The emergence of syntactic categories in the history of linguistics – From Medieval to Early Modern Age
Short Title: SiRe workshop 2024
Date: 27-May-2024 – 28-May-2024
Location: Palermo, Italy
Contact: Annamaria Bartolotta
Contact Email: annamaria.bartolotta@unipa.it
Meeting URL: https://prin2017-sire.eu/
Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics; Syntax
Meeting Description:
SiRe workshop 2024: Advances in the history of linguistics
A two-days colloquium on the history of linguistics to be held at the University of Palermo, Italy.
This workshop is organised under the auspices of the project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research: “Parts of Speech Meet Rhetorics: Searching for Syntax in the Continuity between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age” (SiRe PRIN 20172F2FEZ, PI Paola Cotticelli, University of Verona).
The workshop seeks to bridge gaps in linguistic historiography by delving into the emergence of syntactic categories from Late Antiquity to the pre-Port-Royal theories of 1660. In contemporary linguistic historiography, the theory of the ‘clause’ has often been overlooked, with a prevailing belief that concepts such as ‘main clause’ and ‘subordinate clause’ did not exist before Port Royal. Despite the rich syntactic insights found in Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae, they lack a cohesive syntactic theory and a specific metalanguage for syntax. Adopting a word-based approach, Priscian’s model relied on a dependency-oriented rather than a constituency-oriented structure, shaping subsequent linguistic perspectives. Even humanist grammars in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, including first grammars of ‘exotic’ languages, influenced by the Latin traditional model, primarily focused on morphology and the syntactic binary linkage between individual words.
We invite scholars and researchers to contribute papers on the historiography of linguistics, exploring medieval and early modern treatises dedicated to language, glossary and commentary traditions, grammars of both European and extra-European languages, and the interplay of syntax within grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
– Medieval and Early Modern grammatical theory of syntax
– missionary grammars and related works
– syntactic metalanguage and emergent syntactic notions
– description of subordinating strategies
– clausal embedding
– coordination vs subordination
– sentence linear vs structural order
Keynote Speakers (confirmed):
Anne Grondeux (CNRS – Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Otto Zwartjes (CNRS – Université Paris Cité and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Registration is now open (it includes lunch and coffee breaks). The participation at the workshop is free of charge, but registration is required.
Registration link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe5FOcOfgVzK9hXZkYjy8hS3uUEWDuJNp3n-L8Gm5ED6-pexQ/viewform
Registration closes on April 30th.
The workshop venue is the Department of Humanities at the University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Building 12, Aula Seminari
In order to attend the workshop online, please send an email to sire.prin2024@gmail.com
For further information about travel and accomodation, please contact the organising committee at sire.prin2024@gmail.com
Monday 27 May
15.00-15.15 – Opening session
15.15-16.15 – Keynote: Anne Grondeux (Paris, CNRS / Université Sorbonne Nouvelle): Immensum Prisciani pelagus: the (first) many ways of reading Priscian in the mediaeval West
16.15-16.45 – S. Merlin Defanti (Napoli Federico II): Le pronom relatif et les phrases relatives dans la pensée grammaticale latine : les enjeux de la syntaxe
16.45-17.15 – P. Cotticelli (Verona): Towards a classification of sentences in Medieval grammars: the role of the positurae
17.15-17.45 – Coffee Break
17.45-18.15 – M. Longo (Palermo): A pre-Latin Syntax in Medieval Iceland? A Comparative Investigation of Samsetning and Málsgrein in Icelandic Grammatical Treatises
18.15-18.45 – F. Cotugno (Verona): Dependens e terminans: alla ricerca di una definizione nella costellazione modista
20.00 – Social dinner
Tuesday 28 May
9.15-10.15 – Keynote: Otto Zwartjes (Université Paris Cité / Laboratoire d’histoire des théories linguistiques – HTL): How to learn and teach syntax in missionary grammars? (with particular focus on Chinese syntax in 17th century Spanish missionaries’ grammars)
10.15-10.45 – A. Perri (Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa): From Nebrija to Carochi: the Arte de la lengua mexicana (1665) between tradition and innovation
10.45-11.15 – A. Bartolotta & G. Quartararo (Palermo): Conjunctions as a grammatical category in missionary grammars of South America (16th-17th centuries)
11.15-11.45 – Coffee Break
11.45-12.15 – L. Alfieri (Roma Marconi): The autonomisation of the syntactic category “adjective” between the Middle Ages and the early Modern Era
12.15-12.45 – O. Pazdírek (Brno): Vietnamese syntax in de Rhodes’ Linguae annamiticae seu Tunchinensis brevis declaratio (1651)
12.45-13.15 – D. Poli (Macerata): La questione della lingua nel Collegio Romano: una ipotesi fondata sugli scritti in italiano di Matteo Ricci
13.15-14.30 – Lunch
14.30-15.00 – N. Santoni (Macerata): La grammatica medievale dei dictamina tra Italia e Francia: l’eredità bolognese in un confronto teorico e terminologico con le scuole di Orléans
15.00-15.30 – C. Nigrelli (Palermo):Servire vs regere. On metaterms about prepositions in the medieval Donatian tradition
15.30-16.00 – G. Di Bartolo (Köln): To what extent do conjunctions fit into syndesmoi?
16.00-16.30 – L. Melazzo (Palermo): Some thoughts on the micro-syntax of the so-called idiomata casuum
16.30-17.00 – Coffee Break
17.00-17.30 – P. Meng (Virginia): Interplay of Syntax, Rhetoric, and Logic in Clausal Embedding: Insights from Medieval and Early Modern Linguistic Treatises
17.30-18.00 – E. Nardi (Palermo) & B. Grieco (Roma Sapienza): Per periphrasin loquimur: ‘periphrasis’ in language description, from discourse to grammar
18.00-18.30 – A. Bianchi (Macerata): Un gesuita a Port-Royal: Philippe Labbé tra grammatica ed etimologia
18.30-18.45 – Closing Remarks
Scientific Coordinator: Annamaria Bartolotta
Organising Committee:
Annamaria Bartolotta
Jan Casalicchio
Laura Conte
Gabriele Ganau
Michele Longo
Edoardo Nardi
Castrenze Nigrelli
Domenico Portera
Geraldine Quartararo