Grammar

Abstract

This chapter discusses grammar. The discipline of grammar is first described in detail by a Roman teacher of rhetoric, Quintilian, in the middle of the first century AD. It was divided ‘very briefly’, in his own words, into two parts. One was the knowledge of how to speak correctly (recte loquendi scientia). This part included, as he made clear, a mastery of speech as represented in writing. The other was ‘the detailed interpretation of poets’ (poetarum enarratio). It was not enough, however, to study poetry alone; other forms of literature also had to be examined thoroughly. Grammar as it is later perceived—as a technical discipline concerned with the categories and structure of a language—had emerged historically from one whose origins had lain in the academic study of literature.