The Bohemian scholar Joseph Dobrowsky (1753 1829) played a key role in the Czech national revival of the nineteenth century. Born in Hungary, he went to a German school there and also acquired the Czech language. At Prague, he studied philosophy and theology. In the 1780s, Dobrowsky pursued philological interests and helped to establish the Royal Czech Society of Sciences. His linguistic research encompasses work on literary terms, orthography and historically comparative aspects of the Slavic languages. Reissued here is the revised and expanded 1818 edition of a work first published in 1792....

While working for the East India Company in Bengal, Charles Wilkins (1749 1836) became one of first Europeans to master the Sanskrit language. He proceeded to set up a printing press in Calcutta to publish works in Sanskrit and other Indian languages. Wilkins also undertook further related projects, including this work, published in London in 1808, which was part of his larger scheme to write a dictionary of the language and to translate a great epic poem, the Mahabharata. The grammar was the only part of the project that was completed. He never finished the dictionary, and only translated...

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 1835) was a German philologist, diplomat and philosopher. While Minister of Education he was responsible for reforming the Prussian education system. His pioneering achievements in linguistics influenced many later scholars including Chomsky. This monumental three-volume study of Kawi, a traditional formal and literary language of Java belonging to the Austronesian language family, was posthumously published in 1836 9. The manuscript was prepared for the press by J. K. E. Buschmann, a protege of Humboldt's friend and colleague Bopp (also reissued in this series)....

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 1835) was a German philologist, diplomat and philosopher. While Minister of Education he was responsible for reforming the Prussian education system. His pioneering achievements in linguistics influenced many later scholars including Chomsky. Written in 1830 3, this monumental three-volume study of Kawi, a traditional formal and literary language of Java belonging to the Austronesian language family, was published posthumously in 1836 9. The manuscript was prepared for the press by J. K. E. Buschmann, a protege of Humboldt's friend and colleague Bopp, whose work is...

Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 1835) was a German philologist, diplomat and philosopher. While Minister of Education he was responsible for reforming the Prussian education system. His pioneering achievements in linguistics influenced many later scholars including Chomsky. This monumental three-volume study of Kawi, a traditional formal and literary language of Java belonging to the Austronesian language family, was published posthumously in 1836 9. The manuscript was prepared for the press by J. K. E. Buschmann, a protege of Humboldt's friend and colleague Bopp, whose work is also reissued in...

Charles Henry Robinson (1861 1925) was a Cambridge scholar who, during the 1890s, published several books on the language, literature and culture of the Hausa people. Hausa is an African language originating in Niger and northern Nigeria and spoken widely in West and Central Africa as a lingua franca. Published in 1897, Robinson's Grammar was written to serve the needs of missionaries, colonial staff and army officers who wished to communicate with the local people, but made no claim to be definitive or comprehensive. Until the twentieth century Hausa was written in an Arabic script, examples...

The Indo-Aryan language family is a branch of the Indo-European phylum, and includes Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Kashmiri and Gujarati. First published in 1875, this three-volume comparative grammar of the family was written by the British civil servant John Beames (1837 1902). From 1866 he spent twelve years in India, during which he gathered data for what he intended to be the first comprehensive and accurate Indo-Aryan grammar. Volume 3 focuses on verbs. It begins by describing the structure of Sanskrit verbs, showing them to be the origin of the analytical verb constructions found in...

The Indo-Aryan language family is a branch of the Indo-European phylum, and includes Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Kashmiri and Gujarati. First published in 1875, this three-volume comparative grammar of the family was written by the British civil servant John Beames (1837 1902). From 1866 he spent twelve years in India, during which he gathered data for what he intended to be the first comprehensive and accurate Indo-Aryan grammar. Volume 2 focuses on nouns and pronouns. It begins by looking at the stems and suffixes that form Indo-Aryan nouns, and compares their systems of inflection for...

Amassed over a forty-year career, first with the East India Company in Sumatra and later with the Admiralty as its First Secretary, William Marsden's library, as revealed in this catalogue of 1827, was an invaluable collection. An expert in Asian languages, Marsden (1754 1836) published his catalogue to provide a basis for study into comparative linguistics and oriental literature. This work provides an insight into both the practice of book-collecting in the period, and the variety of works published throughout the world. It lists texts on travel, medicine and linguistics, as well as works...

The German linguist and mythologist Heymann Steinthal (1823 99) taught at the University of Berlin (today Humboldt-University Berlin) and was especially engaged with Wilhelm von Humboldt and his linguistic works. He was a co-founder of the Berliner Gesellschaft fur Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory). This innovatory volume, published in 1855, draws a connection between the disciplines of linguistics and psychology, and further relates them to the issue of logic. The three parts of the book deal with the nature of grammar, its...