Linguistica antica e linguistica di oggi

Abstract

The modern linguistics is built on ancient linguistics, in particular on Greek and Latin grammar: e.g. the concept of a sentence as truth value (i.e. as a combination of language terms enough for giving a judgement of true/false) which should be the reference point of all the parts of a speech (Chomsky, Montague) has been conceived already by Aristotle and developed by the Stoics with the ¢x…wma theory. Then starting from the criterion of ‘grammaticalization’ largely employed in modern linguistics the concept of L language (logical language) as metalinguistic approach to a language has been taken into account and connected with the ‘true/false criterion’. Such a criterion has been investigated from Mesopotamian corpora of laws and from Hittite, Greek and Latin laws and juridical activity. In this way, on the one hand, a linguistic attention (metalinguitics) has been produced and, on the other hand, some more complicated forms of language as optative, subjunctive, aspects and different syntactic structures have been developed in some languages as Vedic, Greek, Latin, Tocharian. Such an enrichment of some Indo-European languages produced on its side some adjustment in nominal, pronominal and verbal system in strong connexion with the structure of language (birth of the article in Greek and Romance Languages, derived from Latin, and, at the same time, reduction or death of nominal forms of the verb as the participle constructions and the AcI). On the other hand the problem of the changes introduced into a language as Latin is connected with the ‘core grammar’. The change remains firmly if and only if it enters in the ‘core grammar’ of a language. The ‘core grammar’ on its side can be acknowledged through the comparison of some bilingual Greek-Latin documents. Finally the doctrine of tropes and figures has been given as well as the development of the metaphor and of the group of figures connected to the “alloiosis”.