Articles / Aufätze
Syntax in the earliest Latin-Portuguese grammatical treatises

Gonçalo Fernandes
Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro
Abstract

This essay analyses the most central concepts of Latin syntactical theory in the earliest pedagogical grammars written in Portugal during the 14th and 15th centuries, namely concord, government, and transitivity. The sources include two unpublished treatises preserved in manuscripts of Portuguese origin, one from the end of the 14th century and the other dated 1427, and the first grammar printed in Portugal (1497). They are representative of the teaching of Latin in Portugal at different levels of learning. All three treatises use the vernacular as a pedagogical aid, and Pastrana’s grammar also employs images to illustrate the main syntactical concepts. All treatises discuss government using the regular medieval terminology of regere “to govern” and regi “to be governed”. Like in Spanish, Italian and English grammars of Latin, the three concords belong to the basic syntactical doctrine. The major difference between these textbooks lies in their employment of the concept of transitivity. It is little more than mentioned in the two manuscripts, but highly relevant in the printed grammar.

Table of contents

The authoritative textbooks of Latin grammar used in Portugal in the Middle Ages were largely the same as in the rest of the Western Europe, namely Donatus’s (mid-4th cent.) Ars minor, Alexander of Villa Dei’s (c.1170–c.1250) Doctrinale Puerorum (c.1199), Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (c.500 A.D.), Peter Helias’s (fl.1130/40–d. post 1166) Summa super Priscianum (c.1140), and John of Genoa’s Catholicon (c.1286). Donatus’s Ars minor provided the basic framework for the discussion of the eight parts of speech and their morphology, whereas the syntactical theory contained in the last two books (XVI and XVII) of the Institutiones grammaticae of Priscian formed the basis of the medieval discussions on syntax. The study of Priscian’s highly theoretical Institutiones grammaticae began to be influenced by Aristotle’s logica vetus at the end of the 8th century, when the study of logic was revived in the Carolingian renaissance (see Law 1994, Marenbon 1994, for details). In the course of the 12th century, new works of Aristotelian philosophy, including the logica noua, the Physics and the Metaphysics, became available and began to influence language theories.

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