This book was submitted as a doctoral thesis to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Amsterdam under the supervision of Prof. S.C. Dik and Prof. A.D. Leeman. It owes much to the interest and criticism of a number of friends both in the Institute of Classical Philology and in the Institute of General Linguistics.

Prof. Leeman stimulated the work on this thesis by his continuous interest in both my personal and my working circumstances and greatly contributed to style and content.

Prof. Dik left no paragraph unchanged by his merciless criticism and has made it permanently impossible for me to repay to him what he has done for me in this and former studies.

Prof. Ruijgh did not confine himself to advising the Faculty on this book - actually, that would have been rather hard to imagine - but made many pertinent remarks.

Mrs. A.M. Pool-Bolkestein's critical remarks are almost the size of a book themselves. Miss E. Vester and Drs. A. Rijksbaron, too, expressed their scepticism abundantly. They all spent many hours in discussing problematic sections with me. Drs. J. J. L. Smolenaars proved not to be the layman in linguistics he would make me believe he is. Mr. N.S.H. Smith endeavoured to make the language this study is written in at least look like English.

A number of assistants in the Institute of Classical Philology as well as Mrs. A.M. Pool-Bolkestein, Miss E. Vester, Drs. A. Rijksbaron and Drs. J. J. L. Smolenaars helped in reading the proofs and so did my wife. She has for several years bravely endured the fate of being married to someone writing a thesis. More than to anyone I owe her a debt of gratitude and an apology.