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4 Syntactic theory in the early Middle Ages

Priscian's Institutiones grammaticae, poorly known during the first medieval centuries, began to circulate more widely from the late 8th century onwards, and its first 16 books, known as the Priscian maior, began to receive commentary. The last two books on syntax, the Priscian minor, only became widely known in the 12th century. The tools of syntactical analysis offered by Priscian were not sufficient for early medieval learners of Latin who were not native speakers of Latin and had difficulty interpreting and analysing Classical and Christian literary works. A Classical Latin prose text makes use of complex sentences, with inverted word order and heavy participial constructions and subclauses, which did not lend themselves to interpretation without careful analysis.

Interaction between the three arts of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, was at the heart of the Carolingian renaissance, being encouraged especially by Alcuin, the primus motor of this educational reform. Dialectic was studied through Boethius's translations of Aristotle's so called "old logic" and popular encyclopaedic works, such as Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae and Martianus Capella's Marriage. Both encyclopaedias included a short treatise on all the Liberal Arts, in which early medieval teachers were able to find inspiration for analysing Latin sentences. After the Carolingian reform, this new approach was pursued actively in St. Gall in the ninth and tenth centuries.

4.1 Aristotle's ontological categories

Isidore of Seville introduces the ten Aristotelian categories in a short treatise on dialectic included in the Etymologiae. In his Categories (Categoriae) Aristotle presents a set of ontological categories, which, as he explains, is a classification of things 'said without combination': substance (e.g. man, horse), quantity (e.g. four-foot), quality (e.g. white), relation (e.g. double, half), place (e.g. in the Lyceum, in the market-place), time (e.g. yesterday, last year), position (e.g. is lying, is sitting), state (e.g. has shoes on), action (e.g. cutting, burning), passion (e.g. being cut, being burned) (Categoriae 2-4). Propositions, such as 'Socrates walks' or 'Socrates is white', are combinations of ontological categories.

It is obvious that Aristotle used language as a clue to his theory of ontological categories. Aware of the affinities between ontological and grammatical items Isidore combined the ontological categories into a complex sentence, including nominal and adverbial phrases as well as embeddings: 'Augustine [substance], a great [quantity] orator [quality], the son of that person [relation], standing [position] in the temple [place], today [time], adorned with a headband [state], having a dispute [action], gets tired [passion]' (Plena enim sententia de his ita est: Augustinus, magnus orator, filius illius, stans in templo, hodie, infulatus, disputando, fatigatur, Etym. 2.26.11; see Luhtala 1993: 150-151).

Isidore's identification of the Aristotelian categories with the various constituents of a complex sentence inspired a number of early medieval authors. Alcuin copied this passage into his handbook on dialectic (De dialectica, PL 101: 962C), and it was also used in the Donatus commentary of the ninth-century grammarian Sedulius Scottus (In Donatum maiorem 62.50-61). Furthermore, Martin of Laon exploited it in his teaching of the Liberal Arts (Contreni 1981: 35).

4.2 The Seven Circumstances

The ancient rhetorical handbooks offered a set of items, which invited comparison with grammatical and ontological categories, namely the rhetorical formula of the 'seven circumstances' (septem circumstantiae or periochae), including persona 'person', res 'thing', locus 'place', causa 'cause', tempus 'time', modus 'manner', and materia or facultas 'means', which often appear in the interrogative form quis 'who', quid 'what', cur 'why', quomodo 'how', quando 'when', ubi 'where', quibus facultatibus 'by what means'. This formula, probably taken over from the rhetorical manual of Marius Victorinus, consists of argumentative loci, which could be used in arguing a case. They served as the point of departure for an analysis of complex sentences in a pedagogical text deriving from the monastery of St. Gall (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995; see Luhtala 1993: 174-176). The author of this treatise, composed in the late ninth or tenth century, was probably Notker Labeo.

In accordance with the title, Quomodo VII circumstantie legende ordinande sint ('How the seven circumstances of things are to be ordered in reading'), the author sets out to expand a minimal statement, 'Cicero disputes', which Martianus Capella had used to illustrate the logical proposition. Notker's method consists in asking a series of questions: 'Who did what? When? Where? How? By what means?' He answered the question 'Who did what?' using both rhetorical and dialectical terminology. From Martianus he adopted the division of a basic clause into subject (subiectiuum) and predicate (declaratiuum), also identifying the two components 'Cicero' and 'disputes' as persona and res, the first two items of the rhetorical circumstances (Luhtala 1993: 172-173; Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 44-46).

Having stated that the subject is in the nominative case and the predicate in the indicative mood, Notker goes on to expand both constituents with various optional elements, accumulating them occasionally into huge complexities. He first elaborates the predicate part with the five optional 'circumstances': "Cicero is arguing in Tusculanum for a long time in a remarkable way for the common good with great brilliance" Cicero disputat in Tusculano multo tempore mirum in modum propter communem utilitatem magna excellentia ingenii (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 46-48). Then the subject part is similarly extended with a number of constituents: "Cicero, whose father was a Roman knight, distinguished with consular rank, being of the royal Volscan clan, discusses the nature of the gods, which is awe-inspiring and unknown to mortals" Cicero patre natus equite Romano de regno genere Velscorum rhetor eximius et consulari dignitate praeclarus ipse disputat de natura deorum, quae mirabilis et [i]gnota mortalibus est.

Inspired by Martianus, Notker dwells at some length on the ordering of the components in a clause. He maintains that the subject is the foundation on which the predicate is built, and thus, according to the natural order, the subject precedes the predicate as in Deus fecit hominem 'God made the man'. However, an inverted order, Hominem fecit Deus has the same truth value and meaning. This is, however, not the case in all Biblical contexts. A heretical view results, if one - following the natural or logical order - regards Deus 'God' as the subject of the clause Et Deus erat uerbum in the opening passage of John's Gospel. Reason will never allow 'Deus' to be set in first place as the subject and to predicate of God 'uerbum', Notker argues. The inverted word order Et uerbum Deus erat 'And the Word was God' renders the correct sense (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 47).

Similarly, the Creed where we confess our faith by saying Ita Deus pater, Deus filius, Deus spiritus sanctus, exhibits inverted word order. 'Father', 'son' and 'the Holy Spirit' are the subjects of these phrases which can be spelt out as follows: Ita pater Deus est, ita filius Deus est, ita spiritus sanctus Deus est (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 48). Notker concludes his discussion on word order by stating a pragmatic principle: the organization of the sentence can be regulated by the will (arbitrium/uoluntas) of the author. To prove his point, he quotes Biblical sentences initiated by each of the circumstantiae in turn (for the examples, see Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 52).

4.3 The Continuous Style

Notker illustrates the continuous style by means of a complex sentence which includes all the seven circumstances, which, as he points out, happens only rarely in a single sentence; the source of this piece of historical narrative is not known (Grotans/Porter (eds.) 1995: 62-66; Grotans 2006: 62-66). He first presents this passage as it has been composed in the continuous style and then rewrites it organizing it into a pedagogical order. Its two orders have the same meaning, but the reorganized ordering is the one suitable for teaching, he explains. The author is remarkably aware of the fact that a complex sentence consists of slots which can be filled either with one word or with various complex units of speech.

Tempore quo Siluius Aeneas regnauit in Italia, templum domino toto orb[e] famosissimum rex Salomon filius Dauid, cui similis in sapientia nullus ante eum uel post inventus est, quia tabernaculum in Sylo, ubi erat arca, angustum populo uisum est ad orandum et sacrificandum Hierosolimis, loco quem ad hoc elegit dominus ex lapidibus preciosis...