Rewriting the history of the language sciences in classical antiquity
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Daniel J. Taylor
Abstract
This paper addresses documents and celebrates the many remarkable success stories that have figured so prominently in the study of the history of classical linguistics in recent years. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) and his De Lingua Latina provide a striking case in point. Varro enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as ancient Rome’s most authoritative language scientist, but a century ago we were embarrassed even to attempt to justify that reputation. Today, however, we know, inter alia, that he reconstructed earlier, unattested forms to explain contemporary ones and that he also discovered the declensions and conjugations of his native language. Indeed, almost all major ancient grammarians and texts have received fresh and novel attention from classical scholars and historians of linguistics. Even a cursory survey therefore reveals that during the past half century or so we have not just been rethinking the history of the language sciences in classical antiquity but have in fact been rewriting that history.
Abstract
This paper addresses documents and celebrates the many remarkable success stories that have figured so prominently in the study of the history of classical linguistics in recent years. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) and his De Lingua Latina provide a striking case in point. Varro enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as ancient Rome’s most authoritative language scientist, but a century ago we were embarrassed even to attempt to justify that reputation. Today, however, we know, inter alia, that he reconstructed earlier, unattested forms to explain contemporary ones and that he also discovered the declensions and conjugations of his native language. Indeed, almost all major ancient grammarians and texts have received fresh and novel attention from classical scholars and historians of linguistics. Even a cursory survey therefore reveals that during the past half century or so we have not just been rethinking the history of the language sciences in classical antiquity but have in fact been rewriting that history.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction 1
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Part I. Methodological considerations, linguistics and philology
- Du Corpus représentatif des grammaires et des traditions linguistiques au Corpus de textes linguistiques fondamentaux 13
- The ‘floating’ linguistic sign 25
- ‘A term of opprobrium’ 35
- Methode als Grenze? 49
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Part II. Antiquity
- Grammatical doxography in Antiquity 69
- Über die Bezeichnung des Indikativs bei den römischen Grammatikern des 1. und 2. Jh. 93
- Rewriting the history of the language sciences in classical antiquity 109
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Part II. Renaissance linguistics
- Elements of a philosophy of language in Claudio Tolomei’s Il Cesano de la lingua Toscana 129
- La conception de l’ordre des mots dans la Grammatica Latina de Caspar Finck et Christoph Helwig 135
- The earliest stages of Persian-German language comparison 147
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Part IV. Seventeenth and eighteenth century
- European conceptions of writing from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century 169
- Lessons from literary theory 187
- Nachahmung und Schöpfung in der Barockgrammatik 201
- Leibniz as lexicographer? 217
- Du verbe actif au verbe transitif 225
- Metaphors in metalinguistic texts 239
- Les Méthodes au XVIIe siècle 251
- A propos des règles dans les grammaires françaises de l’âge classique 265
- La phrase expliquée aux sourds-muets 277
- The place of spatial case forms in early Estonian, Latvian and Finnish grammars 289
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Part V. Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- Aproximaciones a la enseñanza del análisis 303
- A difficult case 317
- Relecture jakobsonienne de la distinction saussurienne langue/parole 327
- Ernst Cassirer’s and Benedetto Croce’s theories of language in comparison 341
- Tradition versus grammatical traditions 359
- An early sociolinguistic approach towards standardization and dialect variation 369
- Gender and the language scholarship of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the context of mid twentieth-century American linguistics 389
- When categories go back to parts of speech 399
- ‘Cultural morphology’ 409
- Interjections: An insurmountable problem of structural linguistics? 425
- L’espace linguistique en voie de (dé)multiplication 435
- Z. S. Harris and the semantic turn of mathematical information theory 449
- Name index 459
- Subject index 465
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements ix
- Introduction 1
-
Part I. Methodological considerations, linguistics and philology
- Du Corpus représentatif des grammaires et des traditions linguistiques au Corpus de textes linguistiques fondamentaux 13
- The ‘floating’ linguistic sign 25
- ‘A term of opprobrium’ 35
- Methode als Grenze? 49
-
Part II. Antiquity
- Grammatical doxography in Antiquity 69
- Über die Bezeichnung des Indikativs bei den römischen Grammatikern des 1. und 2. Jh. 93
- Rewriting the history of the language sciences in classical antiquity 109
-
Part II. Renaissance linguistics
- Elements of a philosophy of language in Claudio Tolomei’s Il Cesano de la lingua Toscana 129
- La conception de l’ordre des mots dans la Grammatica Latina de Caspar Finck et Christoph Helwig 135
- The earliest stages of Persian-German language comparison 147
-
Part IV. Seventeenth and eighteenth century
- European conceptions of writing from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century 169
- Lessons from literary theory 187
- Nachahmung und Schöpfung in der Barockgrammatik 201
- Leibniz as lexicographer? 217
- Du verbe actif au verbe transitif 225
- Metaphors in metalinguistic texts 239
- Les Méthodes au XVIIe siècle 251
- A propos des règles dans les grammaires françaises de l’âge classique 265
- La phrase expliquée aux sourds-muets 277
- The place of spatial case forms in early Estonian, Latvian and Finnish grammars 289
-
Part V. Nineteenth and twentieth centuries
- Aproximaciones a la enseñanza del análisis 303
- A difficult case 317
- Relecture jakobsonienne de la distinction saussurienne langue/parole 327
- Ernst Cassirer’s and Benedetto Croce’s theories of language in comparison 341
- Tradition versus grammatical traditions 359
- An early sociolinguistic approach towards standardization and dialect variation 369
- Gender and the language scholarship of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the context of mid twentieth-century American linguistics 389
- When categories go back to parts of speech 399
- ‘Cultural morphology’ 409
- Interjections: An insurmountable problem of structural linguistics? 425
- L’espace linguistique en voie de (dé)multiplication 435
- Z. S. Harris and the semantic turn of mathematical information theory 449
- Name index 459
- Subject index 465
