UNIT 1.

LESSON 3

THE MIDDLE AGES (500-1500 A.D.)

The Middle Ages encompass roughly that period between the decline of the Roman
Empire (500 A.D.) and the emergence of the Renaissance in Europe (1500 A.D.).
However, the contribution of the Middle Ages to the study of grammar is not well
understood. In fact, many linguistic treatises of this period are not widely available to
modern scholarship, since they are still in manuscript form. With regard to the study of
grammar, this period seems to be primarily one of maintaining and commenting on
previous ideas.

Importance of Latin

One characteristic of the Middle Ages was the elevation of Latin to a position of
importance; it was the language of learning, literature, church services, and
administration. Thus, Latin was the primary subject of language study during this
period. In addition to its status within the church and among learned people, the
teaching of Latin was associated with missionary and didactic functions. In England,
for example, Aelfric's Latin Grammar and Colloquium ("Conversations"), composed c.
1000, were written as instructional materials for children. Based on Priscian, Aelfric's
grammar is one of the earliest grammars aimed specifically at English speakers.
According to linguistic historian R. H. Robins, while Aelfric intended his work as a
grammar of Latin, he viewed it as equally suitable for introducing students to English
grammar. This is significant because it foreshadows the later prescriptive tendency to
base English grammar on Latin models.

Concept of "Grammar"

The second half of the Middle Ages (1100—1500) saw an increased interest in
language studies. The major contribution of this period is "speculative grammar,"
named for the Latin word speculum 'mirror' and based upon the idea that language is
the "mirror" of reality. That is, one could learn about the nature of the world by
studying the way that language was used to refer to things in the world. Speculative
grammar was the product of medieval scholars called the modistae, who wrote
between 1250 and 1350. The modistae were so named because of their treatise De
modis significandi tractatus 'Treatise Concerning the Modes of Signifying.' In this
series of works, the modistae tried to relate language to the natural world. They were
concerned with such questions as "How do words match mental perceptions of
things?" Moreover, the modistae were the first to view grammar as a separate field of
study. Before them, grammar had always been conceived of as part of other fields
such as literary criticism or foreign language study.

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One representative work from this period is the German scholar Thomas of Erfurt's
Grammatica Speculativa (c. 1300). In it he recounted principles for constructing
acceptable sentences: he theorized that they must have the necessary components,
be inflected correctly, and be collocable (i.e., each word must be compatible with
adjacent words). For example, these principles would rule out the sentence Lapis amat
filium 'The stone loves the boy.' Even though the sentence has the necessary
components, and they are inflected correctly, they are not collocable: i.e., the subject
stone cannot co-occur with the verb love.

Also, it was during the Middle Ages that the parts of speech, parsing, conjugation, and
declension were incorporated into the curriculum as the study of grammar. In fact, the
liberal arts were divided into two tiers. The lower tier was called the trivium and
included the subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, while the higher tier was called
the quadrivium and included arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. A saying
from that time sums up the role of each:

"Gram loquitur; dia vēra docet; rhet verba colōrat; mūs canit; ar numerat; ge
pondera;t ast colit astra." ('Grammar speaks; logic teaches the truth; rhetoric
adorns our words; music sings; arithmetic counts; geometry measures;
astronomy studies the stars.') (Quoted in Robins, p. 69)

In this curriculum, grammar served as the basis for teaching students to read and
write Latin, which was the universal language of learning much like English is now the
universal language of commerce. It is thus this conception of grammar, rising out of
the medieval trivium, that gives rise to the modern term grammar school.

RENAISSANCE (1500-1650)

Rise of Vernacular Languages

The Renaissance, traditionally viewed as a "rebirth" of culture and scholarship in

Europe, saw an increased attention by European scholars to classical languages other
than Greek and Latin, notably Hebrew, Arabic, and Chinese. There was also a revival of
classical texts being read in the original rather than interpreted by theologians. Just as
importantly, the Renaissance saw the first systematic study of the vernacular
languages of Europe (i.e., ordinary, everyday language, as opposed to literary or
learned), as well as the more exotic vernacular languages of Africa, Asia, and the
Americas. As we will see, it was the vernacular nationalism of the Renaissance that laid
the foundation for the attitudes of the prescriptive period of eighteenth-century
England. Vernaculars began to be used for scholarly and scientific publication; the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the first grammars of Spanish, French, Italian,
and Polish. In fact, there was a self-conscious attempt to elevate the stature of the

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vernacular languages, as reflected in this excerpt from Robert Ascham's Treatise on
Archery, 1545.

Advent of Printing

In addition to an increased interest in vernacular tongues, the Renaissance witnessed

the expansion of printing in Europe. This coincided with the gradual spread of literacy
and demand for education (including foreign-language education) by means of texts,
grammars, and dictionaries. William Caxton, the first English printer, com-ments on
some linguistic trends in the following passage written in 1490.

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Exercise

Answer the following questions based on the preceding passage.

a. Translate this passage into idiomatic modem English.

b. What does varyeth (l. 1) mean?

c. What does mone (l. 2) mean?

d. What do wexynge and waneth (l. 3) mean?

e. What does comyn (l. 4) mean?

f. Speculate on the meaning of Tamyse and Zelande (I. 6).

g. What is the relationship between the words marchauntes (l.

5) and mercer (l. 8)?

h. How is the word hows (l. 8) pronounced? What is your

evidence?

i. What do axed and axyd (l. 8) mean? Are these words still
pronounced this way in any dialects of Modem English?

j. What does a nother (l. 11) mean? How would we write this
phrase in Modem English?

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Universal Grammar

A third trend that developed during the late Renaissance period was the rationalist
grammar developed by the Port Royal school (1637-1661). The Solitaires, a group of
hermits living in the deserted Port-Royal abbey in France, came to be known as the
Port-Royal grammarians and attempted to write a grammar containing all the
properties common to languages known at the time---a kind of universal grammar.
This goal had not interested the Greeks and Romans, who were concerned with just
Greek and Latin. The Port-Royal grammarians analyzed sentences into their underlying
propositions. For example, the sentence Invisible God created the visible world
embodies three propositions: 'God is invisible,' 'God created the world,' and 'The world
is visible.'

Propositions, in turn, were analyzed into "concepts" and "judgments"; these, in turn,
corresponded roughly, on the syntactic level, to subjects and predicates. This division
is discussed by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot in General and Rational Grammar
(1660). In this work, Arnauld and Lancelot recognize both language universals and
language-specific variations. They attempt to explain features shared by all languages,
arguing that if language's function is to communicate thoughts, then speech must
reflect the structure of the thoughts being expressed. Their ideas on the relationship
between thought and language are laid out in the following passage.

A judgment that we make about things, as when I say, The earth is round,
is called a proposition, and thus every proposition necessarily embodies two
terms: the first is called the subject and is that of which one predicates, as
earth in the above example, and the second is called the predicate and is that
which is predicated, as round in the above example. In addition to the terms,
a proposition includes the connection between the two terms, the copula,
is. . . .

It follows from this that men, also found it necessary to draw a most
general distinction among words into those that signify the objects of
thoughts and those that signify the form and the manner or mode of our
thoughts, . . .

Words of the first kind are those which are called nouns, articles, pro-
nouns, participles, prepositions, and adverbs. Those of the second kind are
verbs, conjunctions, and interjections. These are all derived as a necessary
consequence from the natural manner in which we express our thoughts. . . .
(Quoted in Harris & Taylor, pp. 95-96)

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Summary

By 1650 in western Europe, knowledge of vernacular languages was growing; literacy

was rising (as a result of the advent of printing); and, in addition to classifying words
into parts of speech and parsing sentences, grammarians were investigating deeper
properties of grammar: for example, the philosophical basis of concepts such as
"subject," "predicate," and "proposition."

However, the study of language was still largely prescientific. First, knowledge of
particular languages was limited. Educated individuals might know, at most, their
native language, a neighboring language, and Latin. Second, there was little
understanding of the genetic relationships among languages. For all anyone knew,
English was descended from Latin, and Latin was descended from Greek. Third, there
was no understanding of the process of language change. Change, in fact, was
equated with corruption and decay. Finally, there was little understanding of the
relation between the written language and speech. In fact, speech was considered to

be an imperfect representation of writing.

Reference:

Riley, K and Parker, F. (1998). English Grammar. Allyn a nd Bacon A Viacom. Co., USA

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