Articles / AufätzeLatin parsing grammars from the Carolingian age to the later Middle Ages: Trends and developments
Abstract
This article traces the history of Latin parsing grammars from Late Antiquity up to the 14th century, focusing on the group of texts with the incipit Dominus quae pars. These grammars circulating mainly north of the Alps were intended to be studied at the elementary and intermediate levels of education following the study of the Donatus minor. By asking questions about a chosen headword of each part of speech in turn, the parsing manuals offered a technique which allowed the pupil to put into practice what he had already learnt and the teacher to focus on the information he considered as relevant, including different aspects of morphology, semantics, etymology, prosody or accentuation. A number of novelties introduced into the theoretical grammars also filtered down to the lower levels of teaching. Thus, when a section on syntax began to be incorporated into pedagogical grammars in the 12th century, some syntactical concepts also entered into parsing grammars. From the 13th century onwards, elements of Aristotelian logic and physics were also integrated into the theory of the parts of speech and their syntax in the Dominus quae pars texts.
Table of contents
Parsing grammars (from partitiones = “divisions”, “analyses”) form one of the four subgenres of Latin grammars in the late antique period. Increasingly popular from the Carolingian age onwards, parsing grammars cement their position as an essential part of the Latin curriculum towards the end of the Middle Ages, in the 14th and 15th centuries. Despite the significance of parsing grammars for the teaching of Latin in medieval Europe, they have received reasonably little scholarly attention, and few extant parsing grammars have been published. While the speculative grammars of the late Middle Ages have been the object of intensive study, grammars designed for elementary and intermediate Latin instruction composed in Northern Europe remain relatively neglected by modern scholarship (see Postscript).
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