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

voces sine numero (instead o f between semantically self-sufficient parts
of speech and parts o f speech that are semantically dependent on them);
and the opposition between noun and verb is expressed as the opposition
between vox numeri cum genere et casu and vox numeri cum tempore
et persona (and not as the opposition between presumed different aspects
o f reality, or between presumed different modes o f signifying reality).
The abandonment o f the idea of ‘verbal mood’ (as a ‘psychologistic’
category, whose relation to the system of morphological differences is
too elusive) is also evidence o f the same tendency, which in this case
is pursued even at the cost o f leaving unexplained a number o f existing
morphological differences. There are exceptions to the moves towards
formal criteria but the general direction is certainly clear enough to earn
Ramus a special place among his contemporaries. His influence as a
grammarian was less than his influence as a reformer o f dialectics, and
(apart from the influence exerted on Sanctius) it remained limited to
Britain, where Paul Greaves’ Grammatica anglicana (1594) and later Ben
Jonson’ s English Grammar (1640)30 were to strictly follow his method.
The hypothesis o f a Renaissance ‘ structuralism’ following Ramus’ ideas
remains, therefore, one of the many possibilities which history has not
realized in practice.