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- Herausgeber: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
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The volume is intended for classical philologists and a broad range of scholars working in the fields of theoretical, historical, and comparative linguistics with Ancient Greek, Latin, or Slavic languages as the primary evidence in their research. The contributions address topics ranging from issues of grammatography in a diachronic perspective to historical and comparative linguistics. They encompass both monothematic case studies and comprehensive analyses that capture a linguistic phenomenon in its entirety as well as within a broader context.
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Barbora Machajdíková / Ľudmila Eliášová Buzássyová (eds.)
Greek – Latin – Slavic
Aspects of Linguistics and Grammatography
All studies in this anthology went through an anonymous peer-review process.
This anthology was financially supported by the Vega grants of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic 1/0733/18 “The Concept of Ancient Grammar in the Grammatic Tradition of the 17th-18th Centuries in the Territory of Today’s Slovakia and in the Wider European Context” and 1/0812/18 “The Latin Syllable in a Diachronic and Typological Context”.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24053/9783823395270
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ISSN 2569-2275
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Inhalt
Preface
This anthology was originally conceived as a collection of scholarship from the Greek – Latin – Slavic: Aspects of Linguistics and Grammatography conference.1 This event, originally scheduled for June 2020, was postponed due to the Covid pandemic to early 2021, and then it was cancelled altogether. Despite this setback, the abstracts sent to the conference promised an interesting scholarly discussion that would have been a shame to ignore. As a result, the organizers did not give up on the idea of compiling this volume from selected papers from invited participants. From the first stages of its conception, the anthology was intended as a contribution to two fields: the history of the language arts and historical and comparative linguistics. Because this anthology is not a typical conference proceedings, the individual contributions differ in terms of their content and scope. They encompass both monothematic case studies and comprehensive analyses that capture a linguistic phenomenon in its entirety as well as within a broader context.
The Greek – Latin – Slavic: Aspects of Linguistics and Grammatography volume is a collection of research papers addressed to classical philologists as well as to a broader range of scholars who work in theoretical, historical, and comparative linguistics with Ancient Greek, Latin, and Slavic languages as the primary material in their research. Its broader approach invites researchers to read into their subjects and to look at the wider context of related subjects. In its first part, the anthology assembles case studies and offers researchers the results of analyses that focus on the theoretical approaches of ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern grammarians to languages and their descriptions. It illustrates how the perspective of contemporary authors of grammars on individual language levels (morphological and word-formation, syntactical, and lexical) has evolved over time.
In the second part of the anthology, multispectral approaches are enhanced by research into Indo-European languages and classical ancient languages in particular. This research, based on the historical-comparative method as its essential tool, is conducted in the broader background of the philological analysis. As a result, studies of various language phenomena from the domains of phonology, morphology, semantics, and lexicon – as well as etymology and language contact – are all included.
In her paper, Anneli Luhtala fills in a gap in the hitherto little-developed research into the history of the description of the syntactic level of Latin, which was a latecomer in ancient language studies. She concentrates on the most central developments that took place in medieval syntactical theory, which was based on late-antique foundations and primarily on Priscianus. The paper by Ľudmila Eliášová Buzássyová analyses the tendencies to systematize knowledge about word-formation in neo-Latin school grammar from the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries. Her study focuses on the process of the separation of word-formation as an autonomous discipline as well as on the definitions of key word-formation terms and their changes over time. In her paper, Gabriela Múcsková presents several examples from Slovak where grammatical (and terminological) categorization is based on a grammatographical tradition rather than its current properties and abstract grammatical functions resulting from linguistic development. Ondřej Šefčík focuses on an orthographic argument between two prominent philologists – Jungmann and Nejedlý – in the cultural and political context of the national revival movement in Bohemia.
The second part of the volume starts with Wojciech Sowa’s paper. Using the example of the anonymous work Glossai kata poleis, he examines the reliability of ancient lexicographical sources when studying Ancient Greek dialectal vocabulary. Václav Blažek discusses the etymology of the Greek word γέφῡρα ‘dam; bridge’ with its dialect variants. He evaluates existing etymological analyses and proposes a highly promising solution. Martin Masliš explores the implications of morphological parsing for the acquisition of semantics from a psycholinguistic perspective; looking at the Ancient Greek nominal lexemes with the suffixes -μο- and -ρο-, he tests the proposition that speakers tentatively connected novel words to their possible etymological relatives because of formal similarities. Máté Ittzés discusses how much the construction speculoclaras ‘bright like a mirror’ should be regarded as an isolated “positive adjective + ablative” within the system of Latin gradation as a whole and whether there is any support for the assumption of a nominal compound. According to Reiner Lipp, the Old Latin s-future of the type faxō, faxis, faxit represents a durative-telic future tense formation, showing a regular thematic remodelling of a semi-thematic s-future paradigm inherited from Proto-Italic, which is based on an athematic PIE s-desiderative. He also analyses the associated categories of the subjunctive of the type faxim, faxīs, faxit and the Sabellic s-future.
We hope this short anthology can play a part in developing and deepening linguistic and grammatographical research and their interfaces.
We are very grateful to all contributors to the volume and to the reviewers for their critical insights. We would like to express our very sincere thanks to Professor Carlotta Viti for the inspiration to compile this publication. Our gratitude is also extended to Tilmann Bub from the Narr Francke Attempto Verlag as well as to Mária Šibalová and Milan Regec for their editorial and technical support and professional advice.
Milestones in the study of syntax in antiquity and the Middle Ages
Abstract: This essay presents milestones in the study of syntax in the Middle Ages, taking into account not only the development of the mainstream grammar, based on Priscian’s theory, but also alternative approaches to sentence-construction, which drew inspiration from ancient textbooks on rhetoric and dialectic. In these Priscian’s approach, which largely focused on a basic clause, was expanded to cover even phrases as well as compound and complex sentences. In the twelfth century, Priscian’s tools of analysis – transitivity, agreement and government – were developed in association with the study of logic, and the new tools of description included logical word order as well as the subject – predicate division.
Keywords: medieval syntactic theory, Priscian’s syntactic theory, ancient rhetoric, ancient dialectic, transitivity, government, word order
1Introduction
The study of syntax is a latecomer in the field of ancient language studies. Textbooks on grammar began to be compiled in the first century BC, but they did not include a section on syntax. Varro’s theoretical treatise On the Latin Language (De lingua Latina) did contain a book on syntax, but it did not represent a distinctly grammatical theory of syntax. The fragments surviving from it are pieces of Stoic logic. It was not until the second century AD that the study of syntax emancipated from Stoic logic, when a theory of syntax began to be developed by the Greek grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus in Alexandria (2nd cent. AD). The Apollonian theory was adapted into the Institutiones grammaticae of Priscian who taught in Constantinople c. 500 AD. The last two books of the Institutiones, known as the Priscian minor in the Middle Ages, came to represent the mainstream of syntactical study in the twelfth century, when scholarship flourished in the cathedral schools of Northern France. In the thirteenth century it was an obligatory textbook in the Arts Faculties of universities.
The study of syntax was not part of secondary grammar education until c. 1200.1 This is largely due to the importance that the works of the poets had in both ancient and medieval secondary education. In the standard definition of grammar, first recorded in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, the grammarian’s task consists in teaching well-formed Latin and the language of the poets, and Quintilian posits a clear division of labour between the teaching of the secondary school and the higher education in the rhetorician’s school; the study of poetry belongs to the former and the language of prose texts to the latter (1.4.1). In the rhetorical tradition, prose composition had developed tools of analysis distinct from those that were gradually introduced into grammars. In Donatus’s Ars maior (c. 360 AD), a standard textbook on grammar, these rhetorical tools are briefly mentioned: “In classroom reading a complete thought is called period (periodus), its parts being cola and commata.”2
In this essay, I will present milestones in the study of syntax in the early and high Middle Ages, taking into account not only the development of the mainstream grammar, the Apollonian-Priscianic theory, but also alternative approaches to syntax, which drew inspiration from textbooks on rhetoric and dialectic. Priscian’s theory depended heavily on logic, being mainly restricted to the analysis of the basic clause. Therefore, medieval teachers turned to ancient textbooks on rhetoric and logic when they wanted to expand the scope of syntactic description to include compound and complex clauses, and in fact, both dialectic and rhetoric offered useful tools for analysing Latin prose texts.
2Ancient theory of syntax1
Varro says that his De lingua Latina consists of three sections, the first dealing with the imposition of names, the second with their inflection and the third part shows how words are joined together (7.10).2 The third part is lost, but a fragment from it has been preserved in Aulus Gellius’s Noctes Atticae (16.8.6–8). According to Gellius, Varro defined the sentence or rather the proposition in Book 24 of the De lingua Latina as follows: Proloquium est sententia, in qua nihil desideratur ‘A proposition is a meaning, in which nothing is missing’.3 As Taylor concludes (1987: 6), books fourteen to twenty-five of De lingua Latina did deal extensively with syntax, but probably in manner consistent with its dialectical nature. I agree with Frede (1977: 73; Luhtala 2000a: 23–24) that grammatical syntax belonged to the domain of dialectic before Apollonius Dyscolus. In the later grammatical context, the sentence was termed oratio rather than proloquium.
2.1Definition of sentence
Priscian defines a sentence as follows: Oratio est congrua ordinatio dictionum perfectam sententiam demonstrans ‘A sentence is a congruent ordering of words showing a perfect meaning’ (Inst.gram. 2.15, GL II: 53.28–29). The term congruus points at once to the well-formedness of a sentence and, more specifically, to the agreement or concord of the morphological properties of various parts of speech when joined together within a sentence. A perfect meaning (perfecta sententia) means that a sentence includes the necessary elements and only them, and the perfection or completeness is both structural and semantic.
Structural completeness is reached when a noun in the nominative case is joined to a verb to form a simple sentence, such as Aristoteles ambulat ‘Aristoteles is walking’. An incomplete expression leaves a question in the mind of the hearer. For instance, a predicate such as ‘walks’ cannot be understood, unless it is joined to a nominative case, e.g. ‘Aristoteles’. Similarly, ‘Cicero saves’ is not complete, because you must still ask ‘what does he save?’. The sentence Cicero seruat patriam ‘Cicero saves the fatherland’ is complete and satisfies the mind of the hearer; it is therefore semantically complete.1 In this verb-centred theory it is the verb that draws both the nominative and the oblique case into the construction, which is a complete statement. This approach reminds us of dependency rather than constituency grammar.
2.2Logical word order in grammar
Priscian takes a minimal statement as the point of departure for what he calls the ordering of the parts of speech. This ordering is motivated by the question, why were the different parts of speech “invented”, that is, what is their “raison d’être”. The noun and the verb are the principal parts of speech, because they can form complete statements without the other parts of speech. Priscian proceeds to discuss their mutual ordering in philosophical terms, referring to the priority of substance:
Ante uerbum quoque necessario ponitur nomen, quia agere et pati substantiae est proprium, in qua est positio nominum, ex quibus proprietas uerbi, id est actio et passio, nascitur (Inst.gram. 18.5, GL III: 211.21–25).
“The noun necessarily precedes the verb because acting and being acted upon are properties of substance and name-giving pertains to substances, on which depends the property of the verb, namely action and undergoing of action.”
Substance is the first of Aristotle’s ontological categories, and it is the only category of the ten which can subsist on its own, whereas action is an accident of a substance, which cannot subsist without a substance. Sentences are said about persons (and things) in the external world. The persons (and things) are substances expressed by means of nouns, whereas their actions and the undergoings of action are signified by verbs. Since substances are logically and ontologically prior to the accidents, the noun is consequently prior to the verb.
As regards the ordering of the other three parts of speech, only the positioning of the adverb is relevant for the future discussions of word order. According to Priscian, the name of this part suggests a close association with the verb (ad + verbum) which is reflected in its syntactic position; it is placed before the verb just like adjectives are usually placed before nouns (Inst.gram. 15.39, GL III: 89.14–17). This principle, which is alien to the nature of Latin prose, was occasionally adopted by medieval scholars.
2.3Transitivity
Sentences expressing states of affairs in the external world are depicted in grammar as involving transitive or intransitive action. That is, a sentence expresses a process involving one or two ‘persons’ (persona) or referents, an agent and a patient. This semantic description is related to a morphological aspect, namely the concord or agreement of the inflecting parts of speech. Priscian’s discussion on agreement discloses the fundamental principle, according to which agreement occurs in a construction, when the constituents refer to the same referent (persona). In an intransitive sentence involving only one actant, the verb and the noun/pronoun show agreement in number and gender, and both parts of speech pertain to the same referent. On the other hand, a transitive sentence exhibits a change of referent, and therefore the two case forms involved in this construction fail to show agreement:
“The parts of speech exhibit various inflectional patterns, some being inflected for case and number – e.g. the noun, the pronoun and the participle – others for number and person – e.g. verbs and pronouns – and yet others for tense, like the verb and participle […]. Therefore, in the process of sentence-construction, the inflecting classes of words must be joined to each other in matching agreement, so that the singular is joined to the singular and the plural to the plural, when the constituents pertain to the same referent intransitively, as in ego Priscianus scribo intellegens, and nos oratores scribimus intellegentes. Whenever transitive states of affairs are at issue, it is possible to use different numbers, e.g. docemus discipulum et docemus discipulos[…]” (Inst.gram. 17.153, GL III: 182.26– 183.12).
3Ancient rhetorical theory
3.1Periodic and continuous style
Several ancient authoritative works on rhetoric established two kinds of prose style, the one being periodic (genus distinctum) and the other continuous (genus continuum). In each style speech consists of a varying number of segments, which are called cola and commata, and their combination expresses what is called sententia, that is, a thought, an idea or a meaning.1 Thus, the basic unit of analysis in both grammar and rhetoric is ultimately semantic, the sententia. However, the two arts deal with completely different units of speech. A rhetorical period deals with narrative passages of varying length and complexity, whereas a sentence in grammar (oratio) expresses a meaning, which is minimally perfect (sententia perfecta).
The idea of complete meaning is also involved in the definition of the two basic units of a rhetorical period, cola and commata. A comma cannot express a complete meaning on its own, whereas a colon can. Thus, the colon comes close to the idea of a main clause, but even commata can sometimes be short main clauses, for instance commands and exclamations. The comma is used in both styles, but in the periodic style it must always appear together with a colon.2
In the distinct style, the constituent parts of a passage, cola and commata, are often joined by means of subordination – a concept which was in use neither in Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages. According to Martianus Capella, a period could maximally consist of six cola (5.529).3
3.2Word order in rhetoric
The idea that clarity in prose composition depends on a natural ordering of its components goes back at least to Demetrius in the second century BC.1 According to the natural ordering, sentences should begin with the nominative case and be followed by the verb; the remaining words come in due succession. Like Apollonius and Priscian, Dionysius of Halicarnassos teaches us to place nouns before verbs, because in the nature of things nouns indicate substances, and substance takes precedence over its accidents. But unlike Apollonius and Priscian, Dionysius places action before its circumstances and therefore verbs are placed in front of the adverbs (On Literary Composition, Roberts (ed.) 1910: 98–100; see also Scaglione 1972: 78–79). Yet another guideline offered by Demetrius is to observe the chronological sequence of events, which dictates for example that nouns should precede their appositions or adjectives. Nouns should also come before the pronouns referring to them (On Style, § 199, Roberts (ed.) 1902; see also Grotans 2006: 164–165).
3.3Martianus Capella: expanding the logical proposition
The idea of a natural ordering of the noun and the verb in a basic clause is also present in Martianus Capella’s (c. 360–428 AD) account of the logical proposition. In Book IV of his popular encyclopaedia, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury, he discusses the proposition Omnis homo est animal ‘Every man is an animal’, which follows the natural order, with the subject preceding the predicate. However, he points out that an inverted word order is equally valid: “Although nature demands that the noun should be uttered first and then the verb, it does not cease to be a true proposition, even if you say ‘An animal is every man’” (§ 392, transl. by Stahl et al. 1977: 136–137).1
In Martianus’s encyclopaedia, which was one of the most popular ancient texts circulating in the early Middle Ages, medieval masters were able to find alternative approaches to syntactical analysis. Martianus starts describing the proposition by comparing it with other kinds of sentences, such as questions and commands. Not any combination of a noun and a verb forming a sentence also constitutes a proposition, he argues, but only a combination that can be affirmed or denied. This can be achieved by the union of the third person of the verb and the nominative case, as in Cicero disputat ‘Cicero is discussing’.
Martianus defines the basic components of the proposition Cicero disputat in the standard manner (§ 393, transl. by Stahl et al. 1977: 137): “For what it is we are talking about is ‘laid down’ as subject; and what can be understood about it is ‘declared’ or ‘predicated’ of it.” He then sets out to discover, how the two parts of the proposition can be expanded with various optional components. The constituents in the nominative case (e.g. Romanus) pertain to the subject part (pars subiectiua) while those in the oblique cases, such as ‘in Tusculanum’, ‘with Cato’ and ‘prudently and copiously’, belong to the predicate part (pars declaratiua). Whatever is added to the predicative part, takes the form of different [oblique] cases, he concludes, whereas only the nominative case can occur in the subjective part.2
4Syntactic theory in the early Middle Ages
Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae, poorly known during the first medieval centuries, began to circulate more widely from the late 8th century onwards, and its first 16 books, known as the Priscian maior, began to receive commentary. The last two books on syntax, the Priscian minor, only became widely known in the 12th century.1 The tools of syntactical analysis offered by Priscian were not sufficient for early medieval learners of Latin who were not native speakers of Latin and had difficulty interpreting and analysing Classical and Christian literary works. A Classical Latin prose text makes use of complex sentences, with inverted word order and heavy participial constructions and subclauses, which did not lend themselves to interpretation without careful analysis.
Interaction between the three arts of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, was at the heart of the Carolingian renaissance, being encouraged especially by Alcuin, the primus motor of this educational reform. Dialectic was studied through Boethius’s translations of Aristotle’s so called “old logic” and popular encyclopaedic works, such as Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae and Martianus Capella’s Marriage. Both encyclopaedias included a short treatise on all the Liberal Arts, in which early medieval teachers were able to find inspiration for analysing Latin sentences. After the Carolingian reform, this new approach was pursued actively in St. Gall in the ninth and tenth centuries.
4.1Aristotle’s ontological categories
Isidore of Seville introduces the ten Aristotelian categories in a short treatise on dialectic included in the Etymologiae. In his Categories (Categoriae) Aristotle presents a set of ontological categories, which, as he explains, is a classification of things ‘said without combination’: substance (e.g. man, horse), quantity (e.g. four-foot), quality (e.g. white), relation (e.g. double, half), place (e.g. in the Lyceum, in the market-place), time (e.g. yesterday, last year), position (e.g. is lying, is sitting), state (e.g. has shoes on), action (e.g. cutting, burning), passion (e.g. being cut, being burned) (Categoriae 2–4). Propositions, such as ‘Socrates walks’ or ‘Socrates is white’, are combinations of ontological categories.
It is obvious that Aristotle used language as a clue to his theory of ontological categories. Aware of the affinities between ontological and grammatical items Isidore combined the ontological categories into a complex sentence, including nominal and adverbial phrases as well as embeddings: ‘Augustine [substance], a great [quantity] orator [quality], the son of that person [relation], standing [position] in the temple [place], today [time], adorned with a headband [state], having a dispute [action], gets tired [passion]’ (Plena enim sententia de his ita est: Augustinus, magnus orator, filius illius, stans in templo, hodie, infulatus, disputando, fatigatur, Etym. 2.26.11; see Luhtala 1993: 150–151).
Isidore’s identification of the Aristotelian categories with the various constituents of a complex sentence inspired a number of early medieval authors. Alcuin copied this passage into his handbook on dialectic (De dialectica, PL 101: 962C), and it was also used in the Donatus commentary of the ninth-century grammarian Sedulius Scottus (In Donatum maiorem 62.50–61). Furthermore, Martin of Laon exploited it in his teaching of the Liberal Arts (Contreni 1981: 35).
4.2The Seven Circumstances
The ancient rhetorical handbooks offered a set of items, which invited comparison with grammatical and ontological categories, namely the rhetorical formula of the ‘seven circumstances’ (septem circumstantiae or periochae), including persona ‘person’, res ‘thing’, locus ‘place’, causa ‘cause’, tempus ‘time’, modus ‘manner’, and materia or facultas ‘means’, which often appear in the interrogative form quis ‘who’, quid ‘what’, cur ‘why’, quomodo ‘how’, quando ‘when’, ubi ‘where’, quibus facultatibus ‘by what means’. This formula, probably taken over from the rhetorical manual of Marius Victorinus,1 consists of argumentative loci, which could be used in arguing a case. They served as the point of departure for an analysis of complex sentences in a pedagogical text deriving from the monastery of St. Gall (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995; see Luhtala 1993: 174–176). The author of this treatise, composed in the late ninth or tenth century, was probably Notker Labeo.2
In accordance with the title, Quomodo VII circumstantie legende ordinande sint (‘How the seven circumstances of things are to be ordered in reading’), the author sets out to expand a minimal statement, ‘Cicero disputes’, which Martianus Capella had used to illustrate the logical proposition. Notker’s method consists in asking a series of questions: ‘Who did what? When? Where? How? By what means?’ He answered the question ‘Who did what?’ using both rhetorical and dialectical terminology. From Martianus he adopted the division of a basic clause into subject (subiectiuum) and predicate (declaratiuum), also identifying the two components ‘Cicero’ and ‘disputes’ as persona and res, the first two items of the rhetorical circumstances (Luhtala 1993: 172–173; Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 44–46).3
Having stated that the subject is in the nominative case and the predicate in the indicative mood, Notker goes on to expand both constituents with various optional elements, accumulating them occasionally into huge complexities. He first elaborates the predicate part with the five optional ‘circumstances’: “Cicero is arguing in Tusculanum for a long time in a remarkable way for the common good with great brilliance” Cicero disputat in Tusculano multo tempore mirum in modum propter communem utilitatem magna excellentia ingenii (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 46–48).4 Then the subject part is similarly extended with a number of constituents: “Cicero, whose father was a Roman knight, distinguished with consular rank, being of the royal Volscan clan, discusses the nature of the gods, which is awe-inspiring and unknown to mortals” Cicero patre natus equite Romano de regno genere Velscorum rhetor eximius et consulari dignitate praeclarus ipse disputat de natura deorum, quae mirabilis et [i]gnota mortalibus est.5
Inspired by Martianus, Notker dwells at some length on the ordering of the components in a clause. He maintains that the subject is the foundation on which the predicate is built, and thus, according to the natural order, the subject precedes the predicate as in Deus fecit hominem ‘God made the man’. However, an inverted order, Hominem fecit Deus has the same truth value and meaning. This is, however, not the case in all Biblical contexts. A heretical view results, if one – following the natural or logical order – regards Deus ‘God’ as the subject of the clause Et Deus erat uerbum in the opening passage of John’s Gospel. Reason will never allow ‘Deus’ to be set in first place as the subject and to predicate of God ‘uerbum’, Notker argues. The inverted word order Et uerbum Deus erat ‘And the Word was God’ renders the correct sense (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 47).
Similarly, the Creed where we confess our faith by saying Ita Deus pater, Deus filius, Deus spiritus sanctus, exhibits inverted word order. ‘Father’, ‘son’ and ‘the Holy Spirit’ are the subjects of these phrases which can be spelt out as follows: Ita pater Deus est, ita filius Deus est, ita spiritus sanctus Deus est (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 48). Notker concludes his discussion on word order by stating a pragmatic principle: the organization of the sentence can be regulated by the will (arbitrium/uoluntas) of the author. To prove his point, he quotes Biblical sentences initiated by each of the circumstantiae in turn (for the examples, see Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 52).
4.3The Continuous Style1
Notker illustrates the continuous style by means of a complex sentence which includes all the seven circumstances, which, as he points out, happens only rarely in a single sentence; the source of this piece of historical narrative is not known (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 62–66; Grotans 2006: 62–66). He first presents this passage as it has been composed in the continuous style and then rewrites it organizing it into a pedagogical order. Its two orders have the same meaning, but the reorganized ordering is the one suitable for teaching, he explains. The author is remarkably aware of the fact that a complex sentence consists of slots which can be filled either with one word or with various complex units of speech.
Tempore quo Siluius Aeneas regnauit in Italia, templum domino toto orb[e] famosissimum rex Salomon filius Dauid, cui similis in sapientia nullus ante eum uel post inventus est, quia tabernaculum in Sylo, ubi erat arca, angustum populo uisum est ad orandum et sacrificandum Hierosolimis, loco quem ad hoc elegit dominus ex lapidibus preciosis sectis et quadratis et lignis cedrinis ex libano monte per Iram regem Tyri administratis prospere plusquam credi potest construxit et ad perfectum elimauit.
Notker reorders this passage as starting from the subject part:
A subiectivo ‘From the subject’. Rex Salomon filius Dauid cui similis in sapientia nullus ante eum uel post inuentus est ‘King Solomon, son of David, whom no one before or after equalled in wisdom’. Ecce persona ‘This is the person’. This entire unit consisting of a noun (Salomon), its apposition (rex), a genitive complement (filius David), and a relative clause makes up a highly complex noun phrase representing the ‘person’ or ‘subject’. It is followed by action or the predicative part.
Sequitur actio ‘Action follows’: construxit templum a domino, toto orbe famosissimum et ad perfectum elimauit ‘built a temple for the Lord, the most famous in the whole world, polishing it into perfection’. The predicate part consists of two paratactic clauses. The first includes a verb (construxit) and its object (templum) with an adjectival complement (toto orbe famosissimum), an indirect object (a domino), and the second clause contains a verb (elimauit) and an adverbial phrase (ad perfectum).
Sequitur modus, ne aduerbium longe sit a uerbo ‘Then follows the adverb of manner, in order that the adverb should not be placed too far from the verb’. In prospere plusquam credi potes ‘more successfully than one can imagine’, the adverbial part includes a comparative subclause.
Ubi? ‘Where?’ Hierosolimis loco quem ad hoc elegit dominus ‘In a place in Jerusalem chosen for this purpose by the Lord’. In the adverbial phrase two place names, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘place’, are followed by a relative subclause.
Unde? Qua materia? ‘Of which material?’ Ex lapidibus preciosis sectis et quadratis et lignis cedrinis ex libano monte per Iram regem Tyri administrates ‘From precious stones cut and squared from the cedar trees of Mount Lebanon supplied by Ira, King of Tyre’. The adverbial part is a noun phrase, consisting of a noun and an adjectival complement, ex lapidibus preciosis, into which is incorporated a complex embedding with three past participles, each with complements of their own.
Quando? ‘When?’ Tempore quo Siluius Aeneas regnauit in Italia ‘At the time when Silvius Aeneas reigned in Italy’. This adverbial phrase incorporates a relative clause.
Quare? ‘Why?’ Quia tabernaculum in Sylo ubi erat arca angustum populo uisum est ad orandum et sacrificandum ‘Because the temple at Silo, where the arch was, was regarded by people as too small for praying and scarifying’. This unit is expanded with a causal subclause, into which a relative clause is embedded.
4.4Distinct style
According to Notker, the Bible uses the distinct style (Grotans/Porter 1995: 60–61). In this style, a colon frequently occurs without any comma, as in Deum nemo uidit umquam ‘No man hath seen God at any time’. This kind of clause is called monocolon by Martianus Capella. The following Biblical passage including six cola is regarded as a specimen of distinct style by Notker, although the six cola are organized paratactically:
Omnes manus dissoluentur, et omnia genua fluent aquis, et accingent se ciliciis, et operiet eos formido, et in omni facie est confusio, et in uniuersis capitibus eorum caluitium (Ezechiel 7:17).
“All hands shall be feeble, and all knees shall be weak as water. They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them, and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads.”
The approaches discussed above are remarkable not only in that they expand the scope of syntactic description considerably but also in that they largely draw their examples from Biblical literature. Both of these principles were abandoned when syntactic theory flourished in the twelfth century. Then made-up stock examples tended to be used in syntactic analysis.
5Syntactic theory in the high Middle Ages
The twelfth century was the age of the flourishing of the cathedral schools in Northern France and it is then that dialectic or logic became a major subject. The Priscian minor became widely available and began to dominate the study of syntax. By now, the connection of syntactic description with rhetoric, established in the preceding centuries, was lost, and syntax was studied in association with logic in the mainstream of medieval grammar.
Syntactic theory made significant advances in the Middle Ages. I will illustrate these developments with reference to two twelfth-century works. One of them is an independent grammatical compendium composed by Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141), head of the school of St. Victor in Paris, and entitled De Grammatica (c. 1120). It was designed to be used in the education of clergy. The other work is Peter Helias’s Summa super Priscianum (c. 1140) – a systematic textbook studied at an advanced level which became highly popular throughout Europe up until the early 15th century. Peter taught in Paris and Poitiers from c. 1135 to c. 1160, specializing in grammar and rhetoric.1 Both works have incorporated the latest developments in the study of logical semantics into the structure of their works. Taking the simple sentence as the point of departure for their syntactic analysis, they exploit the key notions of Priscian’s theory, namely concord, government, and transitivity.
By the mid-twelfth century, a basic clause was regularly described in terms of a logical word order, the nominal constituents being placed before (ante) or after the verb (post verbum). The subject – predicate division absent from Hugh’s treatise (c. 1120) was employed in Peter’s Summa (c. 1140), and from the mid-twelfth century onwards it was a regular part of medieval syntactic theory. While adhering closely to Priscian’s doctrine, Hugh and Peter frequently interpret it slightly differently from Priscian.
5.1From clauses (orationes) to phrases (constructiones)
Instead of opening the syntactic section of his grammar by defining a sentence (oratio), Hugh focusses on a minor constituent of a sentence, a construction (constructio): Constructio est dictionum congrua in oratione ordination “Construction is a well-formed ordering of words within a sentence” (De grammatica 106.917). By dropping out the idea of ‘signifying a complete meaning’ (perfectam sententiam significans) from Priscian’s definition, the focus is shifted from clauses to phrases. The focus in the study of syntax has indeed shifted from a complete sentence to the components of which it is formed.
A similar shift of emphasis from clauses to phrases takes place in Hugh’s interpretation of Priscian’s theory of transitivity1: he describes a transitive sentence with two actants, such as Socrates percutit Platonem ‘Socrates is beating Plato’ as consisting of two constructions, intransitio and transitio (De grammatica 106.944–107.962). The first is the intransitio between a noun in the nominative case and a verb (Socrates percutit) and the second is the transitio between the verb and the noun in the oblique case (percutit Platonem).
Peter Helias does not fully agree with the kind of analysis proposed by Hugh and other earlier grammarians. The above analysis of the sentence Socrates legit Platonem is mistaken, Peter argues, because constructio can be understood in different ways. Firstly, it is understood “passively”, when we say that Socrates legit is an intransitive construction and that legit Platonem is a transitive construction; and secondly, when we say that Socrates legit Platonem is a transitive construction, we are talking about a construction which is a perfect or “constructed” sentence (oratio constructa) (Summa super Priscianum 900.73–90). Peter restores the concept of sentence (oratio) into this discussion, labelling it oratio constructa.
Peter is aware of the confusion prevailing in the use of syntactic metalanguage, and he reports views held by earlier grammarians. Some scholars think, he explains, that oratio is intended only to describe a perfect sentence (oratio perfecta), such as homo currit ‘a man is running’. Some others maintain that the sentence lego ‘(I) am reading’, in which the subject is understood in the verb, is oratio according to meaning but not quantity, that is, it has an implicit rather than explicit subject pronoun. By contrast, homo currit ‘a man is running’ is oratio according to both meaning and quantity, and is called oratio constructa, that is, it includes both an overt subject noun and a predicate. They also maintain that in domo ‘in the house’ cannot be called oratio, whereas homo albus ‘a white man’ can. This is because, they argue, the latter signifies a combination of substance and accidents and is therefore called an imperfect oratio whereas the former does not (Summa 177.38–48).
It was customary in the Middle Ages to distinguish two additional subtypes of constructions derived from Priscian. In a reflexive construction, such as Socrates diligit se ‘Socrates loves himself’, the action inhering in Socrates is directed towards himself rather than another person, as Peter explains. Priscian says that this sentence fails to exhibit a transition from one person to another, and therefore Peter prefers to call it a distinct type rather than a subtype of a transitive construction (Summa 899, 49–53). The retransitive construction, such as Socrates rogat Platonem, ut misereatur ‘Socrates asks Plato to have pity on him’ is described as involving two transitions: the action is first directed from an agent to a patient, from Socrates to Plato, and then from the patient towards the agent (Summa 899, 67–900,2). In modern terms, this is an instance of indirect reflexive, that is, a reflexive pronoun in a subclause refers to the subject of the main clause. This is the only type of a subclause that was regularly discussed in medieval treatises on grammar.
Peter concludes this discussion by saying that Priscian’s definition of a sentence is generic pertaining to a perfect sentence, such as homo currit ‘a man is running’ but since oratio is a genus, it can be divided into species, which include, for instance, an imperfect oratio, such as homo albus ‘a white man’ (178.66–179.84). These twelfth century discussions show that the distinction between a sentence and a phrase was a topical issue. The closest that these medieval scholars came to the concept of “phrase” was the notion of an imperfect oratio which was a species of the genus oratio. To distinguish between the two phrases homo albus ‘a white man’ and in domo ‘in the house’ in terms of the Aristotelian distinction between substance and accidents seems confusing to us. With hindsight, the source of the confusion is the mixture of criteria – semantic, syntactic, morphological and ontological – used in defining grammatical concepts.
5.2Transitivity and noun phrases
Hugh extends the theory of transitivity to cover even noun phrases. Thus, intransitio takes place between two or more nominative cases (Scipio Affricanus) or between oblique cases (Scipionem Affricanum), or between a verb and a nominative (Scipio uicit); in each case both constituents point to the same referent. Transitio takes place between a verb and an oblique case (uici Hannibalem), or between a nominative and an oblique case (uincens Hannibalem), or between two oblique cases (parentem Hannibali), whereby the two constituents point to two different referents (De grammatica 107.973–108.989). Priscian related the criterion of (co)referentiality to the concord or agreement of the morphological features of the constituents. This aspect is absent from Hugh’s presentation.
A similar analysis is present in Peter’s Summa but it also includes a novel type of transitive construction, namely one involving prepositional phrases, as in Socrates sedet ad portam ‘Socrates is sitting at the gate’. This sentence does not exhibit a proper transition, Peter argues, because ‘Socrates is sitting’ is an intransitive construction but is nevertheless ‘somehow’ (quodammodo) transitive because sedet ‘sits’ is associated with an oblique case associated with a preposition (ad portam). It involves a transition from one person to another, because porta is a person according to a wide interpretation of this term. Peter concludes, however, that this sentence is improperly (inproprie) called transitive (Summa 898.39–48).
5.3Determinatio
When discussing the order of the parts of speech, Hugh draws a distinction between the principal parts of speech which can form a perfect construction (constructio perfecta) on their own, namely nouns, verbs and pronouns, and the rest of the parts of speech that can only modify or determine (determinant) the other parts; they are called adiumenta, that is, ‘assistance’ or ‘help’ (De grammatica 106.929–939).1 The term determinatio was not part of Priscian’s vocabulary; in this context Priscian used the term consignificare, meaning that these parts of speech can signify only when associated with the principal parts of speech. The term determinatio was adopted by medieval scholars from Boethius. He had employed it in his ‘On Division’ (De diuisione), explaining that it removes the doubt that exists in the mind of the hearer as to the meaning of a word (PL 64 889A–B; Kneepkens 1978: 127).2 The medieval scholars defined it as follows: dictionem modificare et quodam modo restringere ‘to modify a word or somehow to restrict it’ (Robert Blund, quoted by Kneepkens 1978: 139). Some teachers applied the term determinatio to the relation between a verb and the nominative case noun in a basic clause.
5.4Government (regimen)
According to Priscian’s verb-centred approach, all verbs ‘demand’ (exigit) or ‘need’ (requirit) one or two nouns to complete their meaning. A systematic theory of government was developed in the 12th century, whereby Priscian’s terminology began to be replaced by a theory of government (regimen). Peter explains that government has to be understood metaphorically (cf. Kneepkens 1978: 122–123) and uses the terms exigit ‘demands’ and regit ‘governs’ synonymously throughout his exposition. It was generally accepted that the verb governs its second actant, ‘the object’1, but the relation between the verb and its first actant was a matter of debate.
Some of Peter’s contemporaries defined government, as taking place “when a word causes another word to take on (assumit) a particular case in construction in order to determine its own meaning (ad determinationem sue significationis)”.2 This definition is at once morphosyntactic and semantic. It is morphosyntactic when we say that the verb governs the nominative case, and it is semantic, when we explain that a verb takes on a nominative case in a construction in order to determine its own meaning, e.g. ‘Socrates is running’ (Summa super Priscianum 1049.86–1050.101).
Peter agrees with his contemporaries in that the verb governs the nominative in a basic clause but not in order to determine its meaning but in order to complete its construction. He draws a terminological distinction between government, which is a morphological relation, and the semantic relation of determination. Peter explains that the verb governs oblique cases in order to perfect its construction. Determination is at issue in a construction such as homo albus ‘a white man’, where homo does not govern albus but rather determines or modifies its meaning.3 Peter prefers to define government as follows: “a word governs another word by drawing it into a construction with itself in order to complete the construction rather than in order to determine its signification”.4 Peter’s position differed from the view held by his teacher William of Conches, according to whom the nominative enters into a construction independently in its own right (Kneepkens 1987: 132).
Both Hugh and Peter deal with a large number of relations whereby nouns and verbs govern oblique cases, listing them by their semantic or syntactic force. For instance, in filius Herculis ‘the son of Hercules’ the genitive is governed by the nominative; the nominative signifies possession and the genitive denotes the possessor (Summa 1018.77–80, 1017.53–60). Peter frequently makes use of implicit elements in interpreting syntactic constructions. In Priscian’s footsteps, he maintains that when the nominative requires (exigit) the genitive case, it is necessary to understand an implicit substantival verb or its participle in the construction, as in filius Herculis (sum or ens) ‘(I am) the son of Hercules’ (1018.77–80, 1025.44–50). In the noun phrase magne uirtutis uir ‘a very virtuous man’, the genitive is governed by the nominative uir. The nominative signifying possessor demands a genitive signifying that which inheres in it but expresses praise or blame rather than possession (Summa 1021, 36–47). That all such nominatives signify possession can be shown by resolving (resoluere) these expressions into the verb ‘to have’ [and an object]: uir magne uirtutis amounts to uir habens or possidens magnam uirtutem (1021.52–1022.56). Priscian also frequently resorted to paraphrases in describing such constructions (e.g. Inst.Gram. 18.13, GL III: 214.5–12).
5.5Subject (suppositum) and Predicate (appositum)
Peter agrees with Priscian’s view that the parts of speech were ‘invented’ with view to their roles in sentence-construction. Peter relates, however, the ‘raison d’être’ (causa inuentionis) of the noun and the verb to their functions as the subject (suppositum) and predicate (appositum) in a perfect sentence. In every perfect sentence, Peter explains, something is said of something. Nouns were invented to express what the sentence is about, whereas the verb was invented to specify that which is said about the noun (Summa 1051.24–32).1
The division of the basic clause into subject and predicate offered an alternative approach to sentence-construction whereby the verb did not draw the nominative into a construction. It was rather the noun, the subject, that entered into a construction first, and the verb predicated something about it. This was one of the most important syntactic concepts adopted from Aristotelian logic in the Middle Ages. Another novelty of philosophical origin was the role assigned to the substantival verb esse ‘to be’, which had been peripherical in Priscian’s theory. The nature of this verb was a major topic for both philosophers and grammarians. Unlike ordinary verbs, Peter argues, the verb esse does not signify action but mere substance, but it signifies in the manner of the verb, that is, it is said of another sharing tense and verbal endings like ordinary verbs. Substance unites and joins the accidents, and therefore sum is a copula, because it signifies a substance which joins the others into it (Summa 201.43–49).
6A note on the concepts of coordination and subordination
Syntactic theory made great advances in the Middle Ages, and the achievements of medieval scholars are remarkable in the philosophy of language. The ancient and medieval textbooks on grammar, however, failed to make use of a distinction between a main clause and a subclause, and the concepts of coordination and subordination were absent from their descriptive framework. This does not mean, however, that they ignored complex sentences wholesale. In the late Middle Ages and in the works of the early Humanists, traces of new terminology can be observed.
John of Genoa’s popular encyclopaedia, the Catholicon (1286), contains a short section on grammar in its first book. When defining the concepts of subject and predicate, he explains that anything that comes before the principal verb (verbum principale), is the subject. He goes on to explain that if there is only one verb in a sentence, it is the principal verb. If there are several verbs joined with a copulative or disjunctive conjunction, as in Petrus legit et disputant ‘Peter reads and debates’, Martinus legit uel disputat ‘Martinus reads and debates’, all of them are principal verbs. In the case of the relative pronoun, however, the verb in the relative [clause] is not the principal verb. In the sentence Petrus qui est studens Bononie disputat ‘Peter who is studying in Bologna debates’, disputat is the principal verb.1 Here we can see that the principal verb is the predicate of the main clause, for which concept the author lacks a term. This concept was termed clausula principalis in the Compendium totius grammaticae (1483) of John Anwykyll, which is regarded as the earliest Humanist grammar in England.2 The same author uses the term clausula causalis for the causal (sub)clause. Before him, at least the Regule of the Italian Humanist Perotti had used the term uerbum principale.
The term clausula, from which the English term ‘clause’ derives, is of rhetorical origin, suggesting that the influence of rhetoric on medieval syntactic description did not vanish completely after the early Middle Ages. The use of the rhetorical term clausula as standing for ‘clause’ is, in fact, attested earlier in medieval textbooks on versification and prose composition than in grammars. The earliest instance known to me is attested in Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et uersificandi (c. 1208–1213), in which the term clausula regularly stands for clause, whereas the term sententia represents a unit resulting from a combination of two or more clauses into one (Luhtala 2022). Generally speaking, however, these aspects of language study remained to be explored and codified by early modern scholars.
7Conclusions
The early medieval teachers showed remarkable initiative in exploring ways of analysing Latin prose texts, both Classical and Biblical. All the arts of the trivium had established a basic unit of meaning (sententia) which was complete, calling it a sentence (oratio), a proposition (proloquium) or a period (periodus) respectively. In late Antiquity, only rhetoric and logic (as discussed by Martianus Capella) offered tools for expanding the basic unit with optional elements, including various adverbial phrases, embeddings and subclauses. When Priscian discussed for example noun phrases, he failed to integrate them into the structure of a basic clause.
The functional notions of subject and predicate were among the tools of analysis borrowed from logic by scholars active in early medieval St. Gall. In expanding the basic clause, they resorted to Aristotle’s ten ontological categories and the seven rhetorical circumstances. In analysing compound sentences with several optional ‘circumstances’, the author of the St. Gall Tractate showed a remarkably clear understanding that such sentences consisted of slots which could be filled with units of various kinds. He also established a pedagogical word order for interpreting Classical and Biblical texts, which was intended to be used in classroom teaching. Moreover, the author asserted that a complex sentence could be started with any of the circumstances, as depending on the will of the speaker. Thus, the masters in St. Gall discovered that a pragmatic principle governed the ordering of a sentence.
After the Carolingian reform there was a decline in intellectual culture, and the approach to the study of syntax as pursued in St. Gall disappeared. When the study of syntax was revived in the cathedral schools of Northern France in the 12th century, its connection with rhetoric was lost, whereas logical doctrine continued to influence grammatical analysis. However, inspiration for the interaction between grammar and logic was no longer sought in Martianus Capella’s treatise on dialectic. When the division of a sentence into subject and predicate was reintroduced into grammar in the twelfth century, it was adopted from Boethius’s Latin translations of Aristotle’s old logic, and the terms subiectiuum and declaratiuum were replaced with the terms suppositum and appositum. At the same time, the idea of expanding a basic clause with optional elements was lost. On the contrary, the focus tended to shift to units more minor than a clause, that is, to imperfect constructions or phrases.
The descriptive framework adopted from Priscian focused on government and transitivity, whereby syntactic relations were largely described as consisting of linkages between two words. In several medieval works, such as Hugh of St. Victor’s De grammatica and the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villadei (c. 1199), Priscian’s definition of a sentence was reworked to account for phrases rather than clauses, to the effect that the idea of a sentence was occasionally obscured.
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