Excerpt from Critical Grammar of the Hebrew Language, Vol. 1 Accordingly the developement of consonants and vowels, consi dered independently of each other as the primary elements of speech, is the second point in the formation of language to which the atten tion of the philologist must be directed. And this will lead him by an easy transition to the discovery of those general principles on which is founded the combination of vowels and consonants into syllables. Here a much greater variety will disclose itself to him in the methods pursued by different languages than in the course of his preceding investigations; for in proportion as these articulate sounds remove from their internal source, and continue to render themselves independent by advancing further into the material world, the more extensively they become modified by external influences. Yet amid all this diversity of sounds and forms, he must not lose sight of their unity of origin, or shrink from the task of seeking out the clue to its discovery. 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.