Description

Best remembered for his contribution to the study of Greek music and metre, the German classical philologist Rudolf Westphal (1826─92) had originally studied theology at the University of Marburg before turning his attention to comparative linguistics. He learnt Sanskrit and Arabic and took a keen interest in the Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) languages as well as Semitic grammar. In the late 1850s and early 1860s he joined his friend and fellow classical philologist August Rossbach (1823-98) at the University of Breslau (Wroclaw) and later taught at Moscow's Imperial Lyceum. In this work, first published in 1873, Westphal provides the reader with an overview of the Indo-European languages and their sounds. He then gives an extensive account of Indo-European verbs by focusing on the roots derived from Latin and Sanskrit.