"Traditional Grammar" term is applied to summarize the range of methods found in the pre-

linguistic era of grammatical study. The whole approach of this method emphasizes on

correctness, linguistic purism, literary excellence, the priority of the written mode of

language and the use of Latin models.

The very beginning of the twentieth century was typically marked by a new approach to

grammar as suggested by linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and American linguist

like Frantz Boas, Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. Their approach is called structuralism whose

aim was to arouse a reaction against the approach of the traditional grammarians.

Traditional grammarians considered Latin as their model because English is a part of the

Indo-European family of languages, and to which Latin and Greek also belong. It did have

similar grammatical elements.

If you study the form of traditional grammar, the rules of classical languages were followed

considering that English did not have grammar of its own. And English followed Latin

grammar. Besides the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis also makes use of

numerous other categories, just like 'number', 'gender', 'person', 'tense' and 'voice'.

For example, gender was not natural. It was grammatical in traditional grammar. As you see

here "The man loves his bike". Gender, in this example, is used for describing the

agreement between 'man' and 'his'. In English, you need to describe this relationship in

terms of natural gender based upon a biological distinction between male and female. Such

biological distinction is different compared to the common distinction found in languages

which employ grammatical gender.

Traditional grammar has some limitations as it occurs with some static verbs that do not

occur in a progressive form, for instance "I am knowing" or in the imperative mood like

"Know!" Traditional grammar sometimes fails to account for certain things like ambiguous

sentences just like "While thinking about the queen the Honda hit the fence".

Rakesh Patel has taught English literature for five years and now writes on education, literature and spirituality. For free guideline on English literature, feel free to visit http://englishliterature99.wordpress.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1765312http://ezinearticles.com/?Traditional-Grammar---Studying-the-Approach-of-Traditional-Grammarians&id=1765312

TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

Rakesh Patel (2009) says that the Traditional Grammar term is applied to summarize the range of methods found in the pre-linguistic era of grammatical study. The whole approach of this method emphasizes on correctness, linguistic purism, literary excellence, the priority of the written mode of language and the use of Latin models.

The very beginning of the twentieth century was typically marked by a new approach to grammar as suggested by linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure and American linguist like Frantz Boas, Bloomfield and Edward Sapir. Their approach is called structuralism whose aim was to arouse a reaction against the approach of the traditional grammarians.Traditional grammarians considered Latin as their model because English is a part of the Indo-European family of languages, and to which Latin and Greek also belong. It did have similar grammatical elements.

If you study the form of traditional grammar, the rules of classical languages were followed considering that English did not have grammar of its own. And English followed Latin grammar. Besides the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis also makes use of numerous other categories, just like 'number', 'gender', 'person', 'tense' and 'voice'.For example, gender was not natural. It was grammatical in traditional grammar. As you see here "The man loves his bike". Gender, in this example, is used for describing the agreement between 'man' and 'his'. In English, you need to describe this relationship in terms of natural gender based upon a biological distinction between male and female. Such biological distinction is different compared to the common distinction found in languages which employ grammatical gender.

Traditional grammar has some limitations as it occurs with some static verbs that do not occur in a progressive form, for instance "I am knowing" or in the imperative mood like "Know!" Traditional grammar sometimes fails to account for certain things like ambiguous sentences just like "While thinking about the queen the Honda hit the fence".http://ezinearticles.com/?Traditional-Grammar---Studying-the-Approach-of-Traditional-Grammarians&id=1765312 

So, in conclusion, we can define traditional grammar as The collection of prescriptive rules and concepts about the structure of language that is commonly taught in schools; and we say that traditional grammar is prescriptive because it focuses on the distinction between what some people do with language and what they ought to do with it, according to a pre-established standard.The chief goal of traditional grammar, therefore, is perpetuating a historical model of what supposedly constitutes proper language."http://traditionalandpedagogicalgrammar.blogspot.com/p/tradictional-grammar.html

he development of language study in the West:

Classical Antiquity

Introduction

Classical Antiquity ( Romans and Greeks).

We talk about Romans and Greeks because all the languages come from these people.

Everything began with the GREEKS. All the terminology, concepts… that we use today were created by the Greeks. The ideas are the same ( subject, adjective, verb, mood, aspect…).

This terminology is what we call TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR   . Traditional grammar has last since Greeks until nowadays.

In the 20th Century the structuralism begins and it is different from traditional grammar.

We have to distinguish several stages in traditional grammar. There are five:

The very beginning ( up to Aristotle) 4th Century BC

Systematisation of the tradition. It takes an order in the tradition. Alexandrians, Stoics, ( 2nd Century BC) . Dionysius Thrax belongs to this group.

Consolidation : it was stablished itself. Priscian 6th AD. Priscian is the most important figure. He will influence the scholars in England, but in the West.

Medieval Grammarians

Renaissance Grammarians traditional grammar was definitely stablished.

Traditional Grammar is synonymous of Latin and Greek. These periods affected Greek and Latin.

The Ancient Greeks

There are two dichotomies:

Nature and convention

Analogy and anomaly

These dichotomies referred to positions (you can choose nature or convention, and you can choose analogy or anomaly). They are phylosophical concepts.

* Nature/ convention

The Greeks discuss whether the language was natural or conventional.

If language was natural meant that the origin is outside the man himself.

If language was conventional meant that is a custom. Something like an agreement between men. It could change.

This distinction affects mainly to the relationship between the form of a word and the meaning of that word.

Those which defend that language is natural are the naturalists. Those which defend that language is conventional are the conventionalists.

For Naturalists there are a few ways to prove the connection. There are three:

Onomatopoeia: this group of words is the favourite of the naturalists because you can see clearly the connection. These words imitate the sound that you referred to. For example, in English: to hoot( claxon) , to crash, etc.

When they discuss onomatopoeia also began the etymology, that is to find the origin of the words.

b) Sound- symbols

This refers to words that only are imitative in part, not in their whole.

In some words we have one sound or two that is imitative, and when you listen to that sound it reminds you a word.

Liquid flush flow water

R   expresses movement. Run

There are many words that don't fit in this two groups. There is the Principles of etymology   , they try to justify with this, the rest of the words that cannot be explains with the other groups.

Ex: Metaphor : the neck of a bottle ( natural connection. It remains the body's neck)

Conventionalists say that these things haven't got a natural connection.

This dispute will last for centuries. The product of this dichotomy will be the development of scientist etymology. (CAREW)

* Analogy/ Anomaly

This analogy/ anomaly dichotomy is a consequence of the nature convention of the controversy..

This controversy discuss whether the language is regular or not.

Analogy synonymous with regularity.

Anomaly synonymous with irregularity.

ANALOGY:   The ones that defend analogy defend that language is regular.

Regular there are a set of patterns, models which are repeated in language.

Irregular   there are many exceptions to those patterns.

Ex: The final -s to make the plural(regular): boy/ boys; girl/ girls; cow/ cows

This is one of the patterns that shows the regularity of the language.

Child/ children anomaly. The language is irregular.

The analogyst's work is to establish the patterns in Greek to English. Those patterns are known as PARADIGMS ( declensions, conjugations..)

(18th Century In English, we will see it in the future.)

They used formulas as in mathematics to set up the patters:

A:B= C:B( a is to b, as c is to d) boy: boys = cow: cows

Boy: boys = cow: x x = cows

They also established semantic equations, not only formal.

Ex: father: child = dog : X x = puppy

For the analogyst the Greek language was full of this patterns.

The language is irregular. They admit that there are regularities ( the anomalysts) . they pointed out that there are a lot of examples of irregularities, such as child = children; ox = oxen.

But their main emphasis is the semantic irregularities. They said the relationship between the form and the meaning of the word is anomalous, irregular. For example Athens is a plural noun referring to a singular entity.

Synonymous: have two or more forms for one meaning. This is anomalous. Ex: row

Homonymy: have one form and more than one meaning. Ex: bar (chocolate, place, law…) This is another irregularity.

For analogysts language is the product of convention. It's such a regular thing. It's conventional.

Anomalysts say that the presence of irregularity demonstrate there is a natural thing ( the language). This is a link between the two parts.

One consequence of this controversy ( polémica ) is that this will help to the systematisation of grammar.

*  Greek Grammar: the beginning of the tradition

5th - 4th BC. First steps to the creation of the terminology of the tradition of grammar.

THE SOPHISTS

They were teachers. They were criticised because they taught how to defend a cause. (justa o no)

They teach how to win in debates, moral or not. They contribute in the grammar.

PROTAGORAS distinguished the three genders in Greek : masculine, feminine, and things. He distinguished sentence types, negative, affirmative, interrogative,…. They were the main contribution to the grammar

PLATO

Plato's main contribution was the distinction between verbs and nouns.

Onoma noun

Rhema verb

Onoma and rhema are the constituents of the logos ( sentence).

Onoma can mean subject, nominal name

Rhema can mean verb, predicate. Rhema includes verbs and also adjectives. But Plato did not call it adjective.

According to him the relation between onoma and rhema and their meanings is a product of convention. Plato is a conventionalist, an analogyst.

ARISTOTLE

He'll keep the distinction of nouns and verbs, but he added syndesmoi . This is a 3rd class. They are the conjunctions. They are linking words.

Aristotle includes in syndesmoi all the words that are not nouns neither verbs.

Aristotle realised that there were more than one tense in the verbs: past actions, present actions. There were correspondences between the actions and the tenses. Category of time.

Aristotle is a conventionalist. For him meaning is conventional. The meaning of a word is a convention. Words are symbols created by men.

* Greek Grammar: 1st   systematisation of the tradition.

III- II BC

THE STOICS

It's the school of philosophy that paid more attention to the language.

They studied language in their study of logic. Logic includes grammar to the stoics.

The stoics think that good conduct means to live in good harmony with nature.

Knowledge consists of ideas that agree with nature. Language is part of knowledge.

The stoics are naturalists and therefore anomalysts. Language has many irregularities, and stoics defended it.

In the origin of language there was a natural connection between words and things. This connection is not evident today.

What they did was to look for the original forms with natural connection. It's the study of ETYMOLOGY

The beginning of the science of etymology is their main contribution.

But they also add more parts to the parts of the speech(verb, noun, etc ) and they add the ARTICLE.

One more concept is the concept of inflexion which is the declensions and conjugations.

The concept of case is a part of the inflexion. The distinction between the active and passive voice. And also the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs.

But the most important: Etymology.

The Alexandrians:

They were a group of philosophers that lived and worked in Alexandria.

Alexandria and Pergamon were two cities that took the place of Athens in political and cultural aspects.

Alexandria is well known because of its library. Its beginning was Aristotle's personal book collection.

The city became the centre of literary and linguistic research.

In this period, two key works in the world history were produced in Alexandria:

-Euclid Elements

-Grammar of Dionysius Thrax

The study of language: the Alexandrians approached this study through literary texts, especially those of Homer. They studied the manuscripts that included “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”(S.V B.C.).

They find many different versions of the manuscripts that contained those poems, but they were written in different types of Greek. They wanted to find the original version, the one written by Homer. The original Greek was very different from the one they used in their time. They couldn't understand the original texts.

Once they had the original version, they had to make the commentaries, and the grammar explanation of those texts. This gave the chance to the people to read those texts.

They decided to do this because they thought that the original/classic Greek was more correct than their own Greek (they thought that this one was corrupted).

They write grammars with both types of texts (classical and “modern”) to preserve Greek from corruption and also, to explain the original Greek (classical authors).

These two purposes are important because they are the two main purposes of all the grammaticians of today.

This approach brings two consequences:

The interest of linguistics will be the written language, and they will ignore spoken language as a subject of investigation.

This is focused on written language as a more correct version of the language, whereas the spoken language is seen as a corruption of written language. This idea of purity, corruption,…of written language is the most important thing in S.XVIII in England (See in previous lessons, Henry Sweet).

The result of these efforts is: the Greek grammar will be definitely codify or systematize. The study of language will give us the first description of language.

They were analogists. They were obsessed with the regularity. They will give this regularity of Greek in a list in form of declinations and conjugations (paradigm).

Dionysius (S.II B.C., “Technè Grammatikè”= Art of Grammar, S.I B.C.). This is the Greek Grammar, the one that is considered as the real Greek Grammar until our days. It's the first complete and systematic grammar in the West.

Grammar (Dionysius): “is the technical knowledge of the language employed by poets and writers”.

It has 6 parts; discover language etymologies, discover analogies, study critically the compositions of poets, are three of this six parts.

Deal with the language of the previous era is something that Dionysius thought was important. His method had two steps: phonology and morphology (no syntax). In phonology we don't get any phonetic study; it's the study of the name of the Greeks letters and their different phonetic values (this is phonology).

Morphology is the main body of his work, and it deals with syllables and words. Syntax is relevant because the most part of the grammars hadn't deal with it until Chomsky's work.

Dionysius contributed with four more parts of speech to the list of four of the stoics: adverbs, participle, pronoun and preposition). This four plus the other four is the standard now.

These parts will be analysed by using the case, the gender, the voice, the mood, the number,… This has become the standard way of analysing words.

The noun is the part of speech, which has case inflection. The verb is the part without case inflection.

Nouns have five accidents. They are defined because of their accidents. The accidents of the verbs are: number, person, time, mood, voice, tense, conjugation, kind and type.

There are seven types of conjunctions: copulatives, conditionals, causals, finals,…These used to be the names of the sentences.

All these are applied to classical Greek, and he studied his own Greek with the application of the classical Greek.

2.ROMAN ADAPTATION OF GREEK GRAMMAR: the tradition consolidated.

Roman culture was influenced by Greek culture (art, literature,…). The high roman classes send their children to Greece to study. The Greek grammar is an influence to the Latin grammar.

In Rome, grammar is a part of philosophy and literary criticism (as in Greece).

The analogy/anomaly controversy was also present among the Romans (Cesar wrote a tratado).

In these general aspects they were similar, the same as in specific aspects. The Latin grammar repeated the organization that Dionysius said in his grammar.

This was possible because Latin and Greek were similar (from the structural point of view). Therefore, the parts of speech can be transferred to Latin with no problem (verbs, nouns,…).

All the accidents were easy to put into Latin. The problem was that when that was transferred to English grammar, the people thought that these categories were universal.

Within the Romans there was a moment of classicism (probably the most important moment in Grammar - Priscian - S.VI A.D.). Donatus was another important person. Before that, there were other attempts, but we want to deal with one of this because of the originality and similarity: Varro.

Varro is a contemporary of Dionysius. He is the perfect example of taking over Greek grammar into Latin grammar. He wrote a Latin grammar as a consequence of analogy/anomaly controversy. His opinion was that both extremes were wrong (there is regularity and irregularity, but not one of these only). Maybe regularity is more present.

Varro also anticipated the distinction between langue/parole (Saussure), and this is a key moment in the history of Linguistics. He said that there were two types of language: the language in abstract (langue), and the language that it's spoken by an individual (parole).

Priscian is the key moment in classical grammar. He did the most complete description of Latin language of that period (“Institutiones Grammaticae”, c. 500 A.D.).It's almost a repetition of Dionysius work (“Techné grammatiké”).

Priscian and Donatus wanted to describe the language of the best writer, not the language of their own days. They wanted to describe the classical language (Cicero and Virgil, S. II and I B.C. respectively).

This approach has the same consequences as the Alexandrians (the correct language is the written one and the idea this language was more correct than their own contemporary language).

The work itself: it has 18 books; 16 of these deal with morphology, the last 2 deal briefly with syntax. In The Middle Ages, the specialists will focus exclusively on the first 16 books (morphology).

On the whole, these 18 books are an adaptation of Dionysius' work, especially in the field of terminology. Latin had no words yet to describe language matters (noun, verb,…). Priscian translated the Greek terms into Latin. From then on, Latin will have a very suitable terminology.

Examples: onoma>the Greek name for noun / nomen>the Latin word (translation of onoma).

-Syndesmos: coni-unctio( syn-desmos)

-Antonymia: pro-nomen (anto-nymia)

This is the main merit of Priscian's work; the creation of a whole terminology from Greek to Latin.

Priscian also adopted the 8 parts of speech as Dionysius gave us. He made a little change (the article is excluded, he changed it to the interjection).

He described those 8 parts and their accidents (the formal accidents). He was very close to Dionysius in this description. The examples he gave came from Cicero and Virgil (this is the difference from Dionysius' work).

Priscian also said that the order of cases is natural (in noun declinations). The nouns are natural (he said he had chosen the name of that use because is more frequent than the other uses). The nominative is called like this because it came in first place,…

There is a connection between the name and the frequent use (nominative, dative-to friend, accusative-to enemies, vocative-to a second person, secondary). These names are still used today.

This work is a key work in the Middle Ages and it is also the most important work of scholarship in Roman culture.

Linguistic study in the Early Middle Ages in the British Isles

General introduction to the period and the period's approach to language studies

What are the Middle Ages? It's a period in the History of Europe and goes to the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. The fall of the Roman emperor happened in 476 BC.

We call Middle Ages because it refers to the fact that is between two golden periods. Before the Middle Ages we have the Classical Antiquity. After the Middle Ages we have the Renaissance, a period of splendour in general and that is what makes the Middle Ages slightly less relevant culturally than the other 2 periods. It is like an interval.

However, the Middle Ages have a lot to offer in linguistics. They are not so dark in linguistic matters. This image of darkness was destroyed little by little.

We will focus on the 1st half of the Middle Ages (The DARK AGES first period in the Middle Ages, V-XI Centuries)

It is true that the fall of Rome made a decline in culture, but there were many ups and downs.

EUROPE

ENGLAND

A key element in those ups and downs is the Latin language. The rise or fall depends on the knowledge or lack of knowledge of Latin.

Latin was the official language of the Christian Church. The church will be the sponsor of Latin scholarship, education, elitition through the monasteries and churches. Later, the universities.

The church adopted Latin. The kind of Latin is not classical Latin ( not like Cicero or Virgil), because they are pagan authors so their language is pagan too. The Church taught a more colloquial Latin, less difficult.

It was also an instrument for secular transactions. Latin is now, for those people, a foreign language . The Romans had left England, so Germanic people had to learn Latin. For this reason they need Latin Manuals, text book to learn Latin. Most of those manuals will be based on Priscian and Donatus. This is a link with the classical antiquity.

Latin is taught as a written language. They handle texts and learn it from them. This is similar to what happened with the Alexandrians. These studies of Latin are the only studies of grammar and language in this period. Language studies means Latin Studies. Latin was studied for itself and it was necessary to learn another matters. It is an instrument for the education. The study of Latin is the basis of medieval education. Grammars books were grammars of Latin. It was a didactic (practical) and normative way of teaching Latin.

DIDACTIC doesn't mean speculative (abstract). Speculative grammars will come in the 2nd half of the Middle Ages. The practical use of language is what they studied. A Normative grammar means a grammar with rules, norms and with rules about correct and incorrect uses. These grammars are normative. This is another similarity to the Alexandrians. This teach you how to use Latin correctly. Didactic and normative grammars will be based on Priscian and Donatus' works.

Linguistic study in the Early Middle Ages in England

The Linguistic situation in the island

Great Britain was a Celtic speaking island. Then colonised by the Romans (43-410 BC) They were 400 years.

The Romans left and the British, the native of the island had fights between themselves. They invited the Germanic tribes to help them. Those tribes arrived and take over the island in the middle of the 5th century. We have 3 dialects.

The Germanic pushed the natives to the borders of the island( Welshmen: they all were called like this). Those Germanic tribes didn't have political unity. In the 7th century we have 7 different kingdoms with 7 different dialects of Old English + Celtic Native Speakers. In time the 7 kingdoms diminished in 3: Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. The dialect spoken in Wessex is the standard, the official form of Old English (west Saxon) It's the accepted form of Old English.

These Germanic Kingdoms were pagans since a Christian point of view, but they become Christians little by little. In 597 Saint Agustine was send by the Pope to convert the Germanic tribes to the Christianity.

The Christianism was very important for linguistics matters. Those Germanic kingdoms were isolated. The Christianity brigs together with it a new language, Latin and conveys a new civilisation, a new literature. Latin was being developed in other places.

It was introduced the Roman Alphabet, a new language, a new culture, and many books mow more available through Latin. A blossoming in learning was produced. Churches and monasteries were the places in where people learnt. English begin to write extensively.

In the 8th century it is produced the Scandinavian Invasion. There is a decline of learning because of the Scandinavian invasion. The places of education disappear( churches an monasteries).

In the 9th century King Alfred complained about this very bad cultural situation. Not so many people can read or write in Latin.

King Alfred translated into English Cura Pastoralis and in the preface he complained about this situation: the lack of knowledge of Latin. If people can't read Latin, let's make those texts available with a translation into English. All the important texts in their own language.

He promotes a massive work of translation. The importance is enormous. It was a moment of revival of knowledge. Religious moment started: THE BENEDICTINE REFORM, that is a cultural and religious reform at the same time. It will help Alfred in different ways, to promote culture in the island. This reform was improved in learning and teaching Latin in the island.

Aelfric began to work under King Alfred's idea of translation. He was a translator.

After this period, in the 11th century we have a decline. Danish were rolling England and they brought their languages. There were a lot of languages (Old English, Scandinavian, Normand…). All that influenced cultural education.

With the Norman invasion started the 2nd period of the Middle Ages. We have to wait until the 14th century to say that there is a National Language in England.

Language study in the island: The Insular Grammar

This is the study of Latin grammar. We know very little about it. The problem is that there are not a lot of sources(manuscripts). Nowadays we know very few of this period.

The few texts that exist are very difficult even for specialists. Usually this period have been considered a dark period. Those very few available texts have been studied by scholars who were not linguistics (historians of education), they did read those manuscripts. Paleographs studied the way in they wrote.

One more problem is that those manuscripts have characteristics that made them difficult. Most of them are anonymous, they have no name, no date, no place of origin written on them. They were written in Latin. Latin was an international language. It was spoken in all around Europe.

We do not have bibliography, we have not very much. We know all these manuscripts were the product of the policy of the Church. Why is Latin taught? Latin was taught because it was taught in every Christian region. It was the language of the Christian religion. The sacred texts were written in Latin, the religious services in Latin… Latin was imposed.

Another reason. Latin was the language of scholarship. You only learn in Latin, not only the religious matters, also Law, Science, Philosophical matters. It was the language of knowledge. Those subjects were taught in Latin. LATIN WAS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION.

Also commerce and administration were held in Latin, specially in foreign countries. Latin was basic to live.

How did they teach Latin at school? They began to study grammar in the school. Children learn spelling and pronunciation of Latin words. They learn the inflections, declensions and lists of vocabulary.

In a more advanced level they were taught how to write texts. Then they learn to comment literary texts in Latin. The highest stage was the study of etymology of words /philology/. That is the organisation of the study of Latin in different levels.

What instruments did they have to teach? The teachers had the grammars of the Roman Antiquity(4-5th century).Priscian and Donatus were the most studied. Those grammars were written for and to native speakers of Latin.

We know that English people don't know how to speak Latin as native people. The grammars of Priscian and Donatus were no suitable for them. The result of this is that the English began to write and compiled their own Latin Grammars.

Grammatical models

They used two types of classical grammars, and they were called:

Schulgrammatik

Regulae

The 1st type of grammar, schulgrammatik is systematic (complete and with an order). It tries to be comprehensive. It treated the 8 parts of speech. The most important schulgrammatik example we know is Priscian.

The Regulae   is less systematic. They deal with 1,2,3…parts of speech, but not with all of them. They focus on the nouns, or nouns and verbs. They are characterised by giving many lists of inflections. These are reference works.

We use both of these models to produce their own type of grammar. They were made for a specific audience with specific means. The Latin speaker who use those 2 types of grammar was looking for information on them which was not relevant for the new Latin speakers (English People) .

In this grammars is contained information about literary texts, that they use as grammatical examples (Cicero, Virgil), mythological and historical explanations, … those things were not interested in this information( a los ingleses). They needed to learn English in a practical way.

Insular Grammars

Many of the grammars the English compiled are similar to the classical models because they assumed the explanations and theories about the parts of speech.

They also offers something new that makes them interesting.

The insular grammars can be divided in 2 types:

The Elementary Grammar

The Exegetical Grammar

These are the two main grammars.

The elementary grammars are specifically English, to England. They don't appear in anywhere else. They appear in England in the 7th century (the children of classical grammars).

_ They are brief

_ They are systematic expositions

_ Morphology is the most important thing. It is based on Priscian and Donatus.

_ Paradigms give all the possible declensions and conjugations

_ They see Latin as a pattern. They're based on the formal aspects.

_ They were successful for some centuries.

The exegetical grammars are less important. They are commentaries on the classical grammars. They try to explain the classical texts(classical grammars) to help teachers and students to understand difficult classical texts.

They are a type of text similar to the Bible commentary. It is usual to find texts explaining the Bible.

These two types of grammars were introduced in the continent by missionaries( from England to the rest of Europe). Boniface is one of them.

They were also successful in the continent. In the 9th century the elementary grammar died because in the 9th-10th century there was a return to the classical grammars, Priscian and Donatus, because the level of Latin was higher to produce a less corrupted versions of the Bible. They wanted to do better versions of the Bible, less corrupted.

They went back to Priscian's. it takes place in the Carolingian Renaissance(9th and so on centuries) and from the Carolingian Empire it goes back to England.

English Grammarians at Works

We know very little about English Grammarians of this period. The reason is the difficulty of the manuscripts. Still we know enough to say they were very important not only in England also in the continent.

In general we know very few of all the authors. But we know many things about Wynfreth Boniface(we know about him and his works. C. 675-745). We know he was the missionary who brought Christianity to Germany from England. Before he was a missionary he wrote a Latin Grammar. In that grammar he includes a preface in the form of a letter where he tell us his methods to write the grammar.

Aelfric is another grammarian ( ð 1010). He's also relevant because he wrote a Latin grammar in English(Old English).

An Early medieval grammarian talks about grammar: Winfreth- Boniface and the Praefatio ad Sigibertum

He's remembered as the man who Christianised what we call Germany today.

For us he is interesting for other reasons. He is interesting because of his role in the consolidation on medieval grammatical ideas.

He was born in England in 675, in the South. His name is Winfreth but he received the name Boniface from the Pope (8th-c719).

As a child he went to a school monastery and then he went to another one with a higher level and there he became a teacher. All of these in England. While he worked as a teacher he wrote a Latin grammar with his students who were also studying to be monks. Then he became a priest and decided to leave England. As a missionary he first went to Holland and then to Germany. He went to see the Pope several

times for religious matters. In 722 he had close meetings with the Pope. There is an anecdote about Latin in Europe. Boniface and the Pope did not understand each other speaking Latin. Roman and English Latin pronunciation were different. Then Boniface wrote down he wanted to say to the Pope. Boniface's Latin was more classical than Latin spoken in Rome. Pope's Latin was more vulgar.

We also know he wrote many letters when he was in Germany. We have those letters and they give us many information about him, his works, about the situation of that time, etc. Books that he had read, that anted to read… Many of those letters that received were written by lady friends of him.

With Boniface began the Benedictine Rule. This Benedictine Rule was consolidated with the Carolingian Empire.

The Ars Bonifacii

We do not know when he wrote it, but we can guess that date. We know his name is Winfreth. In the grammar there is an acrostic poem (where the first letters of each line form a word, in this case Winfreth). His name now is Winfreth, not Boniface yet.

It was written before 719(but not much earlier). The grammar has a preface which is important. The name isPraefatio ad Sigibertum . It's remarkable. It is a letter. It is an exposition of his methodology of writing the grammar.

The Ars Bonifacii is an elementary grammar ( it deals with the 8 parts of speech, many paradigms, for beginners…). It is typical of this time, but it is also different from other elementary grammars. It's different because he uses sources( grammatical sources) that other contemporary grammarians did not use.

Boniface insist more than his contemporaries in the anomalies, the Latin irregularities. The irregularities of that language.

He follows VERBATIM(al pie de la letra), he follows the words of the sources.

This grammar was very influential. We have 3 manuscripts containing this grammar. In England and outside of England.

In the 9th century this grammar will be not used anymore.

The Preface

ISSUES OF AUTHORITY

Boniface was a non native Latin speaker writing a grammar of Latin. He did not feel very sure of what he was doing.

What authority did he feel writing a grammar of Latin being an English native speaker?

Why did he feel the need to write a grammar since there were many grammatics available in that time?

What type of people is he writing for? Which audience has Boniface in mind? (age, religion, knowledge…)

How did he treat the classical grammars to do his own? He's respectful. He summarises, criticised or not….

Is it a grammar for beginners or not?

Winfreth- Boniface

There was no need of writing a grammar because there were many of them. He wanted to do something new, he wanted to gather all the existent grammars together. He wanted to select and write those selections to put it in one work. He is going to give us something new.

Why did he want to put them together? He wants to do it for the special difficulty to read characteristics of Medieval manuscripts. They don't have index, no title, no page number, no divisions … to help us to find information quickly.( that's what Boniface wanted to do).

He will give us all the information in the text. He will work with 121 or more sources. He uses all those sources simultaneously jumping one to the other even within the sentence.

Definitions and examples are taken from these sources.

The idea of authority: in general Boniface shows he needs to use other people's works to stick closely. When we read the text he talks about he is not the best person to make a grammar of Latin.

That kind of attitude is common in the medieval authors (humility, modesty…) they use it as an stylistic resource.

Boniface is speaker of Latin, so he has lack of Latin confidence. He really feels not adecuated to do it. Both things come together. The solution is to transfer the authority. Transfer the authority to other people, grammatical authority.

The influences are the classical grammarians (late Roman period 4th -5th Century, Donatus and Priscian).

He mentioned a lot of people, but he didn't use all of them. He used the other people's works but he did not mention. Why does he do it? The ones he omit are more contemporary, closer in time (Isidore of Seville). In the Middle Ages the more contemporary the worst. These works are less important than the older ones.

He mentions people from the classical period that he did not use. He did it because they have wrote authority.

The reason for all these must be found in his personal situation. Another reason is that novelty, originally, in that time, is something dangerous.

How does he treat his sources? Sometimes he find that his sources do not agree in certain topics.

Grammarians do not agree in the number of parts of speech ( 2….8….more…depending on the grammarians).

Boniface in grammar feels embarrassed because of it, he says that grammarians should know how many parts the speech must have. This attitude is because he did not want transferring the embarrassment to the sources. It happens with the number of parts of speech, with the classification of conjunctions, pronouns…. Boniface choose one of these positions.

He clarifies difficult passages that find in the grammars, and explains it. He changes the obscure words in the passages. If one passage is not well written he do it well.

Some of the changes he did affects the terminology of the sources. His sources use the term declinatio with two meanings: 1st inflexion of the word (rosa, rosae) 2nd type of declination or declension opposed to another.

What kind of readers does he have in mind? His audience is Old English speakers. Most of them don't literate in their own language. They did not have direct contact with Latin speakers. But they have the need to learn Latin. They were Christians and they attended religious services and those were held in Latin . they were listening Latin in churches. They didn't understand most of it was said, but it started to be familiar to them.

This compensate the lack of native speakers of Latin. And this is the audience Boniface is writing for. Basically made of monks and nuns.

However there are some evidences to think his audience is not total beginners. In the preface there are some reasons of this. Being written in Latin is not one of those evidences.

The goal of grammar: it's very clear in the text and is to improve people's understanding of religious texts.

According to him there is a different kind of written Latin in the Bible and the Latin of grammarians. The Bible is the correct.

The final word of grammarians is the religious text. The authority is not of ancient grammarians. The authority is the religious text. Ecclesiastical writers final authority.

In this period it is common to see examples from religious texts.

But Boniface did not take passages from religious texts. He took separated words( dogma, genesis, apocalypse…)

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