Latin Grammar Research Articles

“Young America” and the Anti-Emersonian Western: John Williams’s Butcher’s Crossing

“Young America” and the Anti-Emersonian WesternJohn Williams’s Butcher’s Crossing Anthony Hutchison (bio) In October 1870 Bret Harte published a review of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s latest essay collection Society and Solitude in Overland Monthly, the lively new San Francisco-based literary magazine already being lauded in the East for its “Far Western flavor” and “Pacific freshness” (qtd. in Tarnoff 159). Overall, Harte was content to defer to the celebrated “Sage of Concord,” effectively using the occasion to endorse the idea of Emerson as an authentically national figure wholly worthy of the cultural esteem bestowed upon him by his fellow American citizens. “There remains to Mr. Emerson, we think,” the piece concludes, “the praise of doing more than any other American thinker to voice the best philosophic conclusions of American life and experience” (387). Harte’s forerunning judgment nonetheless sounded a few more equivocal notes. Notably, given his own relatively recent success producing fiction depicting the pioneer mining communities of California, Harte took issue with Emerson’s portrayal of the American West.1 This was presented in the “Civilization” chapter of Society and Solitude where the region is interpreted as a benign domain in which powerful forces of culture and intellect fuse spectacularly with equally formidable currents associated with nature and will. It is in the crucible of this dynamic, Emerson proposes, in typically unrestrained fashion, that a new and substantive national character will be forged: ’Tis wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has [End Page 237] written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one, who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer’s iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands. (10) As admiring as he was of Emerson, such Eastern exuberance proved too much for the adopted Westerner Harte.2 This was not the West of hard, empirical observation, he lamented, but a fantasy abstracted from the “moral consciousness” of the philosopher. Any extended experience with the region, Harte wrote, would reveal that “the piano appears first in the saloon and gambling-house . . . [and] . . . that the elegancies and refinements of civilization are brought into barbarism with the first civilized idlers, who are generally vicious” (386). The young frontiersman Emerson invests with such potential is far more likely to “be found holding out against pianos and Latin grammars until he is obliged to emigrate” (386). Harte concludes with the claim that there is something deeply resistant to such idealist modes of projection within the culture of the West. The nature-civilization dialectic posited by the Transcendentalist is almost comically misconceived in its detachment from the lived experience of the region: Romance like this would undoubtedly provoke the applause of lyceum-halls in the wild fastnesses of Roxbury (Mass.), or on the savage frontiers of Brooklyn (N.Y.), but a philosopher ought to know that, usually, only civilization begets civilization, and that the pioneer is apt to be always the pioneer. (386) As Kris Fresonke has detailed, the bearing of Emerson’s projections goes beyond conventional scholarly understandings of American Transcendentalism that geographically limit its conception of Nature to long settled, tranquil New England locales. Emerson should be read, rather, more attentively as a seer-poet of the Louisiana Purchase and US–Mexican War annexations. His thought is inspired by exploration narratives as well as both infused and critically engaged with the secular-political expression given to the idea of “design” in Nature transmitted via “manifest destiny” ideology. Fresonke notes that the nineteenth-century West, not least in the incipient federal state’s and cultural producers’ [End Page 238] relentless efforts to map, navigate, and reconfigure its contours, presented an “epistemological problem” to which thinkers such as Emerson sought to provide a metaphysical solution. Once “idealized into a matter of spirit,” however, they found that “nature itself, especially in the American West, didn’t so easily renounce its materiality” (126). Harte’s barbed rebuttal to Emerson’s post-Puritan, providential image of...

Attribution of the manuscript of The Life of Peter the Great and specifics of the Slavonic-Serbian language in the works of Zaharij Orfelin

The article analyses the problem of the authorship of an anonymous manuscript on the history of Russia in the time of Peter the Great, which today is part of the library of the Institute of East European History at the University of Vienna. The hypothesis proposed is that this is the first part of the work of the famous Serbian enlightener Zaharija Orfelin, The Life and Glorious Deeds of Peter the Great, and a further assumption is given on where the second part of the manuscript may be located. The literary language in Orfelin’s work is a vivid manifestation of the so-called “Slavonic-Serbian” language. Attention is drawn to the use by Orfelin of different language systems in different literary genres - for example, The Life of Peter was written in the “Slavonic-Serbian” language, poetry was mainly in Serbian, and political treatises, such as Representation, were written in German. Orfelin paid particular attention to the development of school education and within a short time published a number of textbooks for Serbian children: in 1766, the Latin ABC Book with a short dictionary translated into the Slavonic-Serbian language was published, followed a year later by First elements of the Latin language containing Latin grammar and didactic dialogues, and in 1767 by the ABC of the “Slavonic [slavenskij] language”, which was the first Serbian alphabet and used in primary schools in Serbia until the end of the nineteenth century. Of interest are Orfelin’s less studied contacts with other representatives of the Revival among southern Slavs. The conclusion illustrates Orphelin’s attitude to the reforms of Maria Theresa in the field of religion and education.

Tradición jesuita en la Elucidata grammatica de Vargas

En 1711 Juan García de Vargas, prefecto y profesor de gramática y de retórica latinas en el Colegio Imperial de los jesuitas en Madrid, publica una gramática latina titulada Elucidata Grammatica Latina ad strictam Artem redacta. Con ella Vargas pretende completar y desarrollar las de los Padres Juan Luis de la Cerda y Álvarez y, sobre todo, mantener los métodos propios de esas gramáticas jesuitas, rechazando los nuevos aires racionales que dominaban ya la gramática en Europa tras el éxito allí de la Minerva sanctiana. https://doi.org/10.17398/2660-7301.43.221

WEISS, MICHAEL: Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin.

WEISS, MICHAEL: Outline of the Historical and Comparative Grammar of Latin.

Change from Above, Language Contact, and Individual Change in Ælfric’s Linguistic Terminology

AbstractThe paper focuses on linguistic terminology used by Ælfric (10thc.) in his translation of an anonymous Latin grammar (Excerptiones de arte grammatica anglicе) going back to Priscian and Donatus’ works. Ælfric’s grammatical metalanguage, comprising loan words, semantic loans, loan translations, and periphrastic expressions created for explanatory purposes, is characterized by great diversity. A question arises whether these terms, remaining occasional, made any impact on the language system and can be thus evaluated as change from above.The paper combines a traditional semantic, morphological, and functional description of Ælfric’s terminology and its consideration within the frame of sociolinguistics; the analysis is supplemented by a cross-linguistic study of Ælfric’s terms with remarks on other Germanic languages. The results achieved enable us to argue that Ælfric’s linguistic terminology, being innovative, displays some features of change from above, arising from language contact and individual change.

Book Review: The Schoolroom: A Social History of Teaching and Learning

Dale Allen Gyure’s The Schoolroom: A Social History of Teaching and Learning takes an in-depth look at how the structure of schools has changed over the course of American history, starting from Colonial America to the twenty-first century. After its well laid out table of contents, there is a helpful timeline, chronicling major developments in United States education history starting in 1635 with the opening of Boston Latin Grammar School and going up to 2016 with the Sandy Hook Elementary School and the new era of school design (xv-xix). It also includes a helpful glossary that defines specific terms, such as different building plans, types of schools, and educational theories. Throughout the chapters, words found in the glossary are in bold.

Ambo legēre?

As is well known, the grammatical description of Latin originated from, and remained firmly based on that of Greek. Due to the structural differences that exist between both languages, this transfer occasionally led to categorial ‘frictions’, which in turn gave rise to metalinguistic or ‘metagrammatical’ observations of a specifically contrastive nature. As with the ‘optative’ and the ‘article’, this is also the case with the ‘dual number’. Greek inherited this marker for mostly ‘natural’ pairs from Proto-Indo- European, and could apply it to nouns, pronouns and verbs, designating it in grammatical description by the collocation δυϊκὸς ἀριθμός. Latin, by contrast, never possessed the dual number as a category in its own right, although it contained ‘formal relics’ of it, namely the numerals duo and ambō. In Latin grammaticography, these two forms (categorized either as ‘nouns’ or as ‘pronouns’) were evident candidates for being designated instances of the dualis numerus after the example of Greek. A second group frequently labelled ‘dual’ by Latin grammarians are those verb forms in -ēre (e.g. legēre) which are today known as ‘contracted’ or ‘syncopated’ alternatives (although they are actually primary from a historical point of view) for the third person plural past perfect tense in -ērunt (e.g. legērunt). This paper discusses the varied range of interpretations formulated by Latin grammarians up to the early Middle Ages with regard to these two groups of forms

Nieznany wiersz Sebastiana Fabiana Klonowica

The article is devoted to a previously unknown poem entitled In artem Grammaticam (To grammar) by Sebastian Fabian Klonowic, a 16th century poet from Lublin. The composition survived in a grammar textbook from 1691, entitled Grammaticae methodus facilis et compendiaria […]. The work consists of two parts. In the first one, didactic aspects of Klonowic’s work has been discussed (including his interest in matters related to youth education), the history of all known editions of Grammaticae methodus facilis textbook, the problem of lack of editions from before 1633. Another issue discussed is the attribution of forgotten Latin grammar. The second, major part of the text is an edition of the poem, which consists of its transcript (according to the provided rules of transcription), a translation and a short commentary, which, for instance, identifies ancient sources.

Os ícones do poder disciplinar e a educação colonial brasileira a partir do Serro/MG, de 1759 a 1807

Analisamos a história da educação do Brasil colonial na segunda metade do século XVIII, em especial o contexto do despotismo esclarecido português e suas repercussões na Vila do Príncipe, atual cidade do Serro/MG no período que vai aproximadamente de 1758 até 1807. Investigamos como os fatores externos à Vila do Príncipe como, por exemplo, o terremoto de Lisboa em 1756 e a expulsão dos jesuítas do Brasil em 1759 afetaram a forma de lidar com os subsídios voluntários e, em especial, levantamos o histórico dos impostos serranos para entender o processo de financiamento dos primeiros professores do Norte de Minas Gerais. Contamos a história dos primeiros professores do Serro, seja de primeiras letras, seja de gramática latina. A metodologia de pesquisa intenciona amalgamar o conceito de poder disciplinar e biopoder de Michel Foucault à microanálise histórica, para esclarecer como a educação é afetada pela iconografia do poder do pelourinho, da Real Casa de Fundição do Ouro e do padre, detentora de uma certa pedagogia moralizante da população.

Naming classes of prokaryotes based on the rules of Latin grammar

Recently a proposal was published to unify Rules 7, 8 and 9 of the International Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes. Based on this proposal, all names of taxa above the rank of genus must be in the feminine gender, the plural number. For the rank of class, this proposal contravenes Principle 3 of the Code, which states that the scientific names of all taxa are treated as Latin. The -ia ending of most names of classes belongs to nominative plural nouns of the neuter gender.

The Pesky Ablative: Early European Missionaries’ Treatment of Tamil ‘Ablatives’

In their efforts to create accessible pedagogical grammars of Tamil, early missionaries applied the reference model of Latin and Portuguese grammars and other missioners’ works to the nominal and verbal paradigms they constructed of the language. In so doing, they met with difficulties in formulating the terminology to express the phenomena they encountered. For example, the early missionary grammarians regularly classed several distinct Tamil terminations as ‘ablatives’, because the various senses of these are subsumed in Latin within one ablative case (itself historically derived from three Proto-Indo-European cases: separative ablative, comitative/instrumental, and inessive locative). Different configurations were proposed over the centuries, but, despite the emerging knowledge of the native Tamil grammatical tradition, which had long been influenced by Sanskrit declensional standards, always with a Latinate foundation. The missionaries’ grammars created among Europeans a perception of Tamil that its declensional patterning was akin to that of Latin, and that morphologically realised divergent senses are related because their equivalents in Latin are, readings which persist in many modern didactic descriptions.

The Pronunciation of Syllable Coda m in Classical Latin: A Reassessment of Some Evidence from Latin Grammarians

The Pronunciation of Syllable Coda m in Classical Latin: A Reassessment of Some Evidence from Latin Grammarians

Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae in the Russian Educational Tradition

This article analyses the question and answer sections concerning the endings of Latin nouns of the first two declensions from the text known as Donatus (5th century) in Russian historiography and written by Dmitry Gerasimov (c. 1465 – c. 1535/6). To explain these sections, the author analyses the corresponding fragments of Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae (5th–6th centuries AD), describing the content and textual parallels between the works of Priscian and Dmitry (and/or followers and copyists of Dmitry’s text). The author illustrates the multilayered nature of the text, which synthesises various Latin grammars and Western European (German) translations contemporary to Dmitry. The author concludes that Russian scholarship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was indirectly aware of Priscian’s Institutiones and adapted it to new educational needs.

Aspects of the Morphophonology of the Verb in Latin and in German and English

Aspects of the Morphophonology of the Verb in Latin and in German and English

Quintilian, Inst. 1, 5, 40 on solecism and Apollonius Dyscolus

Abstract Throughout the history of the Latin grammatical tradition barbarism is regularly described according to the system of the four categories of change known as quadripertita ratio, whereas the description of solecism is more controversial. In the grammatical chapters of his first book, Quintilian attests to the application of the fourfold system to solecism in his age, but he also knows a second tradition, which ends up becoming the predominant theory in Latin grammar and regards solecism as the fault by substitution (inmutatio). Quintilian attributes this tradition to some anonymous grammarians (quidam) who have not been identified yet. After considering Quintilian’s testimony in light of the Greek sources and especially Apollonius Dyscolus’ Syntax, we have concluded that Quintilian and Apollonius may rely on a common source, probably of Alexandrine descent, which separated solecism from the first three categories of change of the fourfold system (addition, subtraction and inversion of the regular word order).

Los grados del diminutivo: una doctrina confusa en la gramática latina antigua

Desde Varrón a Prisciano, los gramáticos latinos se interesaron por la acumulación de los sufijos diminutivos (-ulus, -culus, etc.), relacionándola con frecuencia con los grados de comparación y, por ende, con un aumento de la función diminutiva. En las gramáticas latinas antiguas, el tratamiento de los diminutivos era heterogéneo: desde una perspectiva semántica se destacaba su cercanía a los grados de comparación –en tanto representan la disminución de la esencia de un nombre– y desde una formal se clasificaban como derivados –en tanto se derivan de nombres primitivos–. Aunque la mayoría de los gramáticos relaciona el diminutivo con el comparativo y el derivativo, existen diferencias notables en el caso de los «grados del diminutivo». El presente artículo constituye la primera historia completa de la doctrina de los grados del diminutivo en la gramática latina.

Reading in a transparent second language with limited orality: The case of high school students with dyslexia in Latin.

Research has shown that individuals with dyslexia have difficulty in reading not only in their native language but also in a second language (L2). The considered L2, however, has always been a language acquired through exposure to both written and oral forms. The present study examines the case of Italian adolescents reading in Latin as an L2, which is the special case of a dead language with very limited use of orality. As the learning of Latin is mainly based on the acquisition of grammar, this study also examined the relationship between grammatical proficiency and reading ability in Latin. Results suggested that, compared with control peers, students with dyslexia had difficulty in reading words and non-words in Latin. Interestingly, in spite of Latin being learnt mainly through written language, the extent of their difficulty was no larger than they encountered when reading in their native language. Also, despite the fact that students with dyslexia showed relatively less severe difficulties with Latin grammar (as compared to reading), this did not support them when reading Latin words, unlike typical readers. The theoretical and educational implications of these results are discussed.

The Complexity of Epic Diction

Abstract This article offers a revised interpretation of the relationship between form and meaning in Greek epic hexameter diction, binding our understanding of traditional language and idiolects as well as patterns and their exception within a single, systematic approach. The article draws on methodological (and underlying philosophical) principles embedded in contemporary cognitive functional linguistics, usage-based grammar, and the study of language as a complex adaptive system (which emerges from the study of complexity in the sciences). Fundamental to work within these fields in recent decades is the rejection of paradigmatic linguistic approaches (such as traditional Greek and Latin grammar, Saussure and his emphasis on langue, Chomskyan transformations) and the polarities of form and content paradigmatic analysis often assumes. Usage-based linguistics place emphasis on signification and symbolic functions, communicative exchange, and contingent historical evolutionary processes as the primary realities of language and language formation. Grammar is regarded, not as an underlying universal structure, but as an epiphenomenal linguistic symptom. The study of complexity in linguistics expands such perspectives to provide a deep, scientific argument that binds rule-based usage and unpredictable exceptions and anomalies within a single, integrated system. Key elements of these perspectives can be extrapolated already from Milman Parry’s early observations on analogy—even as the full implications of these observations could not have been understood within the historical framework of Parry’s methodology. Various examples from the Iliad and the Odyssey, especially the usage of the formula ton d’ apameibomenos, illustrates the argument for the complexity of epic diction.

«DE RATIONE STUDII» ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM ON THE METHODS OF TEACHING CLASSICAL LITERATURE

Introduction: This publication is a Russian translation of the treatise of the Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam «On the method of study, as well as reading and interpreting of the authors» (1512). The treatise was compiled for the new grammar school of St. Paul in London, but became widely known in the European humanistic environment. To identify and adequately interpret the pedagogical ideas of Erasmus specialists in the history of pedagogy should refer directly to his writings. However, Russian historiography still have neither a verified translation of the treatise, nor the studies devoted to it. Materials and methods: The basis for this translation from the original was the latest critical edition of the source in the Amsterdam collection of the Latin Erasmus’ writings; the translation was checked with a modern English translation by B. McGregor in Collected Works of Erasmus. When compiling the comment, the researches drew upon the explanatory notes made by J.C.Margolin in the edition of Erasmus’ Opera omnia. The traditional methods of translation, historical-philological criticism and hermeneutical interpretation of the source have been used as the main research tool in the issue. The paradigm-pedagogical approach served as an important methodological guideline for the authors. Results: In accordance with the Renaissance tradition of the revival of the ancient heritage Erasmus considers the study of classical literature to be the basis of education in general. The humanist develops a two-level curriculum, offers recommendations for choosing and training of teachers, gives various methodological advice to a teacher for delivering classes in grammar, rhetoric, reading and interpretation of Latin and ancient Greek authors. Discussion and Conclusions: The provisions of the Erasmus of Rotterdam's treatise «On the method of study» are of an applied nature. They were in demand in the school audience in many European countries in the Modern Age, which led to the popularity of his works. Nowadays his recommendations also have not lost relevance and under the name of «interactive methods» they can be successfully applied (and are being applied) in teaching of both ancient classical and foreign languages. More broadly, Erasmus' ideas allow us to identify the specifics of the pedagogical concept of the Northern Renaissance and the enlightenment reform of education and society as a whole.

El acceso al empleo de preceptor de la cátedra de gramática de Benavente (Zamora)

Grammar Schools were one of the most characteristic educational institutions in Spain during the Ancien Régime, together with basic education schools (in which children learned the basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic and the Christian doctrine). They were founded in towns of some importance – due to their geographical location, administrative function or economic level – and granted many young people the opportunity to access further studies, which mainly consisted of Latin grammar. The teacher charged with imparting such lessons was called a preceptor, though in historical documentation we often find them referred to by other names, such as bachiller, dómine or lector. On most occasions, prospective preceptors did not have to undergo any form of formal competitive examination, although there was such a requirement in some exceptional towns. In this regard, our research focuses on how these exams were organized, and the professional profile required to win the post of preceptor of the Chair of Grammar in Benavente, an educational institute founded using a bequest left in the will of don Alonso de Carvajal, a local canon. This case study enables us to provide a comprehensive and coherent overview of the various aspects that characterized the teaching of Grammar during the Ancien Régime.