Dionysious Thrax and Priscian

ROMAN GRAMMARIAN

Ana Lucia Flores | Evelyn Ayala | Michelle Castillo

Dionysious Thrax (c 100 BC)
− Was the first to present a comprehensive grammar of Greek.

− Distinguished two basic unites of description - The sentence (logos), which is the
upper limit of grammatical description:

− The word, which is the minimal unit of grammatical description.

− Distinguished onoma (noun) class words, rhema (verb), metoche (participle),

arthron (article), antxnymia (pronoun), prythesis (preposition), epirrhema
(adverb), and syndesmos (conjunction).

THE EIGHT PARTS OF THE SPEECH DIONYSIUS THRAX

Onoma (noun): a part of speech inflected for case, signifying a person or thing.

Rhema (verb): a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense, person,
number, signifyingan activity or process performed or undone.

Metoche (participle): a part of speech sharing the features of the verb and the noun.

Arthon (article): a part of speech inflected for case and preposed or postposed to nouns.

Antonymia (pronoun): a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for person.

Prothesis (preposition): a part of speech placed before other words in composition and in
syntax.

Epirrhema (adverb): a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition

to a verb.

Syndesmos (conjunction): a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling gaps
in its interpretation.

PÁGINA 1
Ancient grammar focused on the word as the central unit of language. Modern
scholars have characterised the ancient artes grammaticae as ‘word-based
grammars’. Adopting the ‘word and paradigm model’ as their framework, these
treatises mainly consist of a discussion of (normally translated as ‘parts of speech’
or ‘word classes’) and their accidentia. The Technê Grammatikê that has come down
to us under the name of Dionysius Thrax distinguishes eight word classes: (noun),
(verb), (participle), (article), (pronoun), (preposition), (adverb) and (conjunction).

For a long time, Dionysius Thrax (170-90 BC) was considered to have been the first
grammarian who used this system of eight parts of speech. In 1958, however, Di
Benedetto put forward the view that most part of the Technê Grammatikê, including
the exposition of the word class system, was to be regarded as a compilation that
was put together in the 3rd or 4th century AD. Although doubts about the
authenticity of the Technê had already been expressed in antiquity, Di Benedetto
was the first to claim that Dionysius Thrax himself only wrote the first five
paragraphs of the Technê.

The publication of Di Benedetto’s views was the starting point of a long and
passionate debate on the authenticity and authority of the Technê. Although several
scholars (notably Pfeiffer and Erbse) have tried to rebut Di Benedetto’s arguments,
most specialists have now accepted the view that Dionysius Thrax himself wrote only
the very first part of the Technê Grammatikê, while the rest of the work, including
the classification of the parts of speech, belongs to the 3rd or 4th century AD.

PÁGINA 2
Having acknowledged that the major part of the Technê was not written by
Dionysius Thrax, historians of grammar had to reconsider questions about the origin
and development of the traditional system of eight word classes. According to
ancient testimonies, Dionysius Thrax ‘separated’ ˆnoma (proper noun) and
proshgor¤a (appellative), and ‘combined’ êryron (article) and éntvnum¤a (pronoun).

This would mean that he did not use the word class system that we find in the
Technê Grammatikê. Those scholars who have accepted Di Benedetto’s thesis that
the Technê is not authentic have pointed to the works of other grammarians as the
possible origin of the traditional word class system. In particular, Di Benedetto
himself and others have argued that it was the grammarian Tryphon (1st century BC)
who first adopted the traditional system of eight word classes. More recently,
however, Matthaios has shown that Aristarchus (216-144 BC), the teacher of
Dionysius Thrax, already distinguished the word classes that were to become the
canonical eight. He did not discuss these word classes in a grammatical treatise, but
he employed them for his philological activities.

Apart from the adverb, for which he used the term mesÒthw (instead of the later
§p¤rrhma), all word classes that were identified by Aristarchus carried the names
that would become standard in later grammars. With the acknowledgement of the
important role of Aristarchus, a new picture of the early history of the system of eight
word classes has been drawn.

PÁGINA 3
Priscian
His aim was to transfer the grammatical system of Thrax´s and Appolonius´s grammar to
latin.

Uses the classical system of eight word classes laid down by Thrax and Appolonius, with
the omission of the article and the inclussion of the interjection.

Priscian´s work is based on the language of the best writes (e.g. Cicero, Virgil), not on the
language of his own day.

Nomen (noun), including words now classed as adjectives): the property of a noun is to

indicate a substance and aquality, and it assigns a common or a particular quality to

every body or thing.

Verbum (verb) the property of a verb is to indicate an action or a being acted on; it has

tense and mood forms, but is not case inflected.

Participium (participle): a class ofwords always derivationally referable to verbs, sharing

the categories of verbs and nouns (tenses and cases), and therefore distinct from both

Pronomen (pronoun): the property of the pronoun is its substitutability for proper nouns

and its specificability as to person (first,

second, third). A specific property of the

Pronoun is to indicate substance without

quality, a way of interpreting the lack of
lexical restriction on the nouns which may
be referred to anaphorically by pronouns.

PÁGINA 4
Priscian, Latin in full Priscianus Caesariensis, (flourished c. 500 CE, Caesarea, Mauretania
[now Cherchell, Algeria]), the best known of all the Latin grammarians, author of
the Institutiones grammaticae, which had a profound influence on the teaching of Latin and
indeed of grammar generally in Europe.

Though born in Mauretania, Priscian taught in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey). His
minor works include De nomine, pronomine et verbo (“On Noun, Pronoun, and Verb”), for
the teaching of grammar in schools; a treatise on weights and measures; a treatise on the
metres of Terence; Praeexercitamina, an adaptation for Latin readers of some
Greek rhetorical exercises; a panegyric in verse on the emperor Anastasius I; and a verse
translation of Dionysius’s Periegesis. Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (“Grammatical
Foundations”) is an 18-volume exposition of Latin grammar.

As far as possible Priscian took as his guides the works of Apollonius Dyscolus on Greek
grammar and Flavius Caper on Latin grammar. He drew illustrative citations from many
Latin authors and in this way was able to preserve numerous fragments that would otherwise
have been lost.

Priscian’s work was extensively quoted in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries. Subsequently it
became the standard work for the teaching of grammar in the medieval schools; and it
provided the background for the rise of speculative grammar (the logic of language) in the
13th and 14th centuries. There are about 1,000 manuscript copies extant. Of these, the greater
part contain only books i–xvi (called Priscianus major); a few contain books xvii and xviii
(Priscianus minor) and some of the minor works; and a few contain all 18 books of
the Institutiones.

Apart from fragments, the oldest manuscripts are of the 9th century. The first printed
edition was produced in 1470 at Venice.

PÁGINA 5