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Mediaeval grammatical theories1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

G. L. Bursill-Hall
G. L. Bursill-Hall*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Summary

This article is an essay by a modern linguist in one aspect of the history of grammar. Grammar was a compulsory subject in the curriculum of the mediaeval university, and the golden age of scholasticism produced a number of interesting theories of grammar; this article is concerned with the theory of one group in particular, i.e. the Modistae, speculative grammarians who were active in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The Modistae wrote their treatises in Latin and drew upon Latin to illustrate their theories. In addition they made of Latin an idealized language, a kind of “second-order-” or metalanguage, and it was from the standpoint of this idealized language that all grammatical speculation and pedagogy were to be carried out. This is an attitude which has persisted up to the present day and one which has considerably influenced the teaching of grammar and foreign languages since the Middle Ages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Fall 1963 , pp. 40 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1963

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Footnotes

1

The author wishes to acknowledge the financial aid received from the Canada Council, the British Council, the Koerner Foundation, the University of London Research Fund, and the University of British Columbia, which enabled him to carry out the necessary research to do this work.

References

2 Reichling, A., “What is General Linguistics?” Lingua 1 (1947), p. 8 Google Scholar.

3 Firth, J. R., “The Semantics of Linguistic Science.” Papers in Linguistics, p. 139 Google Scholar.

4 Any study of mediaeval grammatical theory is handicapped by the absence of modern critical texts. As far as the Modistae are concerned, there are editions of John of Dacia, Martin of Dacia, Siger de Courtrai, and Thomas of Erfurt; e.g.: Thomas of Erfurt, De Modis Significandi sive Grammatica Speculativa, ed. Fr. M. Fernandez Garcia (Quarrachi, 1902). (This is the work that was wrongly ascribed to J. Duns Scotus; throughout this paper it will be referred to as the work of Thomas.) Siger de Courtrai, Summa Modorum Significandi, ed. G. Wallerand, Les œuvres de Siger de Courtrai, Les Philosophes belges, vol. 8 (Louvain, 1913). John of Dacia, Summa Grammatica, ed. A. Otto. Corpus Philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevii, vol. 1 (Copenhagen, 1955). Martin of Dacia, Tractatus de Modis Significandi, ed. H. Roos, Corpus Philosophorum Danicorum Medii Aevii, vol. 2 (Copenhagen, 1961).

There are a few extracts of Peter Helias, Michel de Marbais, and other mediaeval grammarians mentioned in this paper which can be found in Ch. Thurot, Notices et extraits de divers manuscrits latins pour servir à l’histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen âge, Notices et Extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale, vol. 22 (Paris, 1868). The Modistae were a group of grammarians of the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; they came to be known as “Modistae” as a result of their descriptive device of stating all grammatical features and categories by means of modes of signifying (modi significandi).

5 Grabmann, M., Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. 1 (Munich, 1926)Google Scholar. Gilson, E., History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London, 1955)Google Scholar. Paetow, L. J., The Arts Course at Mediaeval Universities with special reference to Grammar and Rhetoric, The University of Illinois Studies, vol. 3, no. 7 (Urbana, 1909)Google Scholar.

6 Hunt, R. W., “Studies on Priscian in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 1 (1941–43), p. 194 Google Scholar.

7 Sandys, J. E., The History of Classical Scholarship, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1903)Google Scholar. Willmann, O., “The Seven Liberal Arts,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), pp. 760–5 Google Scholar.

8 Quintilian: recte loquendi scientia, poetarum enarratio.

9 The great achievements in mediaeval grammatical theory occur after the introduction of the works of Aristotle into Europe, and this was to have a profound effect on the whole scholarly life of the Middle Ages. Grammar was no longer taught primarily as the way into classical texts but as a branch of speculative philosophy; normative grammar continued to be taught, hence the continued popularity of Alexander’s Doctrinale, but there was an increasing rift between the two approaches to grammar which is not unlike the rift that unfortunately occurs today between the normative grammarian and the structural linguist: cf. also, G. Leff, Mediaeval Thought (London, 1958), chapter 7.

10 Siger de Courtrai, Summa Modorum Significandi, p. 135: sicut logica defendit animam nostram a falso in speculativis et a malo in practicis, sic grammatica defendit virtutem nostram interpretativam ab expressione conceptus mentis incongrua in omnibus scientiis.

11 d’Andeli, Henri, La Bataille des Sept Arts, ed. Paetow, L. J., Memoirs of the University of California, vol. 4 (1914)Google Scholar.

12 At various stages in the history of grammar, we find that recourse is taken to literature to justify the rules of grammar. One immediately calls to mind the Alexandrian grammarians and Priscian, the last of the literary grammarians of the ancient world, who bequeathed a similar tradition to the grammarians of the earlier Middle Ages. This will, in some measure, account for the fact that until literary grammar was superseded by the speculative philosophical grammars of the twelfth century and onwards, the mediaeval schools based their grammatical teachings on the grammars of Priscian and other literary grammarians.

Typical of this type of grammar are the Doctrinale of Alexander de Villadei and the Graecismus of Eberhardus Bethuniensis. Alexander’s work particularly enjoyed great popularity throughout the Middle Ages and even superseded Donatus and Priscian as a teaching manual. Its purpose was purely didactic; it makes no attempt to justify grammatical rules nor does it contain any attempt to theorize about grammar. Its value in the history of grammatical writings can therefore be largely ignored: cf. also R. H. Robins, Ancient and Mediaeval Grammatical Theory in Europe (London, 1951).

13 Paetow, L. J., The Arts Course, p. 29 Google Scholar.

14 Gilson, E., op. cit., p. 313 Google Scholar.

15 Robins, R. H., op. cit., pp. 77–8 Google Scholar.

16 Hunt, R. W., “Studies in Priscian in the 11th and 12th centuries,” Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1950), pp. 1–56 Google Scholar.

17 Wallerand in his edition of the works of Siger de Courtrai (p. 43) states that Peter maintained that there are as many grammars, i.e. grammatical systems, as there are languages, a theory well in advance of his own day.

18 Robins, R. H., op. cit., p. 80 Google Scholar.

19 It would not be inappropriate to compare the achievements of this period to those of the period 1920–40, which was a period of consolidation and refinement after the pioneer work of scholars such as Baudouin de Courtenay, Ferdinand de Saussure, Antoine Meillet, and Franz Boas.

20 We do not possess critical editions of the grammatical works of Peter Helias, Robert Kilwardby, John of Salisbury, to mention but a few, nor for that matter of most of the Modistae.

21 Grabmann, M., Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. 1, pp. 115–16 Google Scholar. Roos, H., “Martinus de Dacia und seine Schrift de Modis Significandi,” Classica et Mediaevalia 8 (1946), pp. 87–115 Google Scholar. Roos, H., “Sprachdenken im Mittelalter,” Classica et Mediaevalia 9 (1947), pp. 200–15 Google Scholar. Roos, H., “Die Modi Significandi des Martinus de Dacia,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 37 (1952), pp. 1–161 Google Scholar.

22 Grabmann lists some thirteen grammarians as the Modistae, cf. M. Grabmann, Thomas von Erfurt und die Sprachlogik des mittelalterlichen Aristotelismus, Sitzungsbericht der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Munich, 1943). He also includes a large number of anonymous treatises on speculative grammar.

23 Robins, R. H., op. cit., p. 79 Google Scholar.

24 Bloomfield, L., Language, pp. 171–7 Google ScholarPubMed.

25 Grabmann, M., Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. 1, p. 116 Google Scholar.

26 Roos, H., “Die Modi Significant des Martinus de Dacia,” p. 134 Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 136.

28 Siger took his Master of Arts in 1309 and presumably wrote his treatise some time after he had begun to teach; he died in 1341. According to Grabmann, Thomas spent the adult portion of his life in the fourteenth century and probably died about 1350. His Grammatica Speculativa was for long thought to be the work of Duns Scotus, cf. M. Grabmann, De Thoma Erfordiensi auctore Grammaticae quae Joanni Duns Scoto adscribitur speculativae. Archivum Franciscanum Historicum (1922), pp. 273–77, and also Grabmann, M., Thomas von Erfurt und die Sprachlogik des mittelalterlichen Aristotelismus, SB (Munich, 1943)Google Scholar.

29 All the Modistae appear to have been, at one time or another, either students or teachers in Paris.

30 Nehring, A., “A Note on Functional Linguistics in the Middle Ages,” Traditio 9 (1953), p. 430 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Thomas of Erfurt, #19: grammatica est de signis rerum.

32 Siger de Courtrai, p. 94: modus significandi activus est modus quo intellectus comprehendit modum essendi seu proprietatem ipsius rei.

33 Siger de Courtrai, p. 135: grammatica est de modis significandi qui sunt operati ab anima.

34 The Modistae used “vox” but this should not be interpreted as “voice” or “phoneme” in the modern sense of the term but rather as “expression.”

35 Michel de Marbais, Summa Modorom Significandi: grammaticus unde grammaticus vocem, unde vox est, non debet diffinire sed ipse naturalis ipsam secundum se et secundum sua principia considerans.

36 The operating effect of “vox” is to set up a series of levels rather reminiscent of Firth’s “spectrum analysis,” Firth, J. R. cf., “General Linguistics and Descriptive Grammar,” Papers in Linguistics, p. 220 Google Scholar.

37 Thomas of Erfurt, #4: intellectus vocem ad significandum, et consignificandum imponit, duplicem rationem tribuit, scilicet, rationem significandi, quae vocatur significatio, per quam efficitur signum vel significans; et sic formaliter est dictio; et rationem consignificandi, quae vocatur modus significandi activus, per quam vox significans fit consignum, vel consignificans; et sic formaliter est pars orationis.

38 Siger de Courtrai, p. 131: modus significandi accidentalis est qui advenit parti post suum completum esse, sicut accidentia dicuntur accidentia quia adveniunt rei secundum suum completum esse.

39 Roos, H., “Sprachdenken im Mittelalter,” p. 102 Google Scholar.

40 Thomas of Erfurt, #183: partes indeclinabiles, non tot modos significandi habent, quot partes declinabiles, quia significatum partium indeclinabilium paucis subsistit proprietatibus, sed significatio partium declinabilium multis: ideo pauciores sunt modi significandi partibus indeclinabilibus, quam declinabilibus.

41 Siger de Courtrai, p. 146: modus significandi generalis ipsius adverbii est significare per modum disponentis et dicitur generalis quia reperitur in aliis speciebus orationis, videlicet in praepositione et quibusdam aliis.

42 Hockett, C. F., A Course in Modern Linguistics (New York, 1958), pp. 221–2 Google Scholar. Jespersen, O., The Philosophy of Grammar (London, 1924), p. 91 Google Scholar.

43 It is clear that in their treatment of syntax the Modistae were trying to make of it a theory of syntax rather than a normative grammar. It is not easy to say how successful they were, since the work of Siger de Courtrai and Michel de Marbais is incomplete; Thomas of Erfurt did have a complete section on syntax in chapters 45–54 of his Grammatica Speculativa, and the very summary outline of the processes of their syntactic analysis given above is based entirely on Thomas of Erfurt’s work. This is an extremely interesting piece of syntactic theory; linguists would today reject his theories but they do nonetheless contain features which are very reminiscent of many aspects of syntactic theory to be found in the work of twentieth-century structural linguists.

44 Firth, J. R., “Personality and Language in Society,” Papers in Linguistics, pp. 177–89 Google Scholar.