The death-knell of philosophical grammar was soundedwith the remarkable successes of comparative Indo-European studies, whichsurely rank among the outstanding achievements of nineteenth-century science.

such major figures of renaissancegrammar as the Spanish scholar Sanctius. Sanctius, in particular, had developeda theory of ellipsis that had great influence on philosophical grammar.

It seems that one of the innovations of the Port-RoyalGrammar of 1660 – the work that initiated the tradition of philosophical gram-mar – was its recognition of the importance of the notion of the phrase as agrammatical unit.

Leonard Bloom-field gives an account of philosophical grammar in his major work, Language,