Karl Brugmann originally intended to include a volume on syntax in his comparative grammar of Indo-European, but as that ambitious project expanded, he and his publisher enlisted Berthold Delbrück (1842–1922) to take on the treatment of syntax. Delbrück's three volumes on inflection and phrase and sentence structure appeared between 1893 and 1900 and remain the fullest treatment of Indo-European syntax to this day. In this, his first volume, Delbrück gives an overview of the prevailing academic positions in the field of Indo-European comparative syntax of his day. He applies the Neogrammarian methodology used by Brugmann, and meticulously presents data relating to nouns, the case system, adjectives, pronouns, numerals, adverbs and prepositions, giving particular attention to the ablative and the dative in a number of Indo-European languages.