Sourcebook for the History of the Philosophy of Mind by Simo Knuuttila & Juha Sihvola

Author:Simo Knuuttila & Juha Sihvola
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

5 Grammar

a. Even if grammar is not natural, it imitates nature. And since grammar is conventional, it is not seen to arise from nature: for natural things are the same for all people, while grammar is not the same for all. However, we have already seen that nature is the mother of arts. While grammar has developed to some extent, or rather for the most part, on account of the invention of man, it nevertheless imitates nature, and in part, it originates from nature, and intends, as far as possible, to conform to nature in every respect. Therefore, as regards the study of elements, it has, with approval of nature, limited the number of vowels to five among all peoples, and yet with many peoples the number of letters is greater. (John of Salisbury, Metalogicon I.14)

b. … all languages are grammatically identical. The reason for this is that the whole grammar is derived from the things – for it cannot be a figment of the intellect, the figment of the intellect being that to which nothing corresponds in a thing external to the soul – and that the natures of things are similar for all people, and likewise the modes of being and the modes of understanding are similar for all those among whom the languages are different, and consequently the modes of signifying are similar, and therefore so are the modes of construction or speech. And thus the whole grammar which inheres in one language is similar to the one which inheres in another language. (Boethius of Dacia, Modi significandi, q. 2)

Ancient and medieval thinkers expressed various views on the nature and status of grammar as an art and branch of knowledge; see e.g. Schmidhauser 2010; Luhtala 2005; Copeland and Sluiter 2009. In general, grammar was taken to concern the elements of speech and the principles by which these elements are combined. There was a universal consensus that languages vary in terms of grammar, or what was commonly referred to as grammar. However, it was also pointed out that, although grammar is not a work of nature, there are many grammatical features which appeared to be universal. For example, John of Salisbury claimed that the number of vowel sounds is five among all peoples (a). This was an ancient belief that is attestable, for example, in the Stoics; see Diogenes Laertius VII.57.

In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, the so-called speculative grammarians, or ‘modists’, such as Boethius of Dacia and Thomas of Erfurt, went much further in their attempt to reconsider the received understanding of grammar. They were dissatisfied with the fact that grammarians had thus far restricted themselves to merely giving descriptions of grammar with reference to the ancient grammarians (see Boethius of Dacia, Modi Significandi, q. 9). Their suggestion was that grammar should be understood as a demonstrative science in the Aristotelian sense of the word. The idea was that grammar should explain what causes the different parts of speech; on the assumption that linguistic expressions

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