This is a work remarkable for its scholarship, originality and independence of thought. As an introduction to philology, it has never been surpassed in terms of combining scholarship or accessibility. Anyone who loves words or who is at all curious about language will appreciate this book, covering as it does all the ground from every useful angle.

Introduction to History; Preface; The Origin of Language; Part 1 Sounds; Chapter 1 The Sound Mechanisms; Chapter 2 Phonetic Systems and Their Transformations; Chapter 3 The Phonetic Word and the Verbal Image; Part 2 Grammar; Chapter 4 Words and Morphemes; Chapter 5 The Grammatical Categories; Chapter 6 Different Kinds of Words; Chapter 7 Affective Language; Chapter 8 Morphological Mutations; Part 3 Vocabulary; Chapter 9 The Nature and Extent of Vocabularies; Chapter 10 How the Meaning of Words is Modified; Chapter 11 How the Terms that Express Ideas are Changed; Part 4 The Structure of Languages; Chapter 12 Language and Languages; Chapter 13 Dialects and Specialized Languages; Chapter 14 Standard or Common Languages; Chapter 15 The Mutual Influence of Languages; Chapter 16 The Relationship Between Languages, and the Comparative Method; Part 5 Writing; Chapter 17 Origin and Development of Writing; Chapter 18 The Written Language and its Spelling; con The Progress of Language Appendix;