In the following pages an attempt has been made to enable students to grasp the main points of the contents of one of the most important philological works which have been published during the last ten or 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 to demand, rewritten. Though a translation of Professor Paul's book has been published by one of the authors, it has been felt that the existence of that translation did not render a work like the present superfluous, nor should a student whose interest has been awakened by the reading of these pages consider he can dispense with studying what Paul has written in his great work.