6533b7d6fe1ef96bd1266aea

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Searching for Syntax in the Early Medieval Commentaries on Donatus

Castrenze Nigrelli

subject

Donatus Commentaries Grammarians Late Antiquity Middle Ages Preposition Syntax Metalanguage

description

This study aims at contributing to the reconstruction of the metalanguage and the specific terminology used by grammarians with reference to the reflection on syntax, as it emerges from the analysis of Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages grammar texts. The study focuses on the description of prepositions within the commentaries on Donatus’s Artes. Despite the overall lack of a systematic treatment of syntax within the Greek-Latin grammatical tradition, the description of specific partes orationis, e.g. praepositio, shows actually traces of a certain reflection on syntax. The metaterminology used by grammarians to describe the mutual relation between linguistic elements seems to go even beyond the merely linear order, entailing somehow hierarchical relations.

https://hdl.handle.net/10447/598313