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Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 29:3 (2002) ► pp.293–327

Speculations about the Potestas Litterarum in medieval grammar (11th through 13th centuries)

| Universidad de Valladolid
The aim of this paper is to study the concept of potestas, one of the three ‘accidents’ of ‘letters’ in the Roman tradition. More specifically, it intends to examine the way in which the speculative grammarians from the 11th to the 13th centuries dealt with speech sounds and which issues were attached to it. The commentators of the beginning of this period mapped out the route to be followed in the attempt at a thorough explanation and systematization of Prisician’s adumbrations. To that purpose, they forged the successful term modus pronunciandi and classified the potestas into five types. This chapter was granted as much discussion as any other: some concepts and terminology of the Aristotelian universe were employed in it (e.g., the opposition substantial/accidental, potentiality/act). Nevertheless, some remarkable differences between the points of view of the 12th-century grammarians and those of the 13th-century have been observed, among them the interest on the part of the latter in the generation of sound. In this century, two works, the anonymous Tractatus de grammatica and John Dacus’s modistic Summa, held for different reasons a very particular position in the evolution of the doctrine on the potestas. In this respect, the influence of the former on the latter has been noticed. With their speculations all these medieval grammarians succeded in differentiating two levels within the realm of speech sounds.
Published online: 2 May 2003
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.29.3.03rod
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Cited by (2)

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Isermann, Michael M.
2007. Letters, sounds and things. Historiographia Linguistica 34:2-3 ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Amsler, M.
2006. Linguistic Theory in the Later Middle Ages. In Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, ► pp. 218 ff. DOI logo

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