In this book, the first full-scale work of its kind in English, Harm Pinkster applies contemporary linguistic theories and the findings of traditional grammar to the study of Latin syntax. He takes a non-technical and principally descriptive approach, based on literary and non-literary texts dating from c.250 BC to c.450 AD. The book contains a wealth of examples to illustrate the grammatical phenomena under discussion, many of them from the works of Plautus and Cicero, alongside extensive references to other sources of examples such as the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. This first volume focuses on the simple clause. It begins with an introduction to the sources used and to the approaches and conventions adopted, followed by a description of the basic grammatical concepts. Further chapters offer a thorough account of the features of the Latin simple clause, including verb frames, active vs passive mood, sentence type, negation, and the noun phrase, among many others.

In this two-volume work, the first full-scale treatment of its kind in English, Harm Pinkster applies contemporary linguistic theories and the findings of traditional grammar to the study of Latin syntax. He takes a non-technical and principally descriptive approach, based on literary and non-literary texts dating from c.250 BC to c.450 AD. The volumes contain a wealth of examples to illustrate the grammatical phenomena under discussion, many of them from the works of Plautus and Cicero, alongside extensive references to other sources of examples such as the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. While the first volume explored the simple clause, this second volume focuses on the complex sentence and discourse. The first three chapters examine different types of subordinate clause; the following four then explore relative clauses, coordination, comparison, and secondary predicates. Later chapters investigate information structure and extraclausal expressions, word order, and discourse and related features. The Oxford Latin Syntax will be a valuable and up-to-date resource both for professional Latinists and all linguists with an interest in Classics.