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In the following pages an attempt has been made toenable students to grasp the main points of thecontents of one of the most important philologicalworks which have been published during the last tenor twenty years—Paul’s ‘Principien der Sprachgeschichte.’
With this object in view, that work has been here,with more or less freedom, as the subject seemed todemand, rewritten. Though a translation of ProfessorPaul’s book has been published by one of the authors,it has been felt that the existence of that translationdid not render a work like the present superfluous, norshould a student whose interest has been awakenedby the reading of these pages consider he can dispensewith studying what Paul has written in his greatwork.
It may be best to state in how far this and ProfessorPaul’s book are alike, as well as in what pointsthey differ.
We have closely followed Paul in his division ofthe subject. Our chapters correspond in number,order, and subject with those of Paul. The views setforth in our pages are in the main those of Paul; theviarguments are mostly his, even in the very few cases(such as the question of the consistency and natureof the laws of sound-change) where the authors mightfeel inclined to differ from Paul’s views. Also theorder in which the various points in each chapter arediscussed has been generally preserved.
On the other hand, we have altered much, as wehope, in the interest of our readers. Professor Paulwrote for Germans in the first place, and secondly forsuch students as were able to read books like his inthe original, i.e. for those who not only knew Germanenough to feel all the weight and import of hisGerman examples, but who also, like most Germanstudents, could be assumed to possess a sufficientlyintelligent interest in the history of the Germanlanguage to appreciate quotations of its older forms(a point which Englishmen have unfortunately toomuch neglected), and who, thirdly, might be expectedto be sufficiently familiar with at least some of theother languages from which he drew his quotations.
Now though, in deference to a generally expressedopinion, a second edition of the translation of Paul’swork is now in the press, in which all these exampleshave been translated, this Englishing of the illustrationswill, we think, be found to be of use in but fewcases.1 It is, in fact, almost i