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.