Quintilian on “grammatical homonymy”: The linguistic sensibility of a Roman lawyer

Abstract

Abstract After defining grammatical (as opposed to lexical) homonymy as concerning either inflection or the conflict between different parts of speech, attention is paid to those contexts in which Varro and Quintilian dealt with processes falling under that concept. The paper remarks on the acute distinction Quintilian seems to make between lexical and grammatical homonymy by dealing with the former in relation to rhetoric and the latter within the grammatical chapters of book I. The similarity of Quintilian’s approach to homonymy is then shown with the use Apollonius Dyscolus would later make of the term synemptosis as a morphological coincidence of word forms. The parallel doctrine and terminology in later Latin traditions is also considered.