WEMSK4: Grammar

[This one is a real problem for me, since it is my field.  You should never do a bibliography in your own field.  I have tried to pare and weed out and be essential.  I am sure I have not succeeded.]

          What Every Medievalist Should Know - Grammar

The first subject the student encountered in school was grammar. Dante assures us that grammar is la primàrte, and we have any number of derivations to indicate its position in the curriculum: grammar school, OFr. glomeriaus "grammar school boys," the term grammaticus "grammar school teacher, pedant." When the student entered the class on the first day, he was greeted with Donatus's Ars minor: Partes orationis quot sunt? etc. etc. Probably the best thing you can do to understand the Middle Ages is to read through the Trivium, beginning with the Donatus minor.  It is available online in my edition and translation:

1.On solecismo 2. de metaplasmo  3. de tropis  4.de partibus orationis ars minor 5. de schematibus  6. de ceteriis vitiis.

Also see:
Wayland Johnson Chase, The Ars Minor of Donatus. For One Thousand Years the Leading Textbook of Grammar. University of Wisconsin Studies in the Social Scieences and History 11 (Madison, 1926).

As you go along, you will want to read both parts of his Ars major, also available online in my edition and translation.

Still a good introduction to medieval education: Franz Anton Specht, Geschichte des Unterrichtswesens in Deutschland, von den aeltesten Zeiten bis zur Mitte des 13. Jhs. (Wiesbaden: Saendig, 1967; repr. of 1885).

If you want a quick survey of pre-12th century Latin grammar:

Ch. Lammert, "La grammaire latine et les grammariens latins du 4e et du 5e siecles," Rewe Bourguignonne 18 (1908), 1-236.  A French epitome of Keil.

For most of the grammars written and used:

Heinrich Keil.Grammatici latini, ed.  8 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1961; repr. of 1855-80.) One hears over and over rumors of a CD-ROM Keil or a Keil online.

There is a concordance, but I have not seen it:
Alberto Grilli et al, Concordanza dei grammatici latini, Atti della Accademia delle scienze di Torino, 112.2 (Supplement). (Turin: Accademia delle scienze, 1979).

The standard bibliography for doing the history of the field:

Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1873 -), usually known by the title Bursians Jahresberichte.

After this, look at l'Annee philologique, since 1976 available on CD-ROM: The Database of Classical Bibliography (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995-). With these three, you can get a fairly good bibliography of the subject.

Of course, there are the journals in the field, e.g. Historiagraphia linguistica, and Histoire Epistemologie Langage, of which vol 12.2 is devoted to "Grammaires medievales."

A little too linguistic for you and me, but a quick overview:
Robert Henry Robins, A Short History of Linguistics, 4th ed. (London: Longman, 1997).

Worth looking at for getting your feet on the ground, but terribly out of date:
Hermann Steinthal, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und Römern, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Bonn: Dümmler, 1961; repr. of 1890).

An excellent selection of materials to go along with your Keil:

Charles Thurot, ed., Extraits de divers manuscrits latins pour servir a l'histoire de doctrines grammaticales au Moyen-Age (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964; repr. of 1869).

                      Native Grammarians

It is interesting at times to look at the `native grammarians', almost all base on part of Donatus and Priscian.  Some of them are pretty strange:

One of these is the George Calder, Ed., Auraicept na n-eces,  (Portland: Four Courts, 1995; repr. 1917), called by its editor
`the scholar's primer'.  On it, see the remarks of Osborn Bergin, "The Native Irish Grammarian," Proceedings of the British Academy 24 (1938).  There are all kinds of Bardic tracts and the like.

 Julius Zupitza, Ed., Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar, 2nd ed., with preface by Helmut Gneuss (Berlin: Weidmann, 1966; repr. of 1880). NB: Available online from Toronto. There are a number of studies of this, but you just need to read it. It is really Donatus englished; it is good to know that the English for interjection is betwuxaworpennys.

For Middle English:

David Thomson, _A Descriptive Catalogue of Middle English Grammatical Manuscripts_ (NY: Garland, 1979) and _An Edition of Middle English Grammatical Texts_ (NY: Garland, 1984).

Way back,  we had a discussion of all this on MEDTEXTL, and Juris G. Lidaka posted a splendid bibliography.  It's in the archives.(Monday September 7, 1992?)

There are four Old Norse "grammatical" treatises; for a survey, etc., see:
Hreinn Benediktsson, Ed., The First Grammatical Treatise,  University of Iceland Publications in Linguistics, 1 (Reykjavik: Institute of Nordic Linguistics, 1972).  Edition, translation and discussion.

More readily available is  edition:
Einar Haugen, Ed., First Grammatical Treatise. The Earliest Germanic Phonology. Language Monograph no. 25 (Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America, 1950).
Most libraries will have a copy of Language. You might also want to look at: The So-Called Second Grammatical Treatise, ed., trans., commentary. Filologia Germanica. Testi e Studi 2 (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1982).
and
 J. H. Marshall, Ed. The Donatz Proensals of Uc Faidit. University of Durham Publications (Oxford: OUP, 1969). "The earlist surviving attempt to compose a full grammar of a Romance vernacular ..."

                       Speculative Grammar

As the 12th Century Renaissance got rolling, so did grammar of the philosophical type:

G. L. Bursill-Hall, Speculative Grammars of the Middle Ages; the Doctrine of the Partes orationis of the Modistae. Approaches to Semiotics, 11 (The Hauge: Mouton, 1971).  See also by the same author the useful: A Census of Medieval Latin Grammatical Manuscripts. Grammatica speculativa 4 (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1981). These had enormous influence, even on Heidegger.

There is a good deal of activity in this area at present.  One of the tireless workers is:
R. W. Hunt, Collected Papers on the History of Grammar in the MA. Studies in the History of Linguistics 5 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1980). Good to just flip through.

For the later Middle Ages, as widely used textbook was: Dietrich Reichling, Ed., Das Doctrinale des Alexander de Villa-Dei. (NY: Burt Franklin, 1974; repr. of vol. 12 of Monumenta Germaniae paedagogica, 1893).