The eight parts

Abstract

This chapter identifies the parts of utterances. The ancient ‘parts’ are among the most abiding legacies of Graeco-Roman grammar. They were first distinguished in Greek. According to Quintilian, eight parts were distinguished by Aristarchus in the second century BC; it can be assumed that they were the categories of word forms that are later familiar. In the system as set out by Donatus, nouns were first distinguished from pronouns, whose roles in syntax are similar. The next were verbs and adverbs; after them first participles, then conjunctions, then prepositions. A final eighth part, corresponding to a subclass as described in Greek, was the interjection. Ultimately, the parts of utterances formed not simply a set, but what one would now see as a system, in which categories were ordered rationally, in a way that reflected the connections between them.