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Fifty years have passed since the first attempt to apply generative grammar methods to Latin syntax. The well-known book by Robin Tolmach Lakoff, published in 1968 by the MIT Press with the title of Abstract Syntax and Latin Complementation, was presented as a dissertation in linguistics at Harvard University in 1967, with the title of Studies in the Transformational Grammar of Latin. The Complement System. 1 In order to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, we thought it was appropriate to publish a collection of papers written by some distinguished specialists who approach the study of Latin syntax from a generative perspective. Their works show the important research that is being currently carried out in this active field.In this introduction, we would like to briefly trace the development of this research area, trying to emphasize elements of continuity, changes, results, and problems. Although generative grammar has provided very important contributions to phonology and morphology as well, it is nonetheless clear that, from the very beginning, its theoretical focus has been on syntax. 2

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In this paper, the history of the studies on Latin nominal compounding is outlined. In the first part, Th. L. gives an overview of the development from the ancient grammarians to the beginning of scientific research in 19 ,h century. In delineating the progress achieved by the mostly philological approaches, also the comparative and linguistic contributions are included in the discussion. It was particularly through the neogrammarian perspective that some aspects of Indo-European word formation became also an important factor for studies on Latin compounds. In the second part, R. O. discusses the main innovations that took place in 2(? h century. While the historical research in the traditional fields of typology and stylistics went on, two new paradigms of general lingusitics shed new light on the synchronic side of compounding. The first attempts to investigate the phenomenon of Latin composition as a system were elaborated by structural linguistics. This perspective was carried on by generative grammar, whose most important progress was the formulation of word formation rules and the discussion of their interaction with other components of grammar.