Page:The Making of Latin.djvu/97



§ . of the changes we have so far considered are Phonetic; that is, they were all unconscious, and happened before the speakers who made them knew that they had made any change at all. Now we can take a step further and apply this knowledge of the Phonetic Laws of Latin to a study which directly contributes to our understanding the use of the language and the thought of the authors who wrote in it; that is, to studying the changes and developments of Grammar made consciously by some speakers of the language and adopted more or less deliberately by all. This part of the subject is called Morphology, by which we mean the history of the grammatical forms, Declensions, Conjugations and the like. This cannot be studied profitably in its details without a wide knowledge of many kindred languages, and no complete account of Latin Morphology will be here attempted, But it will be useful to consider a certain number of conspicuous innovations which come under our notice Rh