1.1 Robins - The Development

The Development of the Word Class System of the European Grammatical Tradition
Author(s): R. H. Robins
Source: Foundations of Language, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Feb., 1966), pp. 3-19
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25000198
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R. H. ROBINS
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORD CLASS SYSTEM OF

THE EUROPEAN GRAMMATICAL TRADITION*
The two most significant predecessors of modern descriptive linguistics have

been the work of ancient Indian scholarship in the fields of phonetics,
grammar, and general linguistic theory, and the continuous western tradition
of grammar established in all its essentials in ancient Greece.
The former became known to European scholarship only in the nineteenth
century, though its influence thereafter was profound.1 The latter has been
constantly a part of the cultural tradition of the western world. Greek theory
was taken over by the Romans, handed on with but slight modifications
by the late Latin grammarians (notably Donatus and Priscian) to the mediae
val world, and, as a joint bequest from the middle ages and the 'rediscovered'
treasures of classical antiquity, became the basis of language teaching and of
much linguistic theorizing in European education and scholarship.
It has been customary to stress the excellence of Indian work to the
disparagement of the Greco-Roman achievement. Panini and his pre
decessors and successors in India well deserve the praise bestowed on them
by modern linguists2, and certainly contemporary phonetics and much of
contemporary linguistic descriptive and analytical procedure, in particular
the theory of morphemic analysis, owes more to India than to the west.
It is, perhaps, a pity that the long tradition of western linguistic scholarship
is judged by its relative failure in phonetics and its lack of any proper
theoretical basis for etymology, rather than by its very real success in devising
a system for the grammatical description of Greek and Latin. The attempted
imposition of this grammatical system on numbers of other languages un
related in structure to Greek and Latin is a charge against some rather
unimaginative moderns, not one against the Greek and Latin scholars
whose interests and circumstances never led them to venture outside the
two western classical languages, any more than the ancient Indians analysed
languages other than Sanskrit.
It is, incidentally, noticeable that among some transformationalists the
* I am indebted to Professor J. Lyons for kindly reading a draft of this paper and making
a number of very pertinent comments.
1 See, especially on the Indian contribution to phonetics and phonology in Europe, W. S.
Allen, Phonetics in Ancient India, London, 1953.
2 E.g. L. Bloomfield, Language, London, 1935, 11: 'One of the greatest monuments of
human intelligence'; cp. id., Language 5 (1929) 267-76.
Foundations of Language 2 (1966) 3-19. All rights reserved.
R. H. ROBINS
work of earlier European writers within the Greco-Roman tradition is now

credited with insights and understanding from which the descriptivists of
the 1930s and 1940s were by their own approach to the subject deliberately
excluded.3
The linguistic achievement of western antiquity was in grammar, in the
narrower sense of that term, excluding phonetics and phonology; in these
latter branches the relative poverty of phonetic observation and failure
adequately to maintain the distinction between letters and sounds prevented
really significant work. But the descriptive grammar of Greek and Latin
worked out in antiquity has survived with comparatively few alterations
for nearly 2000 years, and such alterations as have been made and accepted
can be accommodated in the system without fundamental changes.
Perhaps the principal infrastructure of the classical tradition of grammar
has been the system of parts of speech (mere l6gou, partes orationis) or
word classes and the grammatical categories (case, tense, number, gender,
etc.) associated with them and serving to distinguish and define those classes
whose members admit inflection. The Greek system of eight classes (noun,
verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, conjunction) was
established by Aristarchus (second century B.C.), and set out in the extant
grammar of Greek by Dionysius Thrax, his pupil.4 It was taken over un
changed as the basis of Apollonius Dyscolus's works on Greek syntax, and
Priscian, expressly modelling his description of Latin on Apollonius's
account of Greek5, preserved the number of classes at eight, compensating
3 E.g. N. Chomsky, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, The Hague, 1964, 15-27.
4 Text in I. Bekker, Anecdota Graeca 2, Berlin, 1816, 627-43, and G. Uhlig, Dionysii
Thracis ars grammatica, Leipsig, 1883. The statements made in this paper assume the
genuineness of the bulk of the text of the Techne grammatike as we have it. Doubts on its
rightful ascription to Dionysius Thrax were raised first by the scholiasts (Bekker, op. cit.
672); arguments in favour of its being the genuine work of Dionysius Thrax were set out
in L. Lersch, Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten 2, Bonn, 1840, 64-76, and more fully
by M. Schmidt, 'Dionys der Thraker', Philologus 7 (1852) 360-82; 8 (1853) 231-53,
510-20 and these were accepted by H. Steinthal, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei
den Griechen und Romern 2, Berlin, 1891, and Paully-Wissowa, Realencyklopadie 5.1,
Stuttgart, 1903, s.v. 'Dionysius 134'. Recently the argument has been reopened by V. di
Benedetto, 'Dionisio Trace e la techne a lui attribuita', Annali della scuola normale superiore
di Pisa, serie 2, 27 (1958) 169-210; 28 (1959) 87-118; di Benedetto reexamines the earlier
evidence together with recent discoveries of grammatical writings in papyri. In brief,
his conclusions are that the text that we have from Section 6 on is a third or fourth century
A.D. compilation tacked on to the introduction of a now lost work by Dionysius. Whether
or not this conclusion is justified, it remains the case that the system set out in the Techne
is the one assumed by Apollonius Dyscolus (except in some details) and largely reproduced
by Priscian, modelling himself on Apollonius (cp. the lists and definitions of word classes
in the Techne, Section 13 and in Priscian, Institutiones grammaticae 2.4.15-21). The course
of development and the relative chronology of the system examined in this paper are not
affected by the question of textual genuineness.
5 E.g. Priscian, Inst. gram. 12.3.13, 14.1.1, 17.1.1.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORD CLASS SYSTEM
for the absence of a definite article in Latin corresponding to ho, he, to

in Greek by the recognition of Latin interjections as a separate class of
words, a step taken at least as early as the first century A.D. by Remmius
Palaemon.6
The importance of the word class system in grammatical description was
recognized in antiquity. A scholiast makes it Thrax's most important
contribution7; and in modern times one of the first systematic historians of
linguistics, Laurenz Lersch, takes the evolution of the classical eight class
system as the main theme in his exposition of the development of Greek
and Latin grammatical theory and statement.8
Panini's work on the grammar of Sanskrit, from its compactness and
systematic economy (whence springs much of its difficulty) manifestly
comes at the end of a long line of predecessors; but of these little is known.
It is, however, possible in the Greek tradition to follow the growth of the
Aristarchan word class system and observe the methods by which it was
successively developed. It is clear from the form in which ancient writers
put their statements that they saw the history of grammar as involving a
word class system that was progressively expanded through the creation of
new classes from the subdivision of classes previously recognized in earlier
systems; and this may be fairly represented in the diagram at the end of this
paper.
Some details remain in doubt or are the subject of controversy, but the
resolution of these problems is a matter for classical scholarship rather than
for general linguistics. The earliest attempts at a statement of Greek grammar
are centred on the definition of sentence components, and the changes in
their number and in the means by which they were established provide an
interesting example of progressive linguistic research, research carried out by
speakers of Greek on Greek9, and spread over several generations, but in
some respects not unlike the course of development through which progresses
the analytic framework set up by a modern linguist working in the field
on a hitherto unanalyzed language.
6 Charisius, Ars grammatica 2.212.
7 Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 676: 6 Op&a AtovUatog, 6 iepi T-ov 6KTco gepcov Tob k6you
&Sta;aq lgatq (Dionysius Thrax, who taught us about the eight parts of speech): cp. ibid.
724.
8 Lersch, Sprachphilosophie, part 2.
9 But it has been pointed out that significant advances and refinements in grammatical
observation and analysis were achieved by the Stoics, whose founder Zeno of Citium, like
his successor Chrysippus, was said to have learned Greek as a second language (M. Pohlenz,
'Die Begriindung der abendlandischen Sprachlehre durch die Stoa', Nachrichten von der
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, phil.-hist. Klasse Fachgruppe 1 Altertums
wissenschaft, N. F. Bd. 3 (1939) Nr. 6. On Stoic linguistics see further K. Barwick,
'Probleme der stoischen Sprachlehre und Rhetorik', Abhandlungen der sichsischen Aka
demie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, phil.-hist. Kl. 49 (1957) Heft 3.
R. H. ROBINS
As the Latin grammar of Priscian was so largely modelled on the Greek

system taken over from Thrax by Apollonius and its theoretical basis was
the same, this study may be confined in the main to the work of Greek
scholars. It must be stressed that for the pioneers of Greek grammar, Greek
was an unanalyzed language. It is hard to-day not to envisage Greek set
out in the (largely Aristarchan) system of traditional grammar, and one is
easily tempted to look on the work of Aristotle and the Stoics, the two main
exponents of grammatical systems before Aristarchus, as the progressive
'discovery' or 'revelation' of an already existent set of classes and grammati
cal categories. There is no need to revive the controversy between what
have been nicknamed 'hocus-pocus' and 'God's truth' attitudes to linguistic
analysis, nor to ask the presumably unanswerable question whether gram
matical structures and systems exist independently of a grammatical state
ment. Certainly Greek and Latin were predisposed towards the grammar
imposed on them in a way that some other languages to which the system
was unimaginatively applied were not. In this sense Thrax succeeded
because Greek was 'like that', but we can hardly say that his was the only
model of statement or that his system of eight word classes was the only
satisfactory one. It may have been the best, and certainly the subsequent
modifications, involving the separate recognition of the adjective from within
the noun class and the inclusion of his separate class of participles within
the forms of the verb, are in the nature of a rearrangement within an existing
framework and rely on the same defining categories; but prior to the estab
lishment of the system there will have been other ways in which a gram
matical description of Greek could have been organized. The crucial de
cisions that led to the adoption of the system set out by Thrax are seen to
have been taken as one follows the work of his predecessors.
One must bear in mind that, just as there was no preexisting grammar of
Greek to be discovered in the form in which we now have it, so equally
the purposes behind grammatical analysis changed along with changes in
the conditions that fostered it. Plato was concerned with the structure of
sentences as the vehicles of logical argument. Additionally, Aristotle set
himself the task of classifying and defining the basic terms of the descriptive
sciences in general. The Stoics made the study of language, including gram
mar, etymology, and rhetoric, a central part of their philosophical investi
gations. The Alexandrian literary critics saw grammar primarily as part
of the equipment required for the appreciation of literature and the estab
lishment of correct texts of earlier writers. From all of these points of
approach grammar grew up to become a scholarly activity in its own right,
almost as a by-product of other objectives.
Prior to the Stoics one can hardly speak of grammar as a separately
recognized discipline in the west; but questions of grammar are discussed

by both Plato and Aristotle, and there are references to pre-Socratic treat
ments of such grammatical categories as gender.10 It is certain that Plato
recognized two major components of the sentence (l6gos): 6noma and
rhlma.ll At this period in the history of linguistic thought and before later
developments had taken place it would be anachronistic and misleading to
translate these terms as 'noun' and 'verb'. Whether the two components
were regarded as chain-exhausting by Plato cannot be made definite, but
one notices that their first identification was made as sentence parts, parts
of logos (mere logou), not as classes of words.
In previous non-technical usage onoma was 'name', and rhema, as well
as meaning 'word', meant 'saying', 'proverb', and was used to refer to short
independent and often 'elliptical' sentences.12 Plato thus seems to bifurcate
the sentence, 16gos, into topic and comment, and would probably have
assigned two stretches in it to onoma and rhema respectively, the NP and
VP of the first rewrite rule of a generative grammar: l6gos, S -> 6noma,
NP + rhema, VP.
Certainly this is consistent with much of what he says elsewhere, and later
grammarians recognized the special and fundamental significance of the
binary 6noma-rhema division in sentence structure, as the basis of the two
word favourite sentence type and the two heads of further expansions (nodes
of subsequent branching in phrase structure).13
Semantically Plato observed the broad correlation of onoma with the
actor and rhema with the action in many sentences of this pattern.14
There has been considerable discussion on the inclusion by Plato, and
later by Aristotle, of adjectives and adjectival phrases like leukos (white)
and Dii philos (beloved of Zeus) among the rhemata. By the exercise of
historical hindsight it is not difficult to accuse them of inconsistency and
the failure to recognize the 'properly relevant criteria'. In another passage
leon (lion), elaphos (deer), and hippos (horse) are given as typical onomata,
10 Aristotle, Rhetorica 3.5; De sophisticis elenchis 14.
1 Cratylus 425 A, 431 B: Xoyot ydp Irou 6q ;ydiaxt TI 'roVTcov [sc. 6vopadT0v cKat 5iArlsd ov]
E6vecis EcaTt (Sentences, I think, are the combination of these (sc. on6mata and rhemata)),
Sophistes 263 D.
12 E.g. Protagoras 342 E, 343 A, B.
13 Cp. E. Bach, Introduction to Transformational Grammars, New York, 1964, 34; Apollo
nius Dyscolus, De constructione 1.3 (ed. Bekker, Berlin, 1817, 22): Tx bn6Xotnra T&v
Pepd6v TOO X6you V6yECTati 7rp6o Tflv TOO 15fmaT?o Kai ToO 6v60aTo( o v TaStv (The
remaining parts of speech are referred to the syntax of the verb and the noun); Priscian,
Inst. gram. 2.4.15.
14 Sophistes 262 A: T6 AIEv &'ci Taiq tpdCsolv 6v 8iL5o pa 5q)Ad otIou Xt'kyosEv ..., To
6e y' rtC' acu Toi 6K}eiva ip 6TTOUot cnraieov Tqn q c Wvfi a IFTe9 (Tv 6vopac (The representation
of actions we call rhema, ... but the vocal sign assigned to those performing the actions we
call'6noma).
R. H. ROBINS
and badidzei (walks), trechei (runs), and kathezdei (sleeps) as typical rhemata15.
But the first division of the Greek sentence into components had been in
terms of syntactic function, not of morphological categories, and the specific
identification of word classes as such had yet to be made; and in Greek
adjectives and adjectival phrases served often as predicates without a part
of einai (the copula verb 'to be') necessarily present; that is, they could
stand alone in the rhema place in the structure of the sentence. Beyond this,
at the stage represented by Plato, one need not, and perhaps should not,
press the matter further. In particular it is to be remembered that one is
not dealing here with questions of the use or misuse of an existing technical
metalanguage, but with a very early period in the working out of just such
a metalanguage from the material provided by Greek and not hitherto put
to such a purpose. The 'relevant criteria' were only established at a later
stage, as the development of Greek grammar proceeded.
It may be held that grammatical theory was developed by Aristotle
beyond the point attained by Plato; but we still have to abstract his specifi
cally grammatical observations from various places in treatises not them
selves primarily concerned with grammatical exposition. Bearing this in
mind and also the fact that to look for anything like a distinct discipline
of grammar within philosophia before the Stoics is anachronistic, one need
not be too much put out by apparent or actual inconsistencies between
different passages in separate works, even apart from considerations of
textual genuineness in some cases.
Certainly Aristotle faced the problem of formal word unity and of the
selection of defining criteria for identification of different types of word
from the three sources available in linguistics: word form, syntactic function,
and (apparent) class meaning.16 In Aristotle we find the first explicit treat
ment of grammatically relevant word form variations later to be collected
and ordered in the familiar paradigms. At this stage ptbsis was used in
differently of any such variation in word form, on the model of a descriptively
basic shape and pt4seis derived therefrom. Aristotle thus distinguished the
oblique cases and non-present tenses, as pt6seis onomatos and pt6seis
rhematos, from the nominative forms, onomata, and present tense forms,
15 Aristotle, De interpretatione 1, 10; Plato, Cratylus 399 B; Sophistes 262 B.

16 De interpretatione 2: 6vogla Iv oSv CaTt <povfq crlmavTixi KcaTd& auviKCrlV fivsu
Xp6vou, fq pirlG8v jRpoq atri "arlmavTc6 v cKXoptaoivov (An 6noma is a vocal sound
having a meaning by convention, not involving time reference, such that no part of it
taken separately has a meaning); ibid. 3: bf5j4a 6e Iaut r6 npoaaorlatvov xpovov o0
tupoq o)68v rlatvevt X)pi?, Kai e'aTv d&i T&Ov KaO' ETrpou %syogvov crnletov (A
rhema is that which in addition indicates time, but of which no part taken separately has
any meaning, and it is always a sign of what is predicated of something else).
rhemata; comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, and deadjectival

adverbs ending in -os are also referred to as ptoseis.17
That Aristotle, like Plato, made onomata and rhdmata the main constit
uents of l6gos, the sentence, specifically l6gos apophantikos (declarative
sentence), there is no doubt, and the Latin grammarians ascribed this
binary system to him.18 But he went further than Plato is known to have
done in explicitly defining each. Both onomata and rhemata are semantically
indivisible, and rhemata are distinguished from onomata by their function
as predicates and their inclusion within themselves of time reference (tense),
often relevant to the truth or falsity of a proposition. Morphological criteria
(tense inflections) are thus brought into the defining criteria of words for
the first time, and this has been felt to make the inclusion of adjectives such
as leukos (white) and dikaios (just) among the rhemata more troublesome
than was this same practice in Plato, mentioned above.19 One may, however,
note the statement by Aristotle that rhcmata by themselves, when not form
ing part of a sentence, are onomata (i.e. such word forms, like any isolated
word forms, can be hypostatized, as in citation, and treated as nouns).20
Moreover, elsewhere Aristotle equates single verb predicates like badidzei
(walks) with copulative phrases like badidzon esti (is walking)21; rhema, then,
refers to certain sets of words functioning in their capacity as the second
component of a two part sentence; mostly rhSmata are what were later
distinguished as verbs, but when the later adjectives (leukos etc.) occur as
predicates in a sentence like ho dnthropos dikaios (the man is just), some part
of the copulative verb einai, such as esti (is) could always be added without
change of grammatical structure or meaning, and such a word carries time
reference within its form (prossemainei khronon). In transformational terms
these verbless sentences can be generated by the deletion of some part of
einai.
In sum, the major membership of the sets of Greek words regularly
serving as predicates carries time reference as an obligatory morphosemantic
feature; but in this binary classification, without further subdivisions, one
17 De interpretatione 2: T6 8 6( icoivo4q il [iovt Kat 6oa zotatC a 6 obK 6voPaTa aUXa

TCT)6baet v6g1aTOq (Philonos ('of Philon') or Philoni ('to Philon') and similar forms are not
onomata but pt6seis of an onoma); ibid. 3: T6O yiavev i TO6 6ytavT ob nriPa &a& TCTaiotS
5iflaToq (hygidnen ('he was healthy') or hygiane? ('he will be healthy') is not a rhema but
a ptosis of a rhema); Topica 5.7, 2.9, 1.15.
18 Rhetorica 3.2: 6vTwv 8' 6voaTGOdV Kai rflaTCOV 9t d)V 6 k6yoq auvcalTnKEV (ondmata
and rhemata being the constituents of the sentence); Varro, De lingua Latina 8.11; Cledo
nius, Ars secunda (ed. H. Keil, Grammatici Latini 5, Leipzig, 1923, 34).
19 See note 15.
20 De interpretatione 3: af)Ta V gv ov Kac' tatra Xeyo6eva Ta p5iaa 6v6oaTa aOTtV
(Uttered by themselves rhemata function as onomata).
21 De interpretatione 12; Metaphysica 5.7 (1017 a 26).
R. H. ROBINS
encounters the conflict between syntactic function and morphological form

when these are both used as criterial in defining certain elements but do not
in all cases converge.
Several writers attribute a further development of the sentence component
(meros l6gou) system to Aristotle, the recognition of a third class of
sjndesmoi.22 It is possible that Aristotle made some distinction in rank
between on6mata and rhemata on the one hand and the words he collectively
designated syndesmoi on the other.23 The wide coverage of this third class,
together with the assignment of adverbs in -5s to the ptoseis onomatos
suggests that the tripartite classification was meant to be exhaustive of
the components of sentences. syndesmos included what were later classed
as conjunctions (syndesmoi), articles (arthra), and pronouns (antonymiai),
and it is, in consequence, misleading to translate the Aristotelian syndesmos
as 'conjunction' without further explanation.24
At this stage in the evolution of descriptive grammar, one need devote
little wonder at Aristotle's alleged 'failure' to distinguish between the different
types of syndesmos. This removes the force of Lersch's argument that a
thinker of the status of Aristotle must have recognized the article as a
separate class in its own right.25 Such further specification was the work of
later writers developing Aristotle's distinction between the classes of words
essential to an independent and complete declarative sentence and those
that serve subordinate functions in expansions of the basic type. Certainly
this last statement does not well apply to the personal pronouns, ego (I),
sY (you singular), etc.; but these words, used as substitutes for onomata
in the binary declarative sentence, are much less frequent in such a use than
are nouns, since their occurrence is not obligatory in Greek but only serves
purposes of emphasis, contrast or the like, and so a pronoun-verb sentence
is not precisely the grammatical equivalent of a noun-verb or 6noma-rhema
sentence, such as had been taken as the basic syntactic structure.
22 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum 2, De vi Demosthenis 48, and

Quintilian, Institutio oratoris 1.4 couple his pupil and successor Theodectes in this.
23 Priscian, Inst. gram. 11.2.6: Quibusdam philosophis placuit nomen et verbum solas esse
partes orationis, cetera vero adminicula vel iuncturas earum (Some philosophers have
preferred to say that the noun and the verb are the only parts of speech, the rest being
there to support them and connect them).
24 Rhetorica 3.5; ibid 3.12 gives a general definition of the syntactic and semantic function
of all syndesmoi: 6 yap CTUv6eSeaCo iv COIto Tt ioXXha (The syndesmos makes a unity of
the many (sentence elements)).
25 Lersch 2, 16-17. The probably spurious Rhetorica ad Alexandrum 25 distinguishes
syndesmos and arthron, and the corrupt Chapter 20 of the Poetica lists drthron in a set
of eight very heterogeneous mere (lekseos) (parts of discourse). Steinthal, Geschichte 1,
264 well refers to Analytica priora 1.40, where the distinction made depends on the use
of the Greek article, but no mention is made of drthron.
10
The separate recognition of the drthron to include all the inflected members
of Aristotle's sjndesmos class (i.e. the later article and pronoun classes) was
specifically the work of the Stoics; and their separation of it as a distinct
meros logou (or stoicheion (element), as they referred to word classes26) is
part of a wider reorganization of grammatical class defining categories
undertaken by the Stoics. Only after this is it legitimate to assert that the
European grammatical tradition was definitely set on the lines it was to
follow to the present day. From the Stoic period on one is dealing with the
establishment and definition of different word classes, each having several
syntactic functions, rather than with syntactic components themselves27;
and the meaning of meros l6gou comes nearer to that of the modern 'part
of speech'.
The Stoics, whose philosophical attitude led them to give linguistic science,
and specifically grammar, a place of its own in their system, restricted
ptosis to its subsequent limits, referring exclusively to the inflectional
differences of nouns and of words inflected in comparable paradigms. From
this point it is possible to translate ptosis by the Latin casus and the English
case. The Stoic drthron (covering the later article and pronoun) was case
inflected, ptotik6n; the syndesmoi that remained from Aristotle's slndesmos
class were all uninflected, dptota. The Stoics further extended ptosis to cover
the nominative forms of case-inflected words, and distinguished the ptosis
orthe (or eutheia), the 'upright' case, from the pt6seis pldgiai, the oblique
cases. This division was confirmed by their distinction between rhemata
constructing minimally with a nominative case (e.g. Sokrdtes peripatei,
Socrates walks) and those constructing with an oblique case (e.g. Sokratei
metamelei, Socrates regrets).28 It was further recognized that the ptoseis
pldgiai were mainly concerned in the extension of the verbal predicate
(VP - V + NPobl.), as in sentences like Pldton Diona philei (Plato loves
Dion) or Pldton akouei Sokrdtous (Plato listens to Socrates); and construction
26 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 7.192-3; Lersch, Sprachphilosophie 2, 26-27.

27 Cp. H. Koller, 'Die Anfange der griechischen Grammatik', Glotta 37 (1958) 5-40.
Koller (op.cit. 28-9) regards Aristotle's svndesmos as the copula only, the third sentence
component, uniting subject with predicate (6noma with rhema). This would fit the defini
tion given in Rhetorica 3.12 (note 24, above) quite well, but (1) it cannot be renconciled
with the illustration in Rhetorica 3.5, (2) it assumes that all the other passages exemplifying
the syndesmoi in the text of Aristotle as we have it are not only corrupt but thoroughly
unaristotelian in doctrine, and (3) it implies, as Koller says, that Dionysius of Halicar
nassus misunderstood the position when he speaks of the Stoics 'separating out the
drthra from the syndesmoi (XcopioavTcq and6 rTCv ouv6o!taov Txa 6pOpa, De compositione
verborum 2).
28 Diogenes, Vitae 7.43, 55-56; Steinthal, Geschichte 1, 305-6; Apollonius, De con
structione 3.32.
11
R. H. ROBINS
with the oblique cases provided syntactic criteria for the Stoic definition o
active (transitive) verbs.29
The position of the vocative case in Stoic grammar is uncertain, an
among the early Stoics it may have been excluded, their fifth case beside
the nominative and the three oblique cases being derived adverbs ending in
-os, which Aristotle had treated as ptoseis ondmatos.30
The first Stoic system was fourfold, the two major classes 6noma and
rhema being distinguished as ptotikon and apt6ton respectively. Apt6ton i
part of the Stoic definition of the rhMma; its opposite is implied, though not
made explicit, in their definition of the dnoma. The Aristotelian syndesmo
were also divided into pt6tikd and dptota, the former, drthra, being further
specified as gender-marking and number-marking, and including the later
personal pronouns, article, and interrogatives31, and the latter, syndesmoi
being designated as syntactic connectors.32 Though the Stoics made
considerable advance in the theory of Greek tenses, and distinguished within
the semantics of Greek tense forms the two factors of time reference an
completion-continuity33, they did not apparently make tense part of the
definition of rhemata.
At a later stage, Diogenes and Chrysippus divided onoma into two classes,
onoma (proper noun) and prosegoria (common noun).34 The distinction wa
based on the alleged semantic distinction between individual quality (idia
poiotes) and common quality (koine poiotes), though this was implausibly
linked with a morphological criterion of different inflection, Pdris, Pdridos
as against mantis, mdntios (prophet).35 The formal criterion obviously will
29 Diogenes, Vitae 7.64: 6p8a (sc. KaTrlyoplPaxTa) c v o5v goai Tt oauv'Taa6oeva

lti T6&v ;;atyiov nTdxGcoV ... olov &Kcoft, 6pa ita3kyeTat (Active (verbs) are those that
are constructed with one of the oblique cases, for example akouei (he hears), horai (h
sees), dialegetai (he talks with)).
30 So Steinthal, Geschichte 1, 302; L. Hjelmslev, La categorie des cas, Aarhus, 1935, 4;
contra Pohlenz, 'Begriindung', 169.
31 Diogenes, Vitae 7.58: iplVpov 56'<oti aTOtCeov O6you TwTOtlI6v, 8iO6piov a yvr
T6)V 6voLnxTGv Kai TOUq &pt16s6uS (The drthron is an element of speech with case in
flection and distinguishing the gender and number of nouns); Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.4.16
11.1.1.
32 Diogenes, Vitae 7.58.
33 Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 891; Steinthal, Geschichte 1, 307-17.
34 Diogenes, Vitae 7.57. That this was not a mere subclassification within a single class
(the later position) is attested by the scholiast in An. Graec. 2, 842: of 6 xrociKoi 6v6MaTa
pEv Td K6pta zXeyov, Txa 6 iporlyopuKa obK 6v6aTa (The Stoics called proper nouns
onomata, and common nouns they did not call on6mata). This is the Stoic system cited
by Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.4.16: Secundum Stoicos vero quinque sunt eius (sc. orationis)
partes: nomen, appellatio, verbum, pronomen sive articulum, coniunctio (According to
the Stoics there are five parts of speech: noun, appellation (common noun), verb, pronoun
or article, conjunction).
35 Diogenes, Vitae 7.58; Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 842.
12
not work; one need only think of phrontis, phrontidos (thought), but, once
again, one is here seeing the process of trying out different possibilities that
might suggest themselves.
In a further modification of the Stoic system, Antipater is said to have
made a six class system by the recognition of mes6tes as a word class.36
This class probably contained as its members the adverbs in -os; this was
the subsequent usage of the term, after epirrhema had become the designation
of the class of all adverbs.37 The name mes6tes may be taken from the
neutralization of masculine, feminine, and neuter gender in the adjective
from which it is derived, or from the middle ground it occupies in Greek
grammar in being morphologically formed from members of the 6noma
class but having its principal syntactic function as part of the endocentric
expansion of the rhema class. If previously such adverbs had been regarded
as a ptOsis onomatos by the Stoics, presumably the vocative case forms were
now admitted as one of the five nominal cases, where they subsequently
remained.
Other Stoics referred to adverbs by the term pandektes; the technical
etymology of this is obscure38, but conceivably it might be the result of
widening the class to include all words syntactically equivalent to adverbs
in -os (pandektes, the 'all-receiver'), the membership of the subsequent class
of epirrhemata.
The next documented stage in the development of the Greek word class
system is the one probably established by Aristarchus, but set out in the
short Greek grammar of Dionysius Thrax.39 This system was the basis of
the syntactic works by Apollonius Dyscolus, and was passed on by him to
Priscian (with the omission of the drthron, not represented in Latin, and the
separate recognition of the interjection). During the final stage in the
evolution of the Greek system, Alexandrian literary scholarship was the
dominant context in which grammatical research was undertaken, and the
study of classical literature was the channel whereby grammatical theory
continued in the Latin speaking world and was transmitted through Priscian
and Donatus to the early middle ages.
The final Greek system comprised eight word classes, with the recognition
of three more distinct classes, the pronoun (antonymia), the participle
(metoche), and the preposition (prothesis), and the merging of the Stoic
36 Diogenes, Vitae 7.57: 6 6 AvxinaTpoq Kai xirv pEa6crTnTa Tiqiotv v Trotiq nipi xecgcoq
Kai -&v keyotwvcov (Antipater also puts the mes6tes among the subjects treated in his
Speech and Meaning).
37 Dionysius Thrax, Techne, Section 24.
38 Lersch, Sprachphilosophie 2, 45-6.
39 See further Steinthal, Geschichte 2, 189-327; Robins, 'Dionysius Thrax and the Western
Grammatical Tradition', TPS 1957, 67-106.
13
R. H. ROBINS
distinction between onomata and prosegoriai back into the single onoma
class. It may be that the pronoun was first separated as a class by itself by
the Homeric scholar Zenodotus40; but one may consider the three additions
to the system together.
All three additional classes arise from the splitting of a previously unitary
class, though in two cases a subdivision within the earlier class is made
into a definite division between two new classes, each separately defined.
In the Stoic drthron class, 'definite' drthra horismena (personal, reflexive,
and possessive pronouns) were already distinguished from 'indefinite' drthra
aoristode (articles, interrogative and relative pronouns).41 The definition
given to the Stoic drthra as including the distinction of genders42 is, in fact,
better adapted to the words comprised by the aoristodes subdivision than
to the Stoic class as a whole. In the Aristarchan system personal concord
with verbs was made the distinctive criterion of the pronouns, and the inter
rogative pronouns were reallocated as a subdivision of the onoma class.43
The article and relative pronouns remained within the drthron class as
drthra protassomena ('articles preceding their nouns') and drthra hypotasso
mena ('articles following their nouns'), respectively.
Within the Stoic syndesmoi the later protheseis, prepositions, were rec
ognized as prothetikoi syndesmoi, preposed conjunctions, one of a number
of subclasses, the others of which remained as subclasses in the Aristarchan
system.44
While we appear to have no direct references to participial forms in
quotations from Stoic writers, Priscian tells us that they classed them with
the verbs, as participiale verbum vel casuale, presumably rhema metochikon
or rhema ptotikon, an exception to their definition of rhema as dptoton (not
inflected for case) rather awkwardly annexed to it.45
The definitions of the eight Aristarchan classes, as set out by Thrax, are
worth quoting, as his was taken as the final statement in antiquity of the
mere 16gou46:
onoma: a part of speech inflected for case, signifying a person or a thing;
noun.
40 Zenodotus paid particular attention to the pronouns in his Homeric textual criticism,
and Apollonius Dyscolus, De constructione 2.22 refers to 'the writings of Zenodotus o
pronouns' (T dv &xcovultKuc& ypa(pk; to Zrlvo86Oou).
41 Apollonius, De pronomine 4 B; Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.4.16, 11.1.1.
42 Diogenes, Vitae 7.58.
43 Apollonius, De pronomine 1 C.
44 Apollonius, De coniunctione (Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 480); De constructione 4.1; Dionysi
Thrax, Techne, Section 25.
45 Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.14.6.
46 Greek text in Steinthal, Geschichte 2, 210-1.
14
rhema: a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense,
person, and number, signifying an action performed or undergone; verb.
metoche: a part of speech sharing the features of rhema and 6noma;
participle.
drthron: a part of speech inflected for case, preposed or postposed to
ondmata; article.
antonymia: a part of speech serving as substitute for an 6noma, and marked
as to person; pronoun.
prothesis: a part of speech placed before other words in compounding
and in syntax; preposition.
epirrhema: a part of speech without inflection, modifying or added to a
rhema: adverb.
sjndesmos: a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling
gaps in its interpretation; conjunction.
One sees the basic categorial distinction of case-inflection and non-case
inflection used to define the two fundamental inflected classes, dnoma and
rhema. Given this, the separate recognition of the participle (metoche),
though its universal derivative status was later noted47, was logically entailed.
One can also trace an awareness of the particular noun-like grammatical
features of infinitival forms in Greek (aparemphaton rhema, indeterminate
verb, not formally specifying person and number). This can be seen in Stoic
theory, in which infinitives were distinguished from all finite verb forms48,
and some grammarians are said to have regarded them as belonging to a
separate class.49 This, however, was not determined by the choice of de
fining criteria as was the status of the participle, since absence of case
inflection had been made the principal definiens of the verb, and infinitives
do not exhibit overt case markers, though in Greek they are constructible
with case-inflecting articles.50
The distinction between inflected words (lekseis klitikai) and uninflected
or invariable words (lekseis dklitoi or ametakinetoi) is the differentiating
47 Cp. scholiast, An. Graec. 2, 896: aei Ev nTapayoy, esaTiV. ((The participle) is always a
derived form); Priscian, Inst. gram. 11.1.2: Semper in derivatione est (It is always a derived
form).
48 Apollonius, De constructione 1.8: ot dic6 tfq ZTodqs abr6 (To dicapeuqcparov) tev
IKaXoicnl p5ga, TO 8f cEptRarctt I ypda(pet KarTiy6prlga r aOPj'laga. (The Stoics call the
infinitive itself the verb, and forms like peripatei (he walks) or grdphei (he writes) they call
predicates).
49 Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.4.17.
50 Scholiast quoted by Steinthal, Geschichte 2,287: xla sesa (dppou Xay6geva &caap EqpaTa
6v6oagaa gdb6v cai fv qi grata (Infinitives preceded by an article are nouns rather than
verbs).
15
R. H. ROBINS
factor separating the first five classes from the last three. Thrax only makes
this explicit in his definition of the adverb (epirrhema), but the scholiasts
add it to their definitions of the other two.51
In his exposition Thrax makes quite explicit the difference between distinct
classes, each with a separate definition covering the entire membership of
the class, and various subdivisions or subclasses within it. The Stoic onoma
(proper noun) and prosegoria (common noun) are regrouped as subclasses
within the onoma class.52 The later adjectives are similarly treated as a
subclass of on6mata, onomata epitheta, nomina adiectiva, whence the use,
still sometimes found in modern linguistic literature of the terms noun
substantive and noun adjective. One observes that the morphological criterion
for distinguishing Greek (and Latin) adjectives, the existence of a paradigm
of gradation (positive, comparative, and superlative forms), was excluded
in the system set out by Thrax, by his allocation of such forms as andreioteros,
braver, and oksftatos, swiftest, to separate subclasses of the onoma, along
with others.53
The class of particle, recognized in some grammars of Greek to-day,
though of indeterminate membership, falls within various subclasses of
Thrax's syndesmoi (e.g. symplektikoi, linking, men, de, etc., parapleromatikoi,
expletive, dr, an, ge, etc.).54
To speak of the system set down by Dionysius Thrax as final is not to
imply that in the ensuing tradition no further changes at all were made.
Some of his definitions were criticized and some different ones were put
forward55, and the membership of the classes was in some cases altered.
The Latin recognition of the interjection class and the necessary suppression
of the article class have been mentioned. Morphological similarities had
enabled the Greeks to group their relative pronoun h6s, he, ho with the
definite article ho, he, to, as drthra hypotassomena and drthra protass6mena
respectively. The Latin equivalent to the drthon hypotass6menon, qui, quae,
quod, along with its morphologically similar partner quis, quae, quid, was
allocated either to the nomen class or to be pronomen class, in which latter
it remains to-day.56
51 Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 924, 952.

52 Dionysius Thrax, Techne, Section 13; Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.5.22-24.
53 Dionysius Thrax, Techne, Section 14: 6vopa ruyKpttlc6v and 6vola 6nRcpcriTKOV;
Priscian, Inst. gram. 3.1.1, 3.3.18: Nomen comparativum, nomen superlativum.
54 Cp. J. D. Denniston, The Greek Particles, Oxford, 1954.
55 E.g. Scholiast, Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 952 (on the conjunction): oUVKctK0c6v TxV
oto Xo6you ptsp&v o1 c Kai auaorllTdtvst (Binding together the other parts of speech to
whose meaning it also contributes); so Priscian, Inst. gram. 16.1.1.
56 Greek tiq (who?) was an 6noma ertetmatik6n (interrogative noun) in Dionysius Thrax,
Techne Section 14; see too Apollonius, De pronomine 33-5, where the assignment of tiq
to the onoma class is discussed and supported.
16
But the descriptive framework of eight classes remained, and the grammat
ical categories that were taken as criterial were themselves unaltered, though
they were differently applied in some details. Indeed, so much was Priscian's
treatment of word classes in Latin accepted, that when in the later middle
ages the speculative grammarians placed quite a different interpretation on
Latin grammar, requiring among other things explanatory adequacy as
against mere descriptive accuracy, it was never thought necessary to call
in question the classes and categories that Priscian had used to make his
grammatical system.57 Nor do modern presentations of Greek and Latin
grammar, though differing in their treatment of the adjective as a separate
word class and of the participle as part of the inflection of the verb, depart
radically from the systematic framework set down by Dionysius Thrax and
Priscian.58
Throughout the course of its elaboration, and in its final form, ancient
grammar relied on definitions of its classes in a basically Aristotelian form,
in terms of generic and specific features, categories, and attributes. The
definition of the word class adjective in Hill's Introduction, though framed
for English alone and couched in modern morpheme distribution termino
logy, is of the same type as the definitions given by Thrax: 'Any word with
the distribution of slow and capable of being modified by the addition of -er
and -est is an adjective'.59 These definitions are in a form that allows for
words newly invented or encountered to be allocated to a given class on
the basis of its explicit definition (hard or marginal cases may arise, as they
have always arisen in any classificational system, but that is not the point
here). Such definitions are not discovery procedure statements, in that one
is not told why any particular categories or affixes are to be made criterial
Latin qui and quis as part of the nomen class, Priscian, Inst. gram. 2.4.16, 2.6.30, 13.3.11,
13.4.21; as part of the pronomen class, Probus, Institutio artium (ed. Keil 4, 133), Donatus,
Ars grammatica (ed. Keil 4, 379).
57 Cp. the complaint of William of Conches: 'Quoniam in omni doctrina grammatica
precedit, de ea dicere proposuimus, quoniam, etsi Priscianus inde satis dicat, tamen
obscuras dat definitiones nec exponit, causas vero inventionis diversarum partium et
diversorum accidentium in unaquaque praetermittit.' (Since in all learning grammar
takes precedence, we have set ourselves to deal with it, because, though Priscian states
it adequately, his definitions are obscure and he does not explain them, and he passes
over the causes of his setting up the various parts of speech and the various accidents
to which each is subject) (H. Roos, 'Die Modi Significandi des Martinus de Dacia',
Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 37.2 (1952). 93).
58 Cp. C. D. Buck, Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Chicago, 1933, 168; B. H.
Kennedy, Revised Latin Primer, London, 1930, 12; R. Ktihner, Ausfiihrliche Grammatik
der griechischen Sprache 1, Hanover, 1890, 355-6; id. Ausfiihrliche Grammatik der lateini
schen Sprache, Hanover 1912, 253-4. In these two last books, the separate chapters on
the numerals (621 and 629, respectively) are merely a pedagogical rearrangement of certain
members of the noun, adjective, and adverb classes.
59 A. A. Hill, Introduction to Linguistic Structures, New York, 1958, 168.
17
16gos
00oo
Plato 6noma m
Aristotle 6noma rhema sy
Stoics 1 6noma rhema synde
Stoics 2 6noma prosegorfa rhema sy
Stoics 3 6noma
Stoics 3 6noma prosegonia
prosegoriames6tes
mes6tesrh~iema
rhma
(pand6ktes) s
Dionysius onoma epfrrhema rhema m

(Aristarchus)
Priscian nomen interiectio adverbium verbum participium prep
adjective noun interjection adverb verb preposit

Diagram showing the development of the w
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD CLASS SYSTEM
or why a particular set of classes is the most suitable. Such work has already
been done. Nothing was said expressly on field methods by the ancients,
though the testing and refining of rough categories and classes through
successive stages (as with the Aristotelian ptbsis and syndesmos) can be
seen as an extended bit of field discovery spread over several generations.
Bach contrasts Hill's definition, given above, with a generative definition
in the form of a rewrite rule (Adjective -, X), whose right hand component
is a list (perhaps recursive).60 Such an enumerative definition is a stage
ahead, in as much as considerations of categories, distribution, and para
digms have already been taken into account in the decision to frame the
rules in this way and with a given listing. Neither type of definition is strictly
'operational', nor concerned with the distinction between discovery by a
flash of intuition and discovery by laborious sifting of material (presumably
guided by some sort of intuition if it is to get anywhere).61 The reasons for
rules being framed in a given form must be recoverable, just as adequate
criterial definitions can be rephrased as rules; and the reasons for a listing
rule must be such that an existing grammar of a living language can take
on new vocabulary creations and changes in the grammatical usage of words
and incorporate them into its existing constitution.
This is not the place for a comparative evaluation of the grammar of
formal definitions and the grammar of rules.62 What one may legitimately
stress is that, in tracing the genesis, development, and fixation of the word
class system of classical grammar in western antiquity, we face problems
and controversies very much at the forefront of contemporary linguistics,
and at the same time follow the evolution of a categorial support that has
upheld and guided some 2000 years of continuous and not inconsiderable
linguistic scholarship.
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
60 Bach, Introduction, 28-9.

61 Ibid. 186.
62 Cp. W. O. Dingwall, 'Transformational Grammar: Form and Theory', Lingua 12 (1963)
233-75.
19

1.1 Robins - The Development

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The Development of the Word Class System of the European Grammatical Tradition

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORD CLASS SYSTEM OF

The two most significant predecessors of modern descriptive linguistics have

Foundations of Language 2 (1966) 3-19. All rights reserved.

work of earlier European writers within the Greco-Roman tradition is now

for the absence of a definite article in Latin corresponding to ho, he, to

As the Latin grammar of Priscian was so largely modelled on the Greek

recognized discipline in the west; but questions of grammar are discussed

15 Aristotle, De interpretatione 1, 10; Plato, Cratylus 399 B; Sophistes 262 B.

rhemata; comparative and superlative forms of adjectives, and deadjectival

17 De interpretatione 2: T6 8 6( icoivo4q il [iovt Kat 6oa zotatC a 6 obK 6voPaTa aUXa

encounters the conflict between syntactic function and morphological form

22 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, De compositione verborum 2, De vi Demosthenis 48, and

26 Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 7.192-3; Lersch, Sprachphilosophie 2, 26-27.

29 Diogenes, Vitae 7.64: 6p8a (sc. KaTrlyoplPaxTa) c v o5v goai Tt oauv'Taa6oeva

51 Bekker, An. Graec. 2, 924, 952.

Aristotle 6noma rhema sy

Stoics 1 6noma rhema synde

Stoics 2 6noma prosegorfa rhema sy

Dionysius onoma epfrrhema rhema m

Priscian nomen interiectio adverbium verbum participium prep

adjective noun interjection adverb verb preposit

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

60 Bach, Introduction, 28-9.

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