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Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 41:2/3 (2014) ► pp.219–245

Medieval Commentators on the Notion ‘persona agentis’ in Priscian’s Syntactic Theory

| University of Copenhagen

Medieval syntactic analysis ranges from simple word order parsing in prescriptive grammars to sophisticated discussions of first and secondary constructibles in modistic, dependency grammars. What combines these two levels is found in Priscian‘s use of actants: (1) persona agentis (= Apollonius’ ‘understood nominative’), (2) verb phrase, and (3) persona patientis, in this paradigmatic word order, corresponding to an underlying structure with an active verb, e.g., audio te “I hear you” corresponding to audieris a me “You are heard by me”, seruio tibi “I am a servant to you”, seruieris a me “You are served by me”. In medieval understanding, more complex sentences are reducible / convertible to such active / passive constructions, if one includes their particular notions of government, where verbs govern the nominative and / or oblique cases, always in separate dyadic combinations, e.g., “I hear”, “hear you”.

Published online: 10 November 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.41.2-3.02fre
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