Le nom, le verbe, et ainsi de suite. Éléments de réflexion portés au débat sur la justification de l’ordre canonique des parties de phrase chez Apollonius Dyscole

Abstract

The early Alexandrian grammarians fixed the number of parts of speech (or word classes) at eight and arranged them in an order that became canonical for the whole Greek grammatical tradition: noun, verb, participle, article, pronoun, preposition, adverb, conjunction. In trying to propose (at the beginning of the treatise On Syntax) an a posteriori justification for this intangible ordering, Apollonius Dyscolus (2nd c. AD) establishes a strange analogy, saying that this ordering is “a reflection of the complete sentence” (mímēma toû autoteloûs lógou). Surprisingly, neither this statement of Apollonius nor the problem of ordering (táxis) seems to have interested Byzantine grammarians. Yet, these commentators studied at length the history of the system of parts of speech. Over the past thirty years, some scholars have examined this question. But they do not seem to have reached perfect agreement on the meaning of Apollonius’ statement. This article seeks to provide new avenues of investigation, notably by drawing on late testimonies that have been little exploited until now.

Keywords

• Apollonius Dyscolus
• parts of speech (ordering of the ~
• naming of ~)
• complete sentence
• place of words