Apollonius Dyscolus was the first formal syntactician in Graeco-Roman linguistics. He considered the nature of language to be logical and rule-governed, and assumed an underlying structure for all levels of language. It might be said that from the work of his predecessors, he extracted syntax. This volume contains an English translation of — mainly — Uhlig's 1910 edition of De Constructione Libri Quattor (Peri Suntaxeos), with commentary, an introduction, and an article on Apollonius Dyscolus and the Origins of Deep Structure.

Apollonius Dyscolus was the first formal syntactician in Graeco-Roman linguistics. He considered the nature of language to be logical and rule-governed, and assumed an underlying structure for all levels of language. It might be said that from the work of his predecessors, he extracted syntax. This volume contains an English translation of — mainly — Uhlig’s 1910 edition of De Constructione Libri Quattor (Peri Suntaxeōs), with commentary, an introduction, and an article on Apollonius Dyscolus and the Origins of Deep Structure.

This authoritative and wide-ranging book, first published in 2003, examines the history of western linguistics over a 2000-year timespan, from its origins in ancient Greece up to the crucial moment of change in the Renaissance that laid the foundations of modern linguistics. Some of today's burning questions about language date back a long way: in 1400 BC Plato was asking how words relate to reality. Other questions go back just a few generations, such as our interest in the mechanisms of language change, or in the social factors that shape the way we speak. Vivien Law explores how ideas about language over the centuries have changed to reflect changing modes of thinking. A survey chapter brings the coverage of the book up to the present day. Classified bibliographies and chapters on research resources and the qualities the historian of linguistics needs to develop, provide the reader with the tools to go further.

This wide-ranging book presents the linguistic achievements of four major cultures to readers presumably conversant with modern theoretical linguistics. The chapter on India discusses in detail Pan?ini's (c. 400 B.C.) grammar Ast-adhy-ay-i as well as the work of his commentators Katyayana, Patanjali, and Bhartr?hari. In the Chinese tradition, the Confucian doctrine of the Rectification of Names' is singled out for treatment. Arabic linguistics is represented by Sibawaihi's (d. 793) grammar al-Kitab, in particular its syntax, as well as the subsequent commentary tradition. The chapter on Europe, which is the most comprehensive of the four, covers the time span from antiquity to the 20th century; special attention is devoted to the contributions of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Varro, Apollonius Dyscolus, and the Modistae. The achievements of the cultures in linguistics are treated throughout from a deliberately value-laden point of view. The achievements of Western antiquity and the Middle Ages are shown to be much more than the average linguist is inclined to believe. Even more importantly, it is shown that the Indian and the Arab traditions have been superior to the European tradition at least until the 20th century. The fact that a linguistic theory created some 2,400 years ago is fully as adequate as our best theories today must have far-reaching implications for the notion of 'scientific progress'. More precisely, it proves necessary to distinguish between 'progress in the human sciences' and 'progress in the natural sciences'. These issues, which pertain to the general philosophy of science, are treated in the final chapter of the book.

The volume aims at investigating archetypes, concepts and contexts of the ancient philological discipline from a historical, methodological and ideological perspective. It includes 26 contributions by leading scholars divided into four sections: The ancient scholars at work, The ancient grammarians on Greek language and linguistic correctness, Ancient grammar in historical context and Ancient grammar in interdisciplinary context.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus has long been regarded as a rather mediocre critic. This book rehabilitates the Greek rhetorician by demonstrating the creative ways in which he integrated theories from different linguistic disciplines into a coherent programme of rhetoric.

The aim of this monograph is to describe Greek mathematics as a literary product, studying its style from a logico-syntactic point of view and setting parallels with logical and grammatical doctrines developed in antiquity. In this way, major philosophical themes such as the expression of mathematical generality and the selection of criteria of validity for arguments can be treated without anachronism. Thus, the book is of interest for both historians of ancient philosophy and specialists in Ancient Greek, in addition to historians of mathematics. This volume is divided into five parts, ordered in decreasing size of the linguistic units involved. The first part describes the three stylistic codes of Greek mathematics; the second expounds in detail the mechanism of "validation"; the third deals with the status of mathematical objects and the problem of mathematical generality; the fourth analyzes the main features of the "deductive machine," i.e. the suprasentential logical system dictated by the traditional division of a mathematical proposition into enunciation, setting-out, construction, and proof; and the fifth deals with the sentential logical system of a mathematical proposition, with special emphasis on quantification, modalities, and connectors. A number of complementary appendices are included as well.

"The Western Classical Tradition in Linguistics examines ancient, medieval, post-renaissance and modern conceptions of linguistics (i.e. the study of language and languages). It identifies a classical tradition extending from Ancient Greece to the twenty-first century which has spread from Europe to the other four inhabited continents. It is a story of successive stages of language study, each building upon, or reacting against, the preceding period."--BOOK JACKET.