Synopsis
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Présentation de l'éditeur
From the PREFACE
In my Anglo-Saxon Primer I tried to make things easy for the beginner by adopting a uniform normalized spelling, by giving only a few texts of the simplest character, and by basing the grammar and glossary exclusively on these texts, so that everything learnt in the grammar might be at once utilized in reading the texts, and the time and trouble of looking up words be reduced to a minimum.
But although the Primer is perfectly well suited for those students who have already had some linguistic training— especially those who know German—there are others for whom a rigorous grammar-and-glossary method is too abstract, and whose memories will not bear the strain of having to master a grammar of some length before proceeding to the texts.
Such learners require a less concise and abstract exposition, one in which the strain on the memory is reduced to a minimum, partly by careful gradation of difficulties, partly by greater fullness of exposition, and lastly by further simplification and omission of whatever is not absolutely necessary for the learner's first start. The present work shows that these changes do not entail any increase of bulk, the greater fullness of exposition being balanced by the omissions.
As the Primer is intended as an introduction to a scientific as well as a purely practical knowledge of Old English, it includes an exposition of some of the fundamental facts of historical grammar, such as the laws of mutation and gradation, which are certainly not necessary for the beginner, even if we admit that they have a practical value in helping to fix the forms in the memory. I have, accordingly, rigorously excluded all such details from the grammar in the present work, which is intended to be a purely practical introduction to the language.
But a practical mastery itself has different stages. The first requisite is to understand written texts, which involves only the power of recognizing grammatical forms, not of constructing them, as in the further stage of writing or speaking the language. Thus in beginning the second text in the present book (§ 14) a learner in the first stage is expected to find out for himself that manna is in the genitive plural, and that cræftum is in the dative plural, and to infer from the ending -ne in hwelcne that cræft is masculine. He will then be able to infer with tolerable certainty from what he has learnt in the grammar that the plural of cræft is cræftas, but this inference belongs really to the second stage: a learner in the first stage is expected only to recognize the inflection of cræftas when he meets it.
The first object, therefore, of a simplified grammar is to give what is necessary to enable the beginner to recognize the grammatical forms which occur in the texts he is about to read. This excludes not only mutation &c, but also part of the syntax; thus an exposition of the laws of Old English word-order would evidently be out of place in the present grammar....
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