Excerpt from A Primer of Historical English Grammar The object of this book is to give the essentials of historical English grammar as far as is possible within the limits of 100 pages, excluding syntax, but including the history of the language, phonology, inflections, particles, composition, and derivation. Although it covers exactly the same ground as my Short Historical English Grammar (itself an abridgment of the historical portions of my New English Grammar), yet the great compression involved in writing it has obliged me to depart considerably from the plan of the larger works; although in some cases, where the limits of conciseness had already been reached in the Short Historical Grammar, I have naturally preferred conservatism to useless innovation. As this little book will probably be studied by many who have neither leisure nor inclination to pursue the historical study of English any further, I have added a short selection of Old, Middle, and Modern English texts-the latter with phonetic transcriptions to show the great changes in pronunciation which underlie the fixity of the orthography. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.