The historical grammar of Ancient Greek comprises two parts: Phonetics, which examines pronunciation and the historical development of sounds, and Morphology or Syntax, which deals with declension, formation, and composition.

The issue of pronouncing the sounds of Ancient Greek was first raised in the West during the 15th and 16th centuries, when many Greek scholars, especially after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 but also before that, fled to Europe and taught Greek literature, contributing to the Renaissance of arts and letters.

Western scholars, therefore, learned Ancient Greek texts with their Byzantine pronunciation, which is identical to modern Greek pronunciation. However, they quickly realized that the pronunciation of the sounds of Ancient Greek must have been different from the Byzantine one because the high variation, for example, in representing the [i] sound with η, υ, οι, ει, η, υι, would be an unnecessary luxury of Ancient Greek unless there was a specific reason, meaning each of these symbols originally represented a different sound.

(. . .) [Excerpt from the introduction of the edition]