Dionysius Thrax
Dionysius Thrax (Greek: Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ Dionýsios ho Thrâix, 170–90 BC) was a Greek[1] grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the Greek language, one that was used as a standard manual for perhaps some 1,500 years,[2] and which was until recently regarded as the groundwork of the entire Western grammatical tradition.[a]
Life
His place of origin was not Thrace as the epithet "Thrax" denotes, but probably Alexandria. His Thracian background was inferred from the name of his father Tērēs (Τήρης),[citation needed] which is considered to be a Thracian name.[citation needed] One of his co-students during his studies in Alexandria under Aristarchus was Apollodorus of Athens, who also became a distinguished grammarian.[4][5] Rudolf Pfeiffer dates his shift to the isle of Rhodes to around 144/143 BC, when political upheavals associated with the policies of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II are thought to have led to his exile. According to a report in Athenaeus' Deipnosophistae (11,489a, b), his Rhodian pupils, grateful for his learning,[6] gathered enough silver to enable him to fashion a cup whose shape aspired to recreate that of Nestor mentioned in the Iliad (Book 11, lines 632–637).[7][8]
Dionysius was primarily a
Tékhnē grammatikē
Dionysius Thrax was credited traditionally as the author of the first extant grammar of
Dionysius defines grammar at the beginning of the Tékhnē as "the empirical knowledge of what is for the most part being said by poets and prose writers".[12] He states that grammatikē, what we might nowadays call "literary criticism",[d] comprises six parts:
Grammatikḗ
- (a) ἀνάγνωσις ἐντριβὴς κατὰ προσῳδίαν (anagnōsis...): reading aloud with correct pronunciation, accent and punctuation.
- (b) ἐξήγησις κατὰ τοὺς ἐνυπάρχοντας ποιητικοὺς τρόπους (exēgēsis...): exposition of the tropes/τρόποι, the figurative language of texts.
- (c) ἀπόδοσις πρόχειρος γλωσσῶν τε καὶ ἰστοριῶν (apodosis...): common exposition of obsolete words and subject matter.
- (d) εὕρεσις ἐτυμολογίας (heuresis...): finding the correct meaning of words according to their origin (etymology).
- (e) ἐκλογισμὸς ἀναλογίας (eklogismos...): setting forth or considering analogies.
- (f) κρίσις ποιημάτων (krisis...): critical judgement of the works examined.[16][e][18]
Paragraph 6 outlines the στοιχεῖα (stoikheia) or letters of the alphabet, together with the divisions into vowels, diphthongs and consonants.
Paragraphs 7–10 deal with syllables, long (μακραὶ συλλαβαί), short (βραχεῖαι συλλαβαί) and anceps (κοιναὶ συλλαβαί).
Paragraph 11 treats the eight-word classes, though strong doubts exist as to whether or not this division goes back to Dionysius Thrax, since ancient testimonies assert that he conflated proper nouns and appellatives, and classified the article together with pronouns.[19] In the text attributed to Dionysius, the eight classes. which Di Benedetto and others argue was probably developed by Tryphon several decades after Dionysius, are as follows:
- (a) the 'name' (ὄνομα ónoma), translated as noun: a part of speech inflected for case. Its three genders: masculine (ἀρσενικόν), feminine (θηλυκόν) and neutral (οὐδέτερον) are distinguished, together with the five case endings.[f] He also notes however that two other terms are also in use: κοινόν (common) designating those words whose gender varies depending on the sex of the creature, such as ἵππος (hippos 'horse') and ἐπίκοινον (epicene) used to define words whose gender is stable, but which can refer to either sex, instancing χελιδών (khelidōn 'swallow').[23] The name includes various species like nouns, adjectives, proper nouns, appellatives, collectives, ordinals, numerals and more.[24]
- (b) the verb (ῥῆμα) with its tenses.
- (c) the participle (μετοχή)
- (d) the article (ἄρθρον)
- (e) the pronoun (ἀντωνυμία)
- (f) the preposition (πρόθεσις)
- (g) the adverb (ἐπίρρημα)
- (h) the conjunction (σύνδεσμος)[27]
Paragraphs 12-20 then elaborate successively on the parts of speech.[26]
Authorship
Modern scepticism over the attribution is associated with the pioneering work of Vincenzo Di Benedetto in particular, though as early as 1822 Karl Wilhelm Göttling, by analyzing the scholia on the text that had recently been collected and published by A. I. Bekker, concluded that the text as we have it was to be dated, not to the Hellenistic period but rather to the Byzantine period.[28] Göttling's thesis convinced neither Moritz Schmidt nor Gustav Uhlig, and disappeared from view. In 1958/1959, Di Benedetto revived doubts by comparing the received text with ancient grammatical papyri that had since come to light.[29] He argued that before the 3rd to 4th centuries AD, no papyri on Greek grammar reveal material structured in a way similar to the exposition we have in Dionysius's treatise, that the surviving witnesses for the period before that late date, namely authors such as Sextus Empiricus, Aelius Herodianus, Apollonius Dyscolus and Quintilian, fail to cite him, and that Dionysius's work only begins to receive explicit mention in the works written from the 5th century onwards by such scholars as Timotheus of Gaza, Ammonius Hermiae and Priscian.[30] Di Benedetto concluded that only the first five paragraphs of the treatise came from Dionysius' hand.[19]
Though initially rebuffed by scholars of the calibre of Pfeiffer and Hartmut Erbse, Di Benedetto's argument today has found general acceptance among specialists.[19]
Notes
- ^ "Elle a été considérée comme le texte d'ancrage de toute la tradition grammaticale occidentale."[3]
- ^ There are extensive scholia to the Techne, which have been edited by A. Hilgard in 1901: Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, recensuit et apparatum criticum indicesque adiecit Alfredus Hilgard, Lipsiae: in aedibus B.G. Teubneri 1901. The collections of scholia are the following: Prolegomena Vossiana (p. 1); Commentarius Melampodis seu Diomedis (p. 10); Commentarius Heliodori (p. 67); Scholiorum collectio Vaticana (p. 106); Scholiorum collectio Marciana (p. 292); Scholiorum collectio Londinensis (p. 442); Commentariolus Byzantinus (pp. 565–586).
- ^ Immanuel Bekker, Anecdota Graeca, Volume 2 Berlin 1816 pp 627–643
- ^ Strictly speaking, "literary criticism" is more or less what the sixth section of the treatise, krisis poiēmatōn, deals with. That phrase was translated by Di Benedetto as "textual criticism" which however in classical Greek was called διόρθωσις (diorthōsis).[15]
- ^ Diorthōsis (διόρθωσις), literally "correction", indicates the scholarly work of "recension" of a text, that is, the establishment of the correct text by critical analysis and choice of specific readings. The ekdosis (ἔκδοσις) is the final result of such an operation.[17]
- ^ Classification according to gender was, fide Aristotle, the invention of Protagoras.[20] He designated the neuter category by the word σκεῦoς (inanimate thing; σκεύη in NOM pl.),[21] which Aristotle replaced by μεταξύ (in between), meaning neither male nor female, a terminology which was adopted in Stoic approaches, which however established οὐδέτερον as the default term.[22]
Citations
- ^ "Dionysius Thrax | Greek grammarian". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 August 2021.
- ^ Škiljan 2000, p. 91.
- ^ a b c Ildefonse 1997, p. 447.
- ^ Robertson 2008, p. 4, n. 10.
- ^ De Jonge 2008, p. 101.
- ^ a b c Pfeiffer 1968, p. 266.
- ^ Athenaeus 1933, pp. 174–175.
- ^ Robins 1998, p. 15.
- ^ De Jonge 2008, pp. 100, 137.
- ^ a b Pfeiffer 1968, p. 267.
- ^ Pfeiffer 1968, pp. 267–268.
- ^ a b Pfeiffer 1968, p. 268.
- ^ Clackson 1998, pp. 121–133.
- ^ Sandys 2010, p. 138.
- ^ Pfeiffer 1968, p. 269,n.2.
- ^ Pfeiffer 1968, pp. 268–269.
- ^ Schironi 2018, p. 20, n.64.
- ^ Berglund 2018, p. 226.
- ^ a b c De Jonge 2008, p. 92.
- ^ Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.5.5.
- Perseus Project.
- ^ Michael 2010, pp. 110–111.
- ^ Michael 2010, p. 111.
- ^ The term 'onoma' at Dionysius Thrax, Τέχνη γραμματική (Art of Grammar), 14. Περὶ ὀνόματος translated by Thomas Davidson, On the noun
- καὶ αὐτὰ εἴδη προσαγορεύεται· κύριον, προσηγορικόν, ἐπίθετον, πρός τι ἔχον, ὡς πρός τι ἔχον, ὁμώνυμον, συνώνυμον, διώνυμον, ἐπώνυμον, ἐθνικόν, ἐρωτηματικόν, ἀόριστον, ἀναφορικὸν ὃ καὶ ὁμοιωματικὸν καὶ δεικτικὸν καὶ ἀνταποδοτικὸν καλεῖται, περιληπτικόν, ἐπιμεριζόμενον, περιεκτικόν, πεποιημένον, γενικόν, ἰδικόν, τακτικόν, ἀριθμητικόν, ἀπολελυμένον, μετουσιαστικόν.
- also called species: proper, appellative, adjective, relative, quasi-relative, homonym, synonym, pheronym, dionym, eponym, national, interrogative, indefinite, anaphoric (also called assimilative, demonstrative, and retributive), collective, distributive, inclusive, onomatopoetic, general, special, ordinal, numeral, participative, independent.
- ^ De Jonge 2008, p. 100.
- ^ a b Pfeiffer 1968, p. 269.
- ^ De Jonge 2008, p. 91.
- ^ Pfeiffer 1968, p. 272.
- ^ Di Benedetto 2007, pp. 381–461.
- ^ Pagani 2014, pp. 206–207.
Sources
- Athenaeus (1933). Gulick, Charles Burton [in German] (ed.). Deipnosophistae. Vol. 5. Harvard University Press.
- Berglund, Carl Johan (2018). "Interpreting readers: the Role of Greco-Roman Education in Early Interpretation of New Testament Writings". In Wilk, Florian (ed.). Scriptural Interpretation at the Interface between Education and Religion: In Memory of Hans Conzelmann. ISBN 978-9-004-38569-6.
- Berrettoni, Pierangelo (2004). "On the Geometrical Background of Dionysius Thrax' Definition of Comparatives". In Petrilli, Raffaella; Gambarara, Daniele (eds.). Actualité des anciens sur la théorie du langage. Nodus Publications. pp. 17–36. ISBN 3-89323-314-8.
- Clackson, James Peter (1998) [First published 1995]. "The Technē in Armenian". In Law, Vivien; ISBN 3-89323-451-9.
- De Jonge, Casper Constantijn (2008). Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Language, Linguistics, and Literature. ISBN 978-9-004-16677-6.
- Di Benedetto, Vincenzo (1958–1959). "Dionisio Trace e la Techne a lui attribuita". Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (ASNP). 62/28: 169–210, 87–118.
- Di Benedetto, Vincenzo (1990). "At the Origins of Greek Grammar". Glotta. 68: 19–39.
- ISBN 978-8-846-71940-9. Archived from the originalon 2 April 2019. Retrieved 10 March 2019.
- Ildefonse, Frédérique (1997). La Naissance de la Grammaire dans l'Antiquité grecque. Paris: ISBN 2-7116-1311-9.
- ISBN 9781412830539.
- Kemp, J. Alan, ed. (1986). "The Tekhne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax". Historiographia Linguistica. 13 (2/3): 343–363. .
- Lallot, Jean (2003) [First published 1998]. La grammaire de Denys le Thrace (2nd ed.). Paris: CNRS Éditions.
- ISBN 978-0-521-14326-4.
- Pagani, Lara (2014). "Techne Grammatike e la documentazione papiracea". Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica. 142: 205–217. .
- ISBN 9780198143420.
- Robertson, David (2008) [First published 1903]. Word and Meaning in Ancient Alexandria: Theories of Language from Philo to Plotinus. ISBN 978-0-754-60696-3.
- Robins, Robert Henry (1987). "The Tekhne grammatike of Dionysius Thrax in its Historical Perspective: The Evolution of the Traditional European Word Class System". In Swiggers, Pierre; van Hoecke, Willy (eds.). Mots et parties du discours. Leuven: Leuven University Press. pp. 9–37.
- ISBN 3-89323-451-9.
- ISBN 978-1-108-02706-9.
- Schironi, Francesca (2018). The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad. ISBN 978-0-472-13076-4.
- Škiljan, Dubravko (2000). "The Amnesic Syndromes of Structuralism". In Tomić, Olga Mišeska; Radovanović, Milorad (eds.). History and Perspectives of Language Study: Papers in Honor of Ranko Bugarski. ISBN 978-9-027-23692-0.
External links
- Thrax, Dionysius. τέχνη γραμματική [Art of Grammar] (in Greek). Archived from the original on 25 August 2004.
- Thrax, Dionysius (1883). Τέχνη Γραμματική (in Greek and Latin). B. G. Tevbner – via The Internet Archive.
- Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ.
- English Wikisource has original text related to this article: The grammar of Dionysios Thrax