Art. XII.—Specimen Chapters of an Assyrian Grammar

Extract

A great number of years have now elapsed since I began to collect materials for an Assyrian grammar; an object, of which I have never since lost sight. Of late, I have been preparing my materials for publication; but a preliminary question has suggested itself:—“If I were to publish a grammar, who would read it ?” The persons for whose instruction I should naturally write would be either persons who were acquainted with other Semitic languages, and who were desirous of comparing the grammars of these with that of the oldest and the best developed language of the family; or else persons, who desired to study this language for its own sake, and who sought the aid of a grammar, in the absence of an oral instructor, to teach them the first principles of this “Sanskrit of the Semitic tongues,” which they might afterwards improve upon by their own studies.