Book Description

In the Author's Note to the first edition Professor Robinson wrote that there was "a need for something of an elementary nature which should be of value to the student who takes up Syriac for the first time. A book of paradigms and exercises is especially desirable in the case of those who have had no previous experience of Semitic languages ... it is designed as an introduction, and an introduction only." The steady demand for the grammar since then has shown that the need remains and that this grammar has gone some way to meet it. The printing of a new edition has given the opportunity of expanding the grammar slightly, chiefly by adding some explanatory notes and one or two further rules of syntax, and of providing more help to pronunciation by printing diacritic points more fully throughout. It remains an introduction only, and the more advanced student will still need to refer to larger grammars. - Preface to the fourth edition.