The articulus according to Latin grammarians up to the early Middle Ages: The complex interplay of tradition and innovation in grammatical doctrine

Abstract

Ancient Greek grammar, and in particular its parts-of-speech system, provided the conceptual and terminological basis for the description of the Latin language. This transfer caused a number of (sub)categorial “frictions”, due to the structural differences that exist between both languages. A specific instance is that of the article, ἄρθρον or articulus, which was considered (part of) a separate part of speech in Greek, but which is absent from Latin. In this paper we discuss the views and comments expressed on this issue by Latin grammarians up to the early Middle Ages. While some of the grammarians deny that there is an article in Latin, others state that it does exist, but that it does not “count” as a separate part of speech, or that it is “substituted for” with the demonstrative pronoun. Their comments are illustrative (a) of the various adaptive strategies followed in the “bargaining situation” constituted by the projection of the Greek partsof-speech system upon the Latin language; (b) of transformations undergone by the Graeco-Latin grammatical legacy in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages; and (c) of a push chain of changes in the anaphoric-deictic (sub)system of Latin pronouns.