, conjunctions, and interjections; forms of salutation, hours of the day, days of the week, names of the months, points of the compass, expressions used in buying and selling, etc.

This re-edition of Charles H. Robinson’s (a sometime lecturer of Hausa in the University of Cambridge) Hausa Grammar has been published as no. 22 in the LINCOM Gramatica (LINGram) series (originally published 1922, 4th edition, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.).

ISBN 978 3 86290 032 9. LINCOM Gramatica 23. 228pp. 2011.

A Simplified Grammar of the Pali Language

E. Müller

I intended to help the students of Buddhistical literature, by collecting the idiomatical pecularities of the sacred language, comparing it chiefly to Sanskrit, and in a few cases also to other Indian vernaculars. As the publication of Pali texts has taken so wide dimensions during the last ten years, I thought it would not be out of place to consider and work out the new materials that have come into our possession through these books, mostly unknown to those who made Pali grammar an object of their study (from the preface). Contents: Alphabet, pronunciation, vowels, change of vowels, change of quantity, nasal vowels, vowels added or dropped, consonants, general remarks referring to consonants of different classes, compound consonants, rules of Sandhi, declension, comparison of adjectives, pronominal inflexion, numerals, conjugation, Valâhassajâtaka (Re-edition; originally published 1884 in London; written in English)

ISBN 9783862900756. LINCOM Gramatica 24. 163pp. 2011.

A Mongolian Grammar

outlining the Khalkha Mongolian with notes on the Buriat, Kalmuck, and Ordoss Mongolian

A. Neville Whymant

This, the first Mongolian grammar in the English tongue, published in 1926, focuses on orthography, articles, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and ends with a short vocabulary (Re-edition; originally published 1926 in London ; written in English)

ISBN 978 3 86290 065 7. LINCOM Gramatica 25. 83pp. 2011.