3. Linguistics in the Renaissance period. Emergence of General rational grammar

parts o f speech; Book III deals with the semantic variations involved in
the different grammatical or syntactic behaviour o f word groups; Books
IV and V distinguish supposed synonyms respectively among nouns and
among verbs; Book VI is a critical review o f wrong judgements repeated
in the grammatical tradition. It is a clear, but wholly unusual, structure.
If we take as reference the distinction, derived from Quintilian, which
Valla takes as his banner, between grammatice loqui (i.e. the simple
respect o f grammatical ratio) and latine loqui (i.e. the more mature ability
to conform to the latinitas found in the writers’ consuetudo), we can
say that the way the subject matter is organized in the Elegantie reflects
the ambitious attempt to describe and teach latine loqui; to try to extract
from a systematic (comparative, open and non-Ciceronian) examination
o f prose writers the rationality inherent in usus. This rationality is wholly
outside the patterns o f a grammar that depends on logic. From this
point o f v iew the Elegantie must be interpreted in the light o f Dialectica:
the anti-scholastic and anti-Aristotelian polemic is the coherent correlation
o f the antigrammatical polemic.7
The influence Valla had on the subsequent grammatical tradition in
the strict sense is probably less pervasive than his overall cultural and
linguistic influence. His anti-scholastic opinions in the field o f dialectics,
his anti-Ciceronian opinions in the field o f stylistics, his courageous
battle in favour o f textual criticism which could also be applied to
the Bible, had a resonance throughout Europe, and were received and
relaunched by teachers as important as Erasmus and Luis Vives. His
actual influence on written Latin in Europe in the following hundred
years is still to be ascertained. Research has started on the spread of
the Elegantie in schools, in Italy and abroad: there is even evidence of
cases when the text was adapted for use in elementary teaching, and its
presence in the battles for the reform o f university teaching in Germany
and in Nebrija’ s Spain is known.8 But it may be presumed that the
novelty o f the structure, the objective difficulty, and the unwieldiness
o f the text prevented it from spreading widely in schools even during
the period when V alla ’ s star shone brightest, i.e. within the first four
decades o f the sixteenth century.
Here it is only possible to list the best-known Italian Humanist grammars
from the second half o f the fifteenth century. A conspicuous and
early group o f them comes from the Roman school, and in this, too,
there seems to be some dependence on Valla’s teaching; although recognized
in general, this dependence has yet to be substantiated by analytical
studies. In chronological order we have the grammars by Gasparo
Veronese (written before 1455), by Pomponio Leto (before 1467), by
Niccolo Perotti (1468, first edn Rome 1473), and by Giovanni Sulpicio
Verulano (about 1470, first edn Venice 1490).9 It is generally thought
that these and other Humanist grammars are linked, passing over medieval
grammar, to Donatus and Priscian and other grammatical sources
rediscovered in those years. Outside Rome I will mention only the Institutiones
or the Rudimenta by Aldus Manutius (first edn Venice 1493),
because o f the importance o f the author, a grammarian by training (he
himself came from the Roman school).
If in the fifteenth century the Italian initiative was dominant, from
the last decades o f the century and throughout the sixteenth century the
other European countries produced the most significant texts. In such a
vast field - the object o f contemporary studies guided by disparate
interests - it is difficult even to choose the most relevant information,
let alone order it according to historically significant lines. The fullest
recent summary available (Padley 1976), in the parts in which it carries
out an internal reconstruction o f developments in theory, describes the
Humanist grammars as characterized by the presence o f both formal
and semantic criteria in defining the parts o f speech: i.e. these are
defined individually according to their behaviour in syntax or according
to alleged ‘ logical’ or ‘ontological’ characteristics (the noun denotes a
substance, the verb an action, the adjective an accidental quality, etc.).
As Humanist grammar develops, this mixture o f criteria, inherited from
ancient grammar, becomes increasingly weighted in favour o f the second
type o f criteria - the type least appreciated by a historiographer with
Padley’ s outlook. The importance of this historical interpretative line is
made clear at least by an event from current affairs: as the movements
gathered under the banner o f ‘ language education’ have pointed out, traditional
teaching o f grammar in Italian schools in the twentieth century
is still based on the same incongruous mixture.10 It is clear, however,
that this historiographic line has been privileged among other possible
approaches because, among other things, Padley’ s reconstruction takes
as its goal Port-Royal, the place where parts o f speech are most celebrated
as the reflection o f categories o f thought; and I would also say
because it is influenced by a structuralist trend, in the wider sense,
which tends to recognize and stress the links between a ‘ linguistic’ and
an ‘extra-linguistic’ approach. Among the first exporters o f Humanist
reform, Antonio de Nebrija, whose Introductiones latinae was printed
for the first time in Salamanca in 1481, has a leading position. If Spanish
national history has traditionally celebrated Nebrija as the author o f the
first grammar o f Castilian (first edn Salamanca 1492), Rico’s studies have
decidedly emphasized that the Latin grammar is his historically most
significant work. Indeed, while the writing o f a vernacular grammar, even
at such an early date, is not surprising in the particular Spanish situation
(cf. here Sections 2.2 and 2.4 below), Nebrija entrusts to the Introductiones
(a ponderous work, collected and assembled from the ancient
grammarians) the task o f activating a radical reform within a university
system which was very backward even with regard to its elementary
knowledge o f Latin.11 There are no doubts, for this enthusiastic pupil
o f Valla, that the strengthening o f the education system required by
the new Spain must be founded on a kind o f Latin Spain does not yet
know; while his work in promoting and regulating Castilian is the other
aspect o f a collaboration in the general reform o f State structures within
which Nebrija aimed to promote what he held dearest in the sector o f
higher education. The Introduciones latinas translated into the vernacular
probably saw the light o f day in 1488, by order o f the Sovereign
( ‘ ipsius Reginae imperio’ ), a clear sign o f this organic integration o f the
Humanist project into a State plan that at the same time emphasized the
national language.
On the German situation there is a general essay (T. Heath 1971)
which examines the development o f the Humanist influence on the
teaching o f grammar in the universities o f Freiburg i.B., Ingoldstadt and
Tubingen and in other centres in southern Germany. It provides us with
a chronologically ordered outline, from which emerges a fact that is
probably valid in general, and not just for the area being considered.
The history o f the struggles between universities described in the essay
highlights the institutional importance o f the juxtaposition between the
old and the new grammatical models: the objection to the philosophically
based model o f the Doctrinale, the attack against the modi significandi,
the suggestion that literary Latin should be studied, all seriously
challenge a curriculum which earlier was characterized by the linear
transition from grammar to dialectics. The new forms o f grammar, and
a phenomenon as general as the emphasis on rhetoric to the detriment
o f dialectics, become more tangible if one realizes clearly that the students
trained by the Humanists were not prepared any longer for logic
and the daily practice o f scholastic disputations. All this made people
aware o f the need to modify also other areas o f teaching.
Among the principal stages o f this process we must mention the
adaptation o f Perotti’ s Rudimenta grammatices for the use o f northern
students (which, however, was also available elsewhere) undertaken by
Bernard Perger from the University o f Vienna (published Vienna c. 1479,
Salzburg 1482); the Invectiva contra modos significandi (written i486)
by Alexander Hegius;12 the tendentious commentary on the Doctrinale
written by Hegius in collaboration with Joannes Synthen in 1484 (evidence
o f a problematic compromise with tradition, like the similar commentaries
by Hermann Torrentinus, published in 1504, and by others);
the Isidoneus germanicus by Jacob Wimpfeling (published 1497); the