Temi della ricerca

We will focus on various aspects of Greek/Latin MT. The first one is the phonological terminology. The names of Latin sounds (or “litterae”) in grammatical literature sometimes depend directly on Greek archetypes, sometimes on the reference to the graphic dimension, sometimes finally on the reference to articulatory or auditory phonetic facts. So, Lat. terms apparently describing the sound of consonants, as “durus”, “asper” or “dulcis”, display a semantic synaesthetic transition from a more concrete perceptive sphere (tactile or gustatory) to a more abstract auditory one (Marotta 2012, 2016). These metaphorical shifts are also widely attested in Latin poetry and perpetuated in literary texts up to the present day (De Felice 2014). The analysis will aim to define and highlight the historical paths that allowed the creation of a cognitively founded metaphorical metalanguage (Casadei 1996).

Secondly, Varros’ etymologies will be analysed in their relationship to Latin language history, to test the hypothesis that the overall difference between the Greek reflection on etymology, altogether limited to a rationalistic and synchronic dimension, and the Latin etymological theory, paying good attention instead to historical development facts, may depend on the availability for Latin scholars of texts belonging to linguistic varieties significantly older than the classical ones (Mancini 2016), giving them a chance for a sort of “internal reconstruction” ante litteram.

Thirdly, the Appendix Probi III (actually AP V) will be studied, a priceless source for reconstructing developments making inroads in Vulgar Latin. For this purpose we will combine the philologist’s with the linguist’s perspective and consider the new lectiones recently suggested in light of an autoptic analysis of the Ms. (Asperti-Passalacqua 2014) as well as the new linguistic readings (Mancini 2007, Di Giovine 2015).

Other topics will be dealt with, e.g. Greek structures not conforming to grammatical rules presented by grammarians in a textual style that closely recalls today’s use of asterisks on ungrammatical forms. Reference to ‘impossible structures’ by Latin grammarians will also be studied, where they highlight differences between Greek and Latin in order to prevent learners from mistakes due to language transfer (for different restrictions on the use of the verb ‘be’ see Benedetti 2018).

Finally, from a properly metalinguistic point of view, the project will study the reworking of the Greek models by Roman grammarians and rhetors, a process that highlights affinities and contrasts between two language systems (Benedetti 2019), as well as some crucial notions in the theoretical debate on language properties, such as ambiguity (/ambiguitas), a phenomenon that is identified and exemplified in Aristotle’s works and, through the treatises of the Stoics, is then included and deepened in Roman rhetoric (Magni 2020).

A primary source of reflections on Greek MT is the adaptation, translation and commentary of the Téchnē Grammatikḗ of Dionysius Thrax. The Syriac and the Armenian version of the Téchnē have received little attention in scholarly literature, with only a few exceptions (Köbert 1967, Belardi 1985, Contini 1998, Farina 2008, Talmon 2000). Nonetheless, the adaptation of the Téchnē played a prominent role in the foundation of the grammatical tradition both of the Syriac and of the Armenian language, particularly from the point of view of the lexicon. A first line of research will deal with the adaptation of the Téchnē and its further commentary into Syriac around the 5th to the 6th centuries CE by Ywsep Hzy. Although Greek terms are rendered either with loanwords or calques, they are often compared with grammatical terms belonging to the earlier Syriac tradition. For instance, the grammatical category of gender (Gk. ) is translated with a loanword (gensê ‹gns›), while the grammatical category of case (Gk. ) is rendered with the calque maplt ‹mplt›. The MT that will be analyzed have a twofold interest: they can shed new light on how Greek was taught and understood in a Hellenised Eastern community of bilingual speakers, and they will allow us to evaluate the linguistic stage of Syriac during the sixth century AD, an epoch when the flourishing of the Syriac literary language reaches its climax.

The Armenian translation of the Téchnē (6th-7th century) is the oldest Eastern Indo-European spreading of Greek grammatical tradition, connected with a group of Armenian medieval commentaries (Adontz 1970; Clackson 1995; Sgarbi 1988-1991; Scala 2008). Its peculiar interest for the study of MT is represented by the many translation forms which are not elsewhere attested: e.g. for the translation of the Greek týpt ‘(I) strike’, the normal Classical Armenian forms 1st pers. ganem sg., ganemk‘ pl. are employed, together with an artificial ganom in correspondence to the Greek dual (Weitenberg 2000; Sgarbi 2003).

Another promising line of research is constituted by the first Armenian printed grammars of 16th and 17th centuries, based on a strong adaptation of the description of Armenian to the schemas of Latin Renaissance grammar (Orengo 1994).

In the ancient plurilingual Anatolian environment (Dardano 2012) the most significant testimony of grammatical reflection is offered by plurilingual lexical lists (Sumeric-Akkadian-Hittite, or Akkadian-Hittite). The Anatolian materials have been only partially explored from the perspective of their educational goals (Gordin 2015; Weeden 2011), rather than their linguistic peculiarities (Cavigneaux 1989; Scheucher 2019). From a linguistic point of view these peculiar texts can give access to the ‘speaker’s point of view’, which can surface under the form of observations on unacceptable forms or on impossible structures: e.g. the translation of the Akk. act. participle ha-a-bi-lu (from hablu ‘to oppress’), with the relative sentence dam-me-eš-hi-iš-ki-zi ku-iš ‘one who always commits violence’ (the Hittite nt-participle expresses an attained state and does not have an active and processual meaning). Anatolian lexical lists are also interesting because they unexpectedly show a conservative language, a high-register Hittite, which sometimes is archaic or at least emulates archaisms, in disagreement with innovative forms pertaining to the time when the lists were written. The study of Hittite lexical lists will cast light on translation strategies from Sumerian and Akkadian and help extracting metalinguistic information from them.

As in any other ancient grammatical tradition, Sanskrit grammar had been codified because Sanskrit was fading out from the spoken usage. In later periods, the spoken variety was some form of Prakrit. What the later Indian grammarians had in mind was a variety of scholarly learned Sanskrit that underwent a certain degree of “prakritization” (not unlike the local variants of the Church Latin during the Middle Ages) – the so-called “grammarian’s Sanskrit” as Bhate (1996) calls it; see also Keidan (2014: 199; 2017: 113). Therefore, the later grammatical commentaries will be investigated as an indirect source of linguistic information on the diachronic evolution of Sanskrit after its obsolescence as a spoken language. Two main domains will be under scrutiny: a) commentators’ modifications of Pini’s syntactic theory as a reflection of the ongoing syntactic change involving Prakrits and influencing the “grammarian’s Sanskrit”; b) commentators’ linguistic examples describing the role frames of certain verbs as a reflection of the ongoing semantic change in the verbal semantics and argument government.

MT on Middle Indo-Aryan languages can also be obtained from grammatical treatises, with special reference to those dealing with Prakrit and Apabhraa varieties (Nitti-Dolci 1938; Scharfe 1977: 191ff.; Bubeník 1998: 33ff.; von Hinüber 2001: 86ff.). In particular, an issue with relevant consequences is how the set of the recorded data is affected by the descriptive technique of Prakrit-Grammarians, who, in the Paninian generative vein, conceived Prakrit and Apabhraa words as output of substitution rules taking Sanskrit forms as their input (Aussant 2020). For instance, if one lists the inflectional endings of Apabhraa recorded by Hemacandra in the various sutras of his Grammar (12th cent. AD), one might conclude (with Bubeník 1998: 36) that, according to the Grammarian, the formal opposition between -aho and -ahu could distinguish between the genitive and the ablative singular of the old -a-declension. The impression of an -aho ~ -ahu opposition in Hemacandra may be the deceptive by-product of an incomplete listing of the variant endings in the sutras 8.4.336 and 338 (which take the Sanskrit ablative and genitive, respectively, as inputs) and of the obligation, imposed by the descriptive framework, to formulate a different rule for each Sanskrit case-form.

To study in a MT perspective data from missionary grammars of the Tamil language, we will analyse how missionaries achieved the grammaticisation process of the Tamil language (Auroux 1992, 1994) from the 16th century onwards, throughout the application of the Greco-Latin grammatical framework. Particular attention will be paid to the extension of the Greco-Latin grammatical model to the description of specific linguistic features of the Tamil language which could not be found in Latin or explained throughout the (Greco-)Latin grammars (Muru 2018, 2020). Furthermore, missionary grammars, as well as lexicographer works such as bilingual dictionaries, will also be considered as a source of language judgments on varieties and forms of the Tamil language; these are often not attested in formal written documentary sources. In particular, the Tamil-Portuguese dictionary (1679) of Father Antão de Proença (1625–1666) and the Portuguese-Tamil dictionary of the missionary B. da Costa will be considered.

The knowledge of the languages of the Malay world heavily depends on a rich series of MT: a number of grammatical descriptions, lexicons and dictionaries that go back to the fifteenth century, collected first by Chinese expeditions (15th-16th centuries), then in 1522 by the Italian traveler Antonio Pigafetta, who provided the first European vocabulary of Malay with a wordlist of about 500 Italian-Malay entries (Bausani 1960). A research in the Jesuit archives will provide additional knowledge on the grammar or lexicon of languages spoken in the Malay world. The missionaries obviously described these languages on the basis of Latin grammar, which was in fact the only framework at their disposal (Versteegh 2019).

A case of crucial importance in the sphere of metalinguistics text is the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, with its innovative use of example sentences (Tomasin 2013, Considine 2016, Lorenzetti 2020). Even if the importance of this kind of data has been already highlighted, a fully systematic analysis of the example corpus, also considering the major XVI century dictionaries, is still awaited. For instance, Crusca’s first edition (1612) is recognized to have played a crucial role in the setting a new standard for the “treatment of a living European language” (Considine 2016), its main innovative feature being the use of example sentences for effective lexicographic descriptions. So, both the language used by the compilers and the linguistic data they provide represent a valuable source of information about different phenomena and features in a diachronic perspective. Such is the case of pronouns. For instance, the indefinite, ancient pronoun altrui (‘someone’ or ‘someone else’) is employed in the Crusca as subject in the meaning explanation of the preposition da: Talora denota termine, onde altrui si parte Bocc. nov. 4. 11. This usage is not attested in recent authoritative lexicons and grammars (e.g. Battaglia, “mai come soggetto”). A systematic analysis of the Crusca and the other major XVI century dictionaries will allow us to investigate such phenomena more thoroughly.

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