The New Cratylus

The philologist and biblical critic John William Donaldson (1811-61) published this pioneering work in 1839. It is an attempt to apply the principles of comparative philology to ancient Greek, elucidating the grammar and syntax of the language by comparing it with actual or conjectural cognate languages. As well as producing a great deal of original research on the subject, Donaldson was the first British philologist to bring the work of continental scholars to the attention of English readers. In the book's first section, he gives a history of philology, surveys its present state and expounds a philosophy of language. Here he sets Greek in the context of other Indo-European languages, and outlines a theory of the Greek alphabet and its origins. In the second section, he examines pronouns, numerals, prepositions and particles before considering the noun in the third section, and finally the various tenses and moods of the verb in the fourth section.