Los Epígonos Del Racionalismo en España

French philosophical grammmar and grammatical rationalism developed from the 17th-century Port Royal Grammar, but they were not adopted by Spanish grammarians until early in the 19th century. Of works responsible for the introduction of French grammatical philosophy in Spain, one of the earliest and the most important one is the Principios de gramática general (Madrid 1835), by José Gómez Hermosilla (1771–1837/38?). The work was very well received; by 1841 it already was into a third edition. Even before first appearing in print, a manuscript of the Gramática General was used to adapt Gómez Hermosilla’s ideas to the 1828 Castilian grammar of Jacobo Saqueniza (anagram for Joaquín Cabezas). The most important of the Castilian grammars influenced by the work of Gómez Hermosilla were the one just mentioned and the one by Antonio Martinez de Noboa, published in 1839. The application of Hermosilla’s theories to descriptive grammars of Castilian required adapting both the theory and the description to achieve a reasonable fit between universal and language specific aspects. Other adjustments were required of the writers of descriptive grammars in order to avoid conflicts with a long and well established grammatical tradition. Nevertheless, grammars like those of Saqueniza and Noboa show innovations which resulted from their relationship with the theories of Hermosilla which will produce a deictic interpretation of articles, possesives and demonstratives, and will affect the theory of verb tenses, as well as the definitions of prepositions and conjunctions, and the classification of sentences. Additionally, Noboa’s Castilian Gramática, whose title makes a claim to be in accordance with grammatical philosophy, includes the most extensive and systematic treatment of syntax prior to the appearance of the work of Andres Bello (1781–1865) in 1847.