The first European grammar. European linguistics of the 16th–17th centuries. “port-royal grammar. Slavic spelling treatises

18.01.2022

Part 1
EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS XVI-XVII CENTURIES. GRAMMAR OF PORT-ROYAL

After Thomas of Erfurt, the theoretical approach to language did not develop significantly for about two centuries. However, it was precisely at this time that a new view of languages was gradually emerging, which ultimately distinguished the European linguistic tradition from all others. The idea of a plurality of languages and the possibility of comparing them emerged.

Of course, it has always been known that there are many languages; there have been isolated attempts to compare languages. However, as noted above, each of the linguistic traditions was explicitly or implicitly based on observations of a single language, which was always the language of the corresponding cultural tradition. It was possible to reorient from one language to another, as was the case in Ancient Rome and in Japan, it was possible, especially at the early stage of development of the tradition, to transfer into the language of one’s culture the categories of another, previously described language, but the formation of a tradition or even its variant was always accompanied by a closure in the study of one language. In medieval Europe, the Greek and Latin versions of the tradition had almost no contact with each other. In Western Europe, even in the 13th-14th centuries, when a developed written language already existed in a number of languages, Latin was still considered the only worthy object of study. Individual exceptions, such as the Icelandic phonetic treatises, were rare.

The situation began to change in some countries from the 15th century, in others from the 16th century. By this time, in a number of states the period of feudal fragmentation had ended, the formation of centralized states. Writing was actively developing in many languages, and both business and literary texts appeared, including works by such outstanding authors as Dante, F. Petrarch, and J. Chaucer. The further, the more the idea spread that Latin was not the only language of culture.

The national and linguistic situation in late medieval Europe had two features that influenced the development of further ideas about language. Firstly, Western Europe was not single state, but represented many states where in most cases they spoke different languages X. Moreover, among these states there was not a single one that could lay claim to dominance (like in the past the Roman Empire and the short-lived empire of Charlemagne). For this reason alone, no language could be perceived as as universal as Latin. French for a German or German for a Frenchman were foreign languages, A

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not the languages of the dominant state or a higher culture. Even in England, where in the XI-XV centuries. The language of the nobility was French, but then the English language finally won, including many French borrowings.

Secondly, all major languages Western Europe were genetically related, belonging to two groups of the Indo-European family - Romance and Germanic, and typologically quite close, possessing, in particular, similar systems of parts of speech and grammatical categories. From here, quite naturally, the idea arose about the fundamental similarity of languages that have only partial differences from each other. Instead of the idea of Latin as the only language of culture, the idea arose of several approximately equal in meaning and similar friends in other languages: French, Spanish, Italian, German, English, etc.

In addition to this main factor, there were two additional factors. Although in the Middle Ages they knew from hearsay about the existence, in addition to Latin, of two more great languages: Ancient Greek and Hebrew, very few actually knew these languages, and in modern terms, they were almost not included in the database for Western European language science. Now, in the era of humanism, these two languages began to be actively studied, and their features began to be taken into account, and the rather large typological differences between the Hebrew language and European ones expanded scientists’ ideas about what kinds of languages there are. Another factor was the so-called great geographical discoveries and strengthening trade ties with Eastern countries. Europeans had to deal with the languages of other peoples, the existence of which they did not suspect. It was necessary to communicate with the speakers of these languages, and the task arose of converting them to Christianity. And already in the 16th century. The first missionary grammars of “exotic” languages appear. cows, including Indian ones. At that time, however, European scientific thought was not yet ready for an adequate understanding of the peculiarities of the structure of such languages. Missionary grammars both then and later, up to the 20th century. described these languages exclusively in European categories, and theoretical grammars like the Port-Royal grammar did not take into account or hardly took into account the material of such languages.

The first grammars of new Western languages played much greater significance for the development of the European tradition and its transformation into a science of language. Spanish grammar and Italian languages appeared from the 15th century, French, English and German - from the 16th century. At first, some of them were written in Latin, but gradually in such grammars the languages described simultaneously became the languages in which they were written. These grammars had an educational focus. The task was to form and consolidate the norms of these languages, which was especially important after the invention of printing in the 15th century.

V. M. Alpatov

grammars simultaneously formulated the rules of the language and contained educational material, allowing you to learn these rules. At the same time, lexicography, which had previously been a backward part of the European tradition, began to actively develop. If previously glosses predominated, now, in connection with the task of creating norms for new languages, fairly complete normative dictionaries are being created. In connection with the preparation of such a dictionary for French in 1634 the French Academy was created, which exists to this day; it became the center of language normalization in the country.

The previously unified Western European tradition began to be divided into national branches. At first, until about the end of the 17th century, language research developed most actively in the Romance countries. In the 16th century After some break, the theory of language begins to develop again. The outstanding French scientist Pierre de la Rame (Ramus) (1515-1672, killed on St. Bartholomew's Night) completed the creation of a conceptual apparatus and terminology of syntax, begun by the milliners; It is he who owns the system of sentence members that has survived to this day. A theoretical grammar, written in Latin, but already taking into account the material of various languages, was created by F. Sanchez (Sanccius) (1550-1610) in Spain at the end of the 16th century. He already contained many ideas that were later reflected in the grammar of Port-Royal.

In the 17th century the search for the universal properties of language is even more active, especially since the expansion of interstate relations and the difficulties associated with the translation process revived ideas about creating “ world language”, common to everyone, and in order to create it, it was necessary to identify the properties that real languages have. The development of universal grammars was also influenced by the intellectual climate of the era, in particular, the popularity of the rationalistic philosophy of Rene Descartes (Cartesius) (1596-1650), although the name “Cartesian grammars”, known thanks to N. Chomsky, in relation to the grammar of Port-Royal and similar ones is not entirely accurate , since many “Cartesian” ideas were present in F. Sanchez and others even before R. Descartes.

Linguistics of the 17th century. basically went in the field of theory in two ways: deductive (the construction of artificial languages, which will be discussed below) and inductive, associated with an attempt to identify the general properties of reality existing languages. Not the first, but the most famous and popular example of the inductive approach was the so-called grammar of Port-Royal, first published in 1660 without indicating the names of its authors Antoine Arnault (1612-1694) and Claude Lanslot (1615-1695). This grammar has been reprinted several times and translated into different languages. In our country, several years ago, two of its editions were published almost simultaneously: The General Grammar and the Rational Grammar of Port-Royal. M., 1990; Port-Royal Grammar. L., 1991 (quotations below are from the Moscow edition).

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Grammar entered the history of science under a name that did not belong to the authors (“General and rational grammar” - the beginning of a very long original name). The convent of Port-Rho in those years was the center of progressive thought, and the cru was associated with it; scientists, which included the authors of grammar. The book was rez; a collaboration between two specialists of different professions. A. Arno was a logician and philosopher, co-author of a famous book on logic, and K. L; lo - one of the first professional linguists in France, a language teacher and the author of grammars; in particular, he was the first in France to teach Latin language like a foreigner, with an explanation! mi in French. This combination made it possible to

The authors of the grammar considered a purely descriptive language insufficient; approach to language and sought to create an explanatory grammar; it says that the impetus for its writing was “the path of POR reasonable explanations of many phenomena, or languages common to all; or inherent only in some of them.” Overall, the book

j The authors of grammar proceeded from the existence of a general logical; the foundations of languages, from which specific languages deviate to varying degrees. This idea itself existed in the 17th century. not new and took her to milliners. This idea was so new for A. Arno and K. Lanslot that it did not require special proof. For example, the grammar speaks of the “natural order of words” without evidence of the existence of such an order and even without its description (although it is enough that “natural” for them, as for the modists, was the order “predicate - predicate - object”).

The authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” differed from the milliners! as much with the idea of the basis of languages as with the understanding of what this basis represents. Among the modists, to put it in modern terms, the correspondence between surface and deep structures turned out to be one-to-one, or at least very close to it. They tried to attribute to every phenomenon recorded in Priscian's grammar philosophical meaning. In this mathematics this is no longer the case, primarily due to the expansion of the empirical base. If the modists proceeded from Latin alone, then here in almost every

V. M. Alpatov

The chapter discusses two languages: Latin and French; Spanish, Italian, ancient Greek and Hebrew are also mentioned quite often, and occasionally we talk about “northern”, that is, Germanic, and “eastern” languages; what is meant in the latter case is not entirely clear. WITH modern point In terms of languages, the number of languages is small, but compared to previous times, this was a major step forward.

However, in a number of other points, the authors of the grammar decisively move away from the Latin standard in favor of the French one. This is especially evident in connection with the article: “There were no articles at all in Latin. It was the absence of the article that led to the assertion ... that this particle was useless, although, I think, it would be very useful in order to make speech clearer and avoid numerous ambiguities.” And further: “Everyday life does not always agree with reason. Therefore, in the Greek language, the article is often used with proper names, even with the names of people... Among the Italians, this use has become common... We never put an article before proper names denoting people.” So, it turns out that “we”, the French, in this case “everyday life is consistent with reason,” but other peoples do not. The authors come from the French language and speaking about names with

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a preposition corresponding to “optional” adverbs in Latin, P in some other cases.

Reference structures corresponding to “reason” are in most cases constructed on the basis of either Latin or French: ka. But in principle, any languages can play this role, even “Eastern” ones, as they say where rationality is recognized from the confluence of the third person form with the stem of the verb. The authors apparently proceed from some a priori and not directly formulated ideas about “logic” and “rationality”, but in each case they take some real structures of one of the languages known to them

However, there are cases when A. Arnaud and C. Lanslau are distracted

Regarding it, A. Arno and K. Lanslot write: “Three judgments contained in this sentence pass through my mind. For I affirm: 1) that God is invisible; 2) that he created the world, 3) that the world is visible. From this! three sentences, the second is the main and main one, while the first and third are subordinate clauses... included in the main

If we ignore the archaic terms for our era, vro; “judgment”, such a statement seems very modern. The author of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” here clearly distinguishes between formal and semantic structure, which were not actually distinguished by the Yodists, but were always clearly distinguished by many linguists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Otta. moving from an explanation of the superficial phenomena of the French language (this section of grammar deals with only one language), he moves on to a description of their semantics, which does not have direct formal correspondences. Back in the 17th century. they came to the same conclusions as modern linguists. However, as already mentioned, more often in grammar! not “logical”, but in fact semantic structure corresponds to some surface structure of a particular language.

In some other places in the book, the synonymy of linguistic expressions is spoken of, of which one is recognized as more appropriate

V. M. Alpatov

logic (although it is not always clear whether we are talking about complete compliance), and something else can be used instead for the sake of “the desire of people to shorten speech” or “for the grace of speech.” More often in these cases, phenomena of the French language are taken as a standard. In such cases, N. Chomsky found an analogue of transformation rules, which is obvious modernization, but there is undoubtedly some similarity here. However, the synonymy of some original and non-original expressions was discussed long before the 17th century: one can point to the phenomenon of ellipsis, which has been considered this way since antiquity.

Of course, A. Arnaud and C. Lanslot did not have a clear idea of where their “rational basis of grammar” of all languages comes from. But you can’t go to the authors of the 17th century. make the same demands as for linguists of the 20th century. The very idea of establishing common properties of human languages, based on their fundamental equality (even if in reality such properties turn out to be highly Romanized), represented an important milestone in the development of linguistic ideas.

The fate of the "Grammar of Port-Royal" was very difficult. At first it became very popular and was considered exemplary in France until late XVIII - early XIX c., she was also known outside of France. The authors of subsequent “logical” and “rational” grammars imitated it. However, after the emergence of a new, comparative-historical scientific paradigm, precisely because of its popularity, it began to be perceived as an example of a “mental, aprioristic, childish”, in the words of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, direction in linguistics, squeezing language into logical schemes; Often it was also credited with what it was directed against: strict adherence to the Latin standard. The situation did not change in the first half of the 20th century. Among her critics were many prominent scientists: I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, L. Bloomfield, C. Hockett and others, who often judged her at second hand. By this time the empirical base general linguistics expanded greatly, and the “Grammar of Port-Royal” began to be perceived as too clearly mixing the universal properties of the language with the features of the Romance languages.

New interest in the book arose in the 60s. XX century In many ways, N. Chomsky played a role here, declaring its authors his predecessors. His opponents rightly point out that he greatly modernized the ideas of grammar and considered it outside the historical context, but indeed much in the book, especially the idea of “structures of thought” common to all languages, turned out to be consonant with Chomskyan linguistics (see the corresponding chapter ). However, the revival of interest in the “Grammar of Port-Royal” cannot be reduced only to the authority of N. Chomsky. In the mid-60s. Several specialists began to analyze and comment on it independently of each other, and N. Chomsky turned out to be only one of them. "Rehabilitation"

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The book was connected with the general trends in the world development of languages! sticks. One of its commentators, R. Lakoff, rightly called the “Grammar of Port-Royal” “an old grammar that long had a bad reputation among linguists, but has recently restored the prestige that it had in its time.”

Let us note one more feature of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”, which also influenced! I worry about her future reputation. Like the linguistic works of the previous time, it was purely synchronous. The “rational basis” of all languages is considered as something unchangeable, and historical development it's just not included in the concept. The Latin and French languages are considered in the book as two different languages, and not as an ancestor language and a descendant language (however, the origin of the French language from Latin was not as obvious then as it is now).

Another, deductive approach to language was found in the 17th century. a reflection of attempts to construct an artificial “ideal” language, which has been popular for a long time. Many of the greatest thinkers of this century showed interest in these issues: F. Bacon, R. Descartes, J. A. Comenius, and later G. V. Leibnis were especially actively involved in this in England. The first chairman of the Royal Society of London, J. Wilkin (1614-1672), worked a lot in this area, and one of the works of this kind belongs to Isaac Newton, who wrote it in 1661 at the age of 18; the work of I. Newton is available in Russian translation: Semiotics and Informatics, vol. 28. M., 1986

The authors of such projects proceeded from two postulates. Firstly, the existence of multiple languages is a great inconvenience that must be overcome. Secondly, every thing by nature has a correct name that reflects its essence. The second postulate, as already noted, is characteristic of different linguistic traditions in their early stages. However, this approach, reflected in early etymologies, was based on the belonging of the “correct names” to some real language: ancient Greek, Sanskrit, etc. This was already the case in the time of I. Newton! impossible, although authors of artificial languages sometimes come across the idea of Hebrew as the primary language. In the 17th century the prevailing idea was that the biblical legend of the Babylonian confusion of languages reflected reality. Therefore, the task of “devilonization” of the language was openly set. The search for a universal language was closely connected with the search for a single connecting world harmony, which often took on, including I. Newton, a mystical character. The rapid successes of the natural sciences were seen as a means to achieve very archaic goals.

This also happened in the approach to language. To create an “ideal language,” understood primarily as a “language of meanings,” it was necessary to describe these meanings. There is also interest in the description of semantics in the Port Royale Grammar, but much there was obscured by the specific forms of the languages known to its authors. Here, by virtue of the very common task needed a distraction structural features real languages and reach a deep level.

V. M. Alpatov

I. Newton wrote: “The dialects of individual languages differ so greatly that the universal Language cannot be derived from them as surely as from the nature of the things themselves, which is the same for all peoples and on the basis of which the whole Language was created in the beginning.” His project was about compiling an alphabetical list of all “substances” in each language, then each element of the list should be associated with an element of a universal language. Thus, the universal language simply reflected the lexical structure of the original natural language(I. Newton actually talks about English language) with only one difference: in English “substances” can be expressed in phrases, in an “ideal language” they must be expressed in words. However, the world described by language is not limited to “substances”. Besides simple concepts there are complex ones. In natural languages, derived concepts are often denoted using certain word-formation models. This was taken into account by the creators of artificial languages, who, however, tried to distract from the irregularity inherent in natural languages. Certain typical semantic relations were identified: agent, location, negation, diminutive, etc., which should have received universal expression in a universal language. At the same time, semantic relationships were established between words, including formally non-derivative ones; components of the meaning of certain words were identified, which in the “ideal language”, for the sake of regularity, should have been designated separately. Thus, already in the 17th century. to one degree or another, they were engaged in what in modern linguistics is called component analysis and the study of lexical functions.

In artificial languages there had to be a grammar, in particular, a certain set of grammatical categories. In this case, naturally, they took as a basis a set of categories of known European languages, most often Latin, but with certain adjustments: the category of gender was excluded as illogical. The contrast of parts of speech in a number of projects, including those of I. Newton and J. Wilkins, was not considered necessary: their words acted as names, and the designations of actions or states were made through the addition of regular word-forming elements. Nevertheless, such names could, if necessary, have indicators of tense or mood.

Trying to abstract from the peculiarities of specific languages and in no case allowing any direct borrowing from them into their languages, the designers of universal languages could not distract from the limited range of language systems known to them. Primary “substances” were identified on the basis of words and phrases of European languages. The basis of word formation was the models that actually existed in these languages. Grammatical categories are also taken from these languages, but in a somewhat reduced form.

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At the same time, the creators of universal languages, based on an analysis of the phenomena of Romance and Germanic languages with the addition of Hebrew, approached a number of issues deeper than the authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”. First of all, this relates to semantic analysis. Modern researcher of linguistic construction of the 17th century. L.V. Knorina rightly wrote: “Artificial languages are descriptions of the deep semantics of a natural language, performed at an outstanding level.”

However, this side of the activity of this group of scientists was not noticed by contemporaries. All studies of this kind saw only the creation of “ideal languages” as such. And the task of “devilonizing” the linguistic world was too clearly utopian. The projects of “ideal languages” themselves were often associated either with the mystical search for world harmony, or with attempts to restructure society on utopian foundations; It is not for nothing that one of the creators of the universal language was the famous utopian Tommaso Campanella, author of “The City of the Sun.” When the idea of creating a world language faded into the background (which happened already with early XVIII c.), all mentioned projects have been forgotten. In particular, I. Newton’s project, which remained in manuscript, was first published in the original only in 1957. The fate of all this kind of research turned out to be much worse than the fate of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”, which never completely disappeared from linguistic use. They had no influence on the linguistics of the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, and only in recent decades the works of J. Wilkins, I. Newton and others began to attract attention and it turned out that much of them was relevant.

The very idea of creating a world language, having gone to the periphery of the science of language, continued to develop later. Some linguists were fond of it, the most famous of whom was N. Ya. Marr, and from the second half of the 19th century V. it was reflected in the creation of Esperanto and other auxiliary languages. However, their creators no longer sought to reflect the general structure in the structures of words and used, albeit in a modified form, real roots and words of real languages.

LITERATURE

Alpatov V. M. “Grammar of Port-Royal” and modern linguistics (Towards the publication of Russian publications) // Questions of linguistics, 1992, No. 2, p. 57-68.

Knorina L.V. The nature of language in the linguistic construction of the 17th century // Questions of linguistics, 1995, No. 2, p. 110-120.
part 1

INTRODUCTION.

The Grammar of Port-Royal is one of the most significant and famous texts of the world linguistic and philological heritage.
This small book, published in its first edition in Paris in 1660, served as a turning point in the development of European linguistic thought.
The authors of the grammar are the outstanding logician and Jansenist philosopher A. Arno and the wonderful grammarian Kl. Lanslo managed to present in a concise, almost aphoristic form the foundations of a new approach to grammar. This approach is based on the analysis of language from the standpoint of the “mind”, its capabilities and basic “operations”
(hence the definition of grammar as “rational”). The rational aspect of language reflects, according to the authors of Port-Royal, what is common in the structure of all languages
(hence the definition of grammar as “general”). The grammar of Port-Royal laid the foundation for the tradition of “grammatical science” and, following its example, in Europe in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Many European and non-European languages have been described. This model was widely used in school teaching. As a philosophical and logical-linguistic work, “Grammar” has not lost its significance even today.
It is of interest to linguists of all profiles, philosophers, logicians, historians of science and culture, and philological teachers.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE CREATION OF THE “PORT-ROYAL GRAMMAR”.

Of course, it has always been known that there are many languages; there have been isolated attempts to compare languages. However, as noted above, each of the linguistic traditions was explicitly or implicitly based on observations of a single language, which was always the language of the corresponding cultural tradition. It was possible to reorient from one language to another, as was the case in Ancient Rome and Japan; it was possible, especially at the early stage of development of a tradition, to transfer the categories of another, previously described language into the language of one’s culture, but the formation of a tradition or even its variant was always accompanied by being locked into learning one language. In medieval Europe, the Greek and Latin versions of the tradition had almost no contact with each other. In Western Europe, even in the 13th-14th centuries, when a developed written language already existed in a number of languages, Latin was still considered the only worthy object of study. Individual exceptions, such as the Icelandic phonetic treatises, were rare.

The situation began to change in some countries from the 15th century, in others from the 16th century. By this time, the period of feudal fragmentation had ended in a number of states, and the formation of centralized states was underway. Writing was actively developing in many languages, and both business and literary texts appeared, including works by such outstanding authors as Dante, F. Petrarch, and J. Chaucer. The further, the more the idea spread that Latin was not the only language of culture.

The national and linguistic situation in late medieval Europe had two features that influenced the development of further ideas about language. Firstly, Western Europe did not constitute a single state, but was composed of many states, where in most cases different languages were spoken. Moreover, among these states there was not a single one that could lay claim to dominance (like in the past the Roman Empire and the short-lived empire of Charlemagne). For this reason alone, no language could be perceived as as universal as Latin. French for a German or German for a Frenchman were foreign languages, not the languages of the dominant state or a higher culture. Even in England, where in the XI-XV centuries. The language of the nobility was French, but then the English language finally won, including many French borrowings.

Secondly, all the main languages of Western Europe were genetically related, belonging to two groups of the Indo-European family - Romance and Germanic, and typologically quite close, possessing, in particular, similar systems of parts of speech and grammatical categories. From here, quite naturally, the idea arose about the fundamental similarity of languages that have only partial differences from each other. Instead of the idea of Latin as the only language of culture, the idea of several languages of approximately equal importance and similar to each other arose: French, Spanish, Italian, German, English, etc.

In addition to this main factor, there were two additional factors. Although in the Middle Ages they knew from hearsay about the existence, in addition to Latin, of two more great languages: Ancient Greek and Hebrew, very few actually knew these languages, and in modern terms, they were almost not included in the database for Western European language science. Now, in the era of humanism, these two languages began to be actively studied, and their features began to be taken into account, and the rather large typological differences between the Hebrew language and European ones expanded scientists’ ideas about what kinds of languages there are. Another factor was the so-called great geographical discoveries and strengthening trade ties with the countries of the East.
Europeans had to deal with the languages of other peoples, the existence of which they did not suspect. It was necessary to communicate with the speakers of these languages, and the task arose of converting them to Christianity. And already in the 16th century. The first missionary grammars of “exotic” languages, including Indian ones, appear. At that time, however, European scientific thought was not yet ready for an adequate understanding of the peculiarities of the structure of such languages. Missionary grammars both then and later, up to the 20th century. described these languages exclusively in European categories, and theoretical grammars like the grammar of Por-
The piano did not take into account or almost did not take into account the material of such languages.

The first grammars of new Western languages played much greater significance for the development of the European tradition and its transformation into a science of language. The grammars of Spanish and Italian appeared in the 15th century, French, English and German - in the 16th century. At first, some of them were written in Latin, but gradually in such grammars the languages described simultaneously became the languages in which they were written. These grammars had an educational focus. The task was to form and consolidate the norms of these languages, which was especially important after the invention in the 15th century. book printing. The grammars simultaneously formulated the rules of the language and contained educational material that made it possible to learn these rules. At the same time, lexicography, which previously constituted a backward part of the European tradition, began to actively develop. If previously glosses predominated, now, in connection with the task of creating norms for new languages, fairly complete normative dictionaries are being created. In connection with the preparation of such a dictionary for the French language, the French Academy was created in 1634, which exists to this day; it became the center of language normalization in the country.

The previously unified Western European tradition began to be divided into national branches. At first, until about the end of the 17th century, language research developed most actively in the Romance countries. In the 16th century After some break, the theory of language begins to develop again. The outstanding French scientist Pierre de la Rame (Ramus) (1515-1672, killed in
St. Bartholomew's Night) completed the creation of a conceptual apparatus and terminology of syntax, begun by the milliners; It is he who owns the system of sentence members that has survived to this day. The theoretical grammar, written in Latin, but already taking into account the material of various languages, was created by F. Sanchez
(Sancius) (1550-1610) in Spain at the end of the 16th century. He already contained many ideas that were later reflected in the grammar of Port-Royal.

In the 17th century the search for universal properties of language is even more active, especially since the expansion of interstate relations and difficulties associated with the translation process revived ideas about creating a “world language” common to everyone, and in order to create it, it was necessary to identify the properties that real languages have . The development of universal grammars was also influenced by the intellectual climate of the era, in particular, the popularity of the rationalistic philosophy of Rene Descartes (Cartesius) (1596-1650), although the name “Cartesian grammars”, known thanks to N. Chomsky, in relation to the grammar of Port-Royal and similar ones is not entirely accurate , since many “Cartesian” ideas were present in F. Sanchez and others even before R.
Descartes.

Linguistics of the 17th century. basically went in the field of theory in two ways: deductive (construction of artificial languages) and inductive, associated with an attempt to identify the general properties of real-life languages. Not the first, but the most famous and popular example of the inductive approach was the so-called “Grammar of Port-Royal”, first published in 1660 without indicating the names of its authors Antoine Arnault (1612-1694) and Claude Lanslot (1615-1695).

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE “GRAMMAR OF PORT-ROYAL”.

“The Grammar of Port-Royal” entered the history of science under a title that did not belong to the authors (“Grammar general and rational” - the beginning of a very long original title). The convent of Port-Rho in those years was a center of advanced thought, and was associated with it by a circle of scholars, which included the authors of the grammar. The book was the result of a collaboration between two specialists from different professions. A. Arno was a logician and philosopher, co-author of a famous book on logic, and C. Lanslot was one of the first professional linguists in France, a language teacher and author of grammars; in particular, he was the first in France to teach Latin as a foreign language, with explanations in French. This combination made it possible to explain the high theoretical level for that time with a fairly good knowledge of the material in several languages.

The authors of the grammar considered a purely descriptive approach to language insufficient and sought to create an explanatory grammar, it said that the impetus for its writing was “the path of reasonable explanations of many phenomena, either common to all languages, or inherent only in some of them.”
In general, in the book the explanatory approach prevails over both the descriptive and the normative. However, a number of sections dedicated to the French language contain normative rules. By 1660, the norms of the French language were generally formed, but many details still remained unpolished. However, the significance of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” is primarily not in the instructions, but in the explanation of previously described phenomena of language.

The authors of grammar proceeded from the existence of a common logical basis languages, from which specific languages deviate to varying degrees. This idea itself existed in the 17th century. not new and went back to the milliners. This idea for A. Arno and K. Lanslo was so convincing that it did not require special evidence. For example, grammar speaks of the “natural order of words” without evidence of the existence of such an order and even without its description (although it is enough that “natural” for them, as for the modists, was the order “subject - predicate - object”).

The authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” differed from the modists not so much in the very idea of the basis of languages, but in their understanding of what this basis is. Among the modists, to use modern language, the correspondence between surface and deep structures turned out to be one-to-one, or at least very close to it. They tried to attribute a philosophical meaning to every phenomenon recorded in Priscian’s grammar. In this grammar this is no longer the case, primarily due to the expansion of the empirical base. If the milliners started from Latin alone, here almost every chapter discusses two languages: Latin and French; Spanish, Italian, ancient Greek and Hebrew are also mentioned quite often, and occasionally we talk about the “northern”, that is, Germanic, and “ oriental languages; what is meant in the latter case is not entirely clear. From a modern point of view, the number of languages is small, but compared to previous times, this was a major step forward.

The orientation towards the Latin standard was not yet completely overcome in grammar, which is especially noticeable in the section on cases and prepositions. Although it is said that “of all languages, only Greek and Latin have cases of names in the full sense of the word,” the Latin case system is taken as the standard, and it is this system that is recognized as “logical.” In ancient Greek, which has one less case compared to Latin, it is proposed to consider that the missing ablative “is also present in Greek names, although it always coincides with the dative.” For the French language, the expression of certain “deep” cases is seen in the use of prepositions or the omission of the article. A more complex case is made up of adjectives for A. Arnaud and C. Lanslot. In Latin grammars it was customary to consider nouns and adjectives as one part of speech - a name, but for French and other new languages
In Europe, these two classes had to be distinguished; a compromise approach was adopted in grammar: one part of speech is distinguished - the name - with two subclasses. This interpretation is also projected onto semantics: words are distinguished
"clear" meanings separating nouns and adjectives, and
“vague” meanings common to them: the words red and redness have in common
"vague" meaning and different - "clear". The introduction of “clear” meanings indicates a departure from the Latin standard, the introduction of “vague” ones indicates its partial preservation (however, there is another interpretation, according to which the separation of two types of meanings has a deep philosophical meaning).
However, in a number of other points, the authors of the grammar decisively move away from the Latin standard in favor of the French one. This is especially evident in connection with the article: “There were no articles at all in Latin. It was the absence of the article that led to the assertion ... that this particle was useless, although, I think, it would be very useful in order to make speech clearer and avoid numerous ambiguities.” And further: “Everyday life does not always agree with reason. Therefore, in the Greek language, the article is often used with proper names, even with the names of people... Among Italians, this use has become common... We never put an article before proper names denoting people.” So, it turns out that “we”, the French, in this case “everyday life is consistent with reason,” but other peoples do not. The authors come from the French language when speaking about names with a preposition, corresponding to “optional” adverbs in Latin, in some other cases.

Reference structures corresponding to “reason” are in most cases constructed on the basis of either Latin or French. But in principle, any languages can play this role, including “Eastern” ones, as they say where the rationality of the coincidence of the third person form with the stem of the verb is recognized. The authors, apparently, proceed from some a priori and not directly formulated ideas about “logicality” and
“rationality”, but in each case they take some real structures of one of the languages they know (sometimes, as with adjectives, from the contamination of the structures of two languages)

However, there are cases when A. Arnaud and C. Lanslot abstract from the characteristics of specific languages and approach semantic analysis. Here the most important are the sections devoted to relatively peripheral issues: relative pronouns, adverbs, ellipsis, etc. One of the most famous passages of the book is a fragment of the section on relative pronouns, where the phrase is analyzed: Dieu invisible a le monde visible “The Invisible God created the visible world." Regarding this, A. Arno and K.
Lanslo write: “Three judgments contained in this sentence pass through my mind. For I affirm: 1) that God is invisible; 2) that he created the world, 3) that the world is visible. Of these three sentences, the second is the main and main one, while the first and third are subordinate clauses... included in the main as its constituent parts; in this case, the first sentence forms part of the subject, and the last - part of the attribute of this sentence. So, similar subordinate clauses are present only in our consciousness, but are not expressed in words, as in the proposed example. But often we express these sentences in speech. This is why the relative pronoun is used.”

If we ignore terms that are archaic for our era like “judgment,” such a statement seems very modern. The authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” here clearly distinguish between formal and semantic structure, which were not actually distinguished by the modists, but were not always clearly distinguished by many linguists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting from an explanation of the superficial phenomena of the French language (in this section of grammar we are talking about only one language), he proceeds to a description of their semantics, which does not have direct formal correspondences. Back in the 17th century. they came to the same conclusions as many modern linguists. However, as already mentioned, more often in grammar
“logical”, and in fact semantic structure corresponds to some surface structure of a particular language.

In some other places of the book, the synonymy of linguistic expressions is spoken of, of which one is recognized as more consistent with logic (although it is not always clear whether we are talking about complete compliance), and the other can be used instead for the sake of “the desire of people to shorten speech” or “for the grace of speech " More often in these cases, phenomena of the French language are taken as a standard. However, the synonymy of some original and non-original expressions was discussed long before the 17th century: one can point to the phenomenon of ellipsis, which has been considered this way since antiquity.

CONCLUSION.

The fate of the "Grammar of Port-Royal" was very difficult. At first it became very popular and was considered exemplary in France until the end of the 18th century.
XIX century, it was also known outside of France. Authors of subsequent
"logical" and "rational" grammarians imitated it. However, after the emergence of a new, comparative-historical scientific paradigm, precisely because of its popularity, it began to be perceived as an example of a “mental, aprioristic, childish”, in the words of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, direction in linguistics, squeezing language into logical schemes; Often it was also credited with what it was directed against: strict adherence to the Latin standard. The situation did not change in the first half of the 20th century. Among her critics were many prominent scientists: I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, L.
Bloomfield, C. Hockett and others, who often judged it at second hand. By this time, the empirical base of general linguistics had greatly expanded, and
The "Grammar of Port-Royal" began to be perceived as too clearly mixing the universal properties of the language with the peculiarities of the Romance languages.

New interest in the book arose in the 60s. XX century In many ways, N. Chomsky played a role here, declaring its authors his predecessors. His opponents rightly point out that he greatly modernized the ideas of grammar and considered it outside the historical context, but there is really a lot in the book, first of all, the idea that all languages have common
“structures of thought” turned out to be consonant with Chomskyan linguistics. However, the revival of interest in the “Grammar of Port-Royal” cannot be reduced only to the authority of N. Chomsky. In the mid-60s. Several specialists began to analyze and comment on it independently of each other, and N.
Chomsky turned out to be just one of them. The “rehabilitation” of the book was associated with the general trends in the global development of linguistics. One of her commentators,
R. Lakoff rightly called the Port-Royal Grammar “an old grammar that had long had a bad reputation among linguists, but has recently regained the prestige it had in its time.”

Let us note one more feature of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”, which also influenced its subsequent reputation. Like the linguistic works of the previous time, it was purely synchronic, the “Rational Basis” of all languages is considered as something unchangeable, and the factor of historical development is simply not included in the concept. Latin and French are treated in the book as two different languages, and not as an ancestor language and a descendant language (however, the origin of the French language from Latin was not as obvious then as it is now).

It should be noted that the deductive approach to language, mentioned above and reflected in attempts to construct an artificial “ideal language,” has been popular for a long time. Many of the greatest thinkers of the 17th century showed interest in it: F. Bacon, R. Descartes, I. Newton, etc. However, when the idea of creating a world language faded into the background (which happened already from the beginning of the 18th century), all the mentioned projects forgot. In particular, project I.
Newton, which remained in the manuscript, was first published in the original only in 1957. The fate of all this kind of research turned out to be much worse than the fate of the “Grammar of Porto”, which never completely disappeared from linguistic use.
Royal"

LIST OF REFERENCES USED.

1. Alpatov V. M. “Grammar of Port-Royal” and modern linguistics (Towards the publication of Russian publications) // Questions of linguistics, 1992, No. 2, p. 57-68.
2. General and rational grammar of Port-Royal.-M.: Progress, 1990.

EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS OF THE XVI-XVII CENTURIES. "GRAMMAR OF PORT-ROYAL"

Of course, it has always been known that there are many languages; there have been isolated attempts to compare languages. However, as noted above, each of the linguistic traditions was explicitly or implicitly based on observations of a single language, which was always the language of the corresponding cultural tradition. It was possible to reorient from one language to another, as was the case in Ancient Rome and Japan; it was possible, especially at the early stage of the development of a tradition, to transfer the categories of another, previously described language into the language of one’s culture, but the formation of a tradition or even its variant was always accompanied by being locked into learning one language. In medieval Europe, the Greek and Latin versions of the tradition had almost no contact with each other. In Western Europe, even in the 13th-14th centuries, when developed writing and literature already existed in a number of languages, Latin was still considered the only worthy object of study. Individual exceptions, such as the Icelandic phonetic treatises, were rare.

The situation began to change in some countries from the 15th century, in others - from the 16th century. By this time, the period of feudal fragmentation had ended in a number of states, and the formation of centralized states was underway. In many languages since the 12th-14th centuries. Writing actively developed, both business and literary texts appeared, including works by such outstanding authors as Dante, F. Petrarch, J. Chaucer. The further, the more the idea spread that Latin was not the only language of culture.

The national and linguistic situation in late medieval Europe had two features that influenced the development of further ideas about language. Firstly, Western Europe did not constitute a single state, but was composed of many states, where in most cases different languages were spoken. Moreover, among these states there was not a single one that could lay claim to dominance (like in the past the Roman Empire and the short-lived empire of Charlemagne). For this reason alone, no language could be perceived as as universal as Latin. French for a German or German for a Frenchman were foreign languages, not the languages of the dominant state or a higher culture. Even in England, where in the XI-XIV centuries. The language of the nobility was French, but then the English language finally won, including many French borrowings.

In addition to this main factor, there were two additional factors. Although in the Middle Ages they knew from hearsay about the existence, in addition to Latin, of two more great languages: Ancient Greek and Hebrew, very few actually knew these languages, and, in modern terms, they were almost not included in the database for Western European science of language. In the era of humanism, these two languages began to be actively studied, and their features began to be taken into account, and the rather large typological differences between the Hebrew language and European ones expanded scientists’ understanding of what languages are like. Another factor was the so-called Great Geographical Discoveries and the strengthening of trade ties with the countries of the East. Europeans had to deal with the languages of other peoples, the existence of which they did not suspect. It was necessary to communicate with the speakers of these languages, and the task arose of converting them to Christianity. And already in the 16th century. The first missionary grammars of “exotic” languages, including Indian ones, appear. At that time, however, European scientific thought was not yet ready to adequately understand the peculiarities of the structure of such languages. Missionary grammars both then and later, up to the 20th century, described these languages exclusively in European categories, and theoretical grammars like the Port-Royal grammar did not take into account or almost did not take into account the material of such languages.

The first grammars of new Western languages were much more important for the development of the European tradition and its transformation into a science of language. The grammars of Spanish and Italian appeared in the 15th century, French, English and German - in the 16th century. At first, some of them were written in Latin, but gradually in such grammars the languages described simultaneously became the languages in which they were written. These grammars had an educational focus. The task was to form and consolidate the norms of these languages, which became especially important after the invention in the 15th century. book printing. The grammars simultaneously formulated the rules of the language and contained educational material that made it possible to learn these rules. At the same time, lexicography, which previously constituted a backward part of the European tradition, was actively developing. If previously glosses predominated, now, in connection with the task of creating norms for new languages, fairly complete normative dictionaries are collected. In connection with the preparation of such a dictionary for the French language, the French Academy was opened in 1634, which exists to this day; it became the center of language normalization in the country.

The previously unified Western European tradition began to be divided into national branches. At first, until about the end of the 17th century, language research developed most actively in the Romance countries. In the 16th century After some break, the theory of language begins to develop again. The outstanding French scientist Pierre de la Rame (Ramus) (1515-1572, killed on St. Bartholomew's Night) completed the creation of a conceptual apparatus and terminology of syntax, begun by the milliners; It is he who owns the system of sentence members that has survived to this day. A theoretical grammar, written in Latin, but already taking into account the material of various languages, was created by Francisco Sanchez (Sanccius) (1523-1601) in Spain at the end of the 16th century. He already contained many ideas that were later reflected in the “Grammar of Port-Royal”.

In the 17th century the search for universal properties of language is even more active, especially since the expansion of interstate relations and difficulties associated with the translation process revived ideas about creating a “world language” common to everyone, and in order to create it, it was necessary to identify the properties that real languages have . The development of universal grammars was also influenced by the intellectual climate of the era, in particular the popularity of the rationalistic philosophy of Rene Descartes (Cartesius) (1596-1650), although the name “Cartesian grammars”, known thanks to N. Chomsky, in relation to the “Grammar of Port-Royal” and similar ones is not entirely exactly, since many “Cartesian” ideas were present in F. Sanchez and others even before R. Descartes.

Linguistics of the 17th century. went in the field of theory mainly in two ways: deductive (the construction of artificial languages, which will be discussed below) and inductive, associated with an attempt to identify the general properties of real-life languages. Not the first, but the most famous and popular example of the inductive approach was the so-called “Grammar of Port-Royal”, first published in 1660 without indicating the names of its authors Antoine Arnault (1612-1694) and Claude Lanslot (1615-1695). This grammar has been reprinted several times and translated into different languages.

Grammar entered the history of science under a name that did not belong to its authors (“General and rational grammar” is the beginning of its very long real name). The convent of Port-Royal in those years was the center of advanced thought, and a circle of scientists was associated with it, which included the authors of the grammar. The book was the result of a collaboration between two specialists from different professions. A. Arno was a logician and philosopher, co-author of a famous book on logic, and C. Lanslot was one of the first professional linguists in France, a language teacher and author of grammars; in particular, he was the first in France to teach Latin as a foreign language, with explanations in French. This combination made it possible to combine high theoretical knowledge for that time with a fairly good knowledge of material in several languages.

The authors of the grammar considered a purely descriptive approach to language insufficient and sought to create an explanatory grammar. It says that the impetus for its writing was “the search for reasonable explanations of many phenomena, either common to all languages, or inherent only in some of them.” In general, in the book the explanatory approach prevails over both the descriptive and the normative. However, a number of sections devoted to the French language also contain regulatory rules. By 1660, the norms of the French language were generally formed, but many details still remained unpolished. Therefore, the grammar more than once talks about which phrases should be “recommended for use.” However, the significance of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” is primarily not in the instructions, but in the explanations of previously described phenomena of language.

The authors of grammar proceeded from the existence of a general logical basis of languages, from which specific languages deviate to varying degrees. This idea itself existed in the 17th century. not new and went back to the milliners. For Arno and Lanslo it was so common that it did not require special proof. For example, the grammar speaks of the “natural order of words” without evidence of the existence of such an order and even without its description (although it is quite clear that the order “natural” for them, as for the modists, was “subject - predicate - object”).

The authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” differed from the modists not so much in the very idea of the basis of languages, but in their understanding of what this basis is. Among the modists, to use modern language, the correspondence between surface and deep structures turned out to be one-to-one or, at least, very close to it. They tried to attribute a philosophical meaning to every phenomenon recorded in Priscian’s grammar. In this grammar this is no longer the case, primarily due to the expansion of the empirical base. If the milliners started from one Latin language, then here almost every chapter discusses two languages: Latin and French; Spanish, Italian, ancient Greek and Hebrew are also mentioned quite often, and occasionally we talk about the “northern” ones, i.e. Germanic, and about “eastern” languages; what is meant in the latter case is not entirely clear. From a modern point of view, the number of languages is small, but compared to previous times, this was a major step forward.

The orientation towards the Latin standard in the “Grammar of Port-Royal” was not yet completely overcome, which is especially noticeable in the section on cases and prepositions. Although it is said that “of all languages, only Greek and Latin have cases of names in the full sense of the word,” the Latin case system is taken as the standard, and it is this system that is recognized as “logical.” In the ancient Greek language, which has one less case compared to Latin, it is proposed to consider that the missing ablative “is also present in Greek names, although it always coincides with the dative.” For the French language, the expression of certain “deep” cases is seen in the use of prepositions or the omission of the article. A more complex case is made up of adjectives for Arno and Lanslot. In Latin grammars, it was customary to consider nouns and adjectives as one part of speech - a name, but for French and other new languages of Europe these two classes had to be distinguished. The grammar adopts a compromise approach: one part of speech is distinguished - the name - with two subclasses. This interpretation is also projected onto semantics: words have “clear” meanings that separate nouns and adjectives, and “vague” meanings that are common to them: words red And redness have a common “vague” meaning and different “clear” ones. The introduction of “clear” meanings indicates a departure from the Latin standard, the introduction of “vague” ones indicates its partial preservation (however, there is another interpretation, according to which the separation of two types of meanings has a deep philosophical meaning).

Reference structures corresponding to “reason” are in most cases constructed on the basis of either Latin or French. But in principle, any languages can play this role, including “Eastern” ones, as they say where the rationality of the coincidence of the third person form with the stem of the verb is recognized. The authors, apparently, start from some a priori and directly unformulated ideas about “logicality” and “rationality,” but in each case they take some real structures of one of the languages known to them (sometimes, as with adjectives, from the contamination of the structures of two languages).

However, there are cases when Arnaud and Lansleau abstract from the characteristics of specific languages and approach semantic analysis. Here the most important sections are those devoted to relatively peripheral issues: relative pronouns, adverbs, ellipsis, etc. One of the most famous passages in the book is that part of the section on relative pronouns where the phrase is analyzed Dieu invisible a le monde visible“The invisible god created the visible world.”

Regarding it, Arnault and Lanslot write: “Three judgments contained in this sentence pass through my mind. For I affirm: 1) that God is invisible; 2) that he created the world, 3) that the world is visible. Of these three sentences, the second is the main and main one, while the first and third are subordinate clauses... included in the main as its constituent parts; in this case, the first sentence forms part of the subject, and the last - part of the attribute of this sentence. So, such subordinate clauses are present only in our minds, but are not expressed in words, as in the proposed example. But often we express these sentences in speech. This is why the relative pronoun is used.”

If we ignore terms that are archaic for our era like “judgment,” such a statement seems very modern. The authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal” here clearly distinguish between formal and semantic structures, which were not actually distinguished by the modists, but were not always clearly distinguished by many linguists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting from an explanation of the superficial phenomena of the French language (in this section of grammar we are talking about only one language), they move on to a description of their semantics, which does not have direct formal correspondences. Back in the 17th century. they came to the same conclusions as many modern linguists. However, as already mentioned, more often in grammar the “logical”, and in fact semantic structure corresponds to some surface structure of a particular language.

In some other places of the book, the synonymy of linguistic expressions is spoken of, of which one is recognized as more consistent with logic (although it is not always clear whether we are talking about complete compliance), and the other can be used instead for the sake of “the desire of people to shorten speech” or “for the grace of speech " More often in these cases, phenomena of the French language are taken as a standard. In such cases, N. Chomsky found an analogue of transformation rules, which is obvious modernization, but there are undoubtedly some similarities here. However, the synonymy of some original and non-original expressions was discussed long before the 17th century. One can point to the phenomenon of ellipsis, which has been considered this way since Antiquity.

Of course, Arnauld and Lanslot did not have a clear idea of where their “rational basis of grammar” of all languages came from. But you can’t go to the authors of the 17th century. make the same demands as for linguists of the 20th century. The very idea of establishing common properties of human languages, based on their fundamental equality (even if in reality such properties turn out to be highly Romanized), represented an important milestone in the development of linguistic ideas.

The fate of the "Grammar of Port-Royal" was very difficult. At first it became very popular and was considered exemplary in France until the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries; it was also known outside of France. The authors of subsequent “logical” and “rational” grammars imitated it. However, after the emergence of a new, comparative-historical scientific paradigm, precisely because of its popularity, it began to be perceived as an example of a “mental, aprioristic, childish”, in the words of I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, direction in linguistics, squeezing language into logical schemes; Often it was also credited with what it was directed against: strict adherence to the Latin standard. The situation did not change in the first half of the 20th century. Among her critics were many prominent scientists: I. A. Baudouin de Courtenay, L. Bloomfield, C. Hockett and others, who often judged her at second hand. By this time, the empirical basis of general linguistics had greatly expanded, and the “Grammar of Port-Royal” began to be perceived as too clearly mixing the universal properties of the language with the features of the Romance languages.

New interest in the book arose in the 60s. XX century In many ways, N. Chomsky played a role here, declaring its authors his predecessors. His opponents rightly point out that he greatly modernized the ideas of the Grammar and considered it outside the historical context, but indeed much in the book, especially the idea of “structures of thought” common to all languages, turned out to be consonant with Chomskyan linguistics (see the chapter on N. Chomsky). However, the revival of interest in the “Grammar of Port-Royal” cannot be reduced only to Chomsky’s authority. In the mid-1960s. Several specialists began to analyze and comment on it independently of each other, and Chomsky was only one of them. The “rehabilitation” of the book was associated with the general trends in the global development of linguistics. One of its commentators, R. Lakoff, rightly calls the “Grammar of Port-Royal” “an old grammar that has long had a bad reputation among linguists, but has recently restored the prestige that it had in its time.”

Let us note one more feature of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”, which also influenced its subsequent reputation. Like the linguistic works of previous times, it was purely synchronic. The “rational basis” of all languages is seen as something unchangeable, and the factor of historical development is simply not included in the concept. Latin and French are treated in the book as two different languages, and not as an ancestor language and a descendant language (however, the origin of the French language from Latin was not as obvious then as it is now).

Another, deductive approach to language was found in the 17th century. reflected in attempts to construct an artificial “ideal” language, which have been popular for a long time. Many of the greatest thinkers of this century showed interest in these issues: F. Bacon, R. Descartes, J. A. Comenius, and later G. W. Leibniz. This was especially active in England. The first chairman of the Royal Society of London, J. Wilkins (Wilkins) (1614-1672), worked a lot in this area, and one of the works of this kind belongs to Isaac Newton, who wrote it in 1661 at the age of 18.

The authors of such projects proceeded from two postulates. First, the existence of multiple languages is a great inconvenience that must be overcome. Secondly, every thing by nature has a correct name that reflects its essence. The second postulate, as already noted, is characteristic of different linguistic traditions in their early stages. However, this approach, reflected in early etymologies, was based on the belonging of the “correct names” to some real language: ancient Greek, Sanskrit, etc. So consider it in Europe in the 17th century. It was no longer possible, although authors of artificial languages sometimes come across the idea of Hebrew as the primary language. In the 17th century the prevailing idea was that the biblical legend of the Babylonian confusion of languages reflected reality. Therefore, the task of “devilonizing” the language was openly set. The search for a universal language was closely connected with the search for a single connecting world harmony, which often took on a mystical character, including that of I. Newton. The rapid successes of the natural sciences were seen as a means to achieve very archaic goals.

This also happened in the approach to language. To create an “ideal language,” understood primarily as a “language of meanings,” it was necessary to describe these meanings. There is also interest in the description of semantics in the “Grammar of Port-Royal”, but much there was obscured by the specific forms of the languages known to its authors. Here, due to the most general task, it was necessary to abstract from the structural features of real languages and reach a deep level.

I. Newton wrote: “The dialects of individual languages differ so greatly that the universal Language cannot be derived from them as surely as from the nature of the things themselves, which is the same for all peoples and on the basis of which the whole Language was created in the beginning.” His project was about compiling an alphabetical list of all “substances” in each language, then each element of the list should be associated with an element of a universal language. Thus, the universal language simply reflected the lexical structure of the original natural language (Newton actually talks about the English language) with only one difference: in English “substances” can be expressed in phrases, in the “ideal language” - necessarily in words. However, the world described by language is not limited to “substances”. In addition to simple concepts, there are complex ones. In natural languages, derived concepts are often denoted using certain word-formation models. This was taken into account by the creators of artificial languages, who, however, tried to distract from the irregularity inherent in natural languages. Certain typical semantic relations were identified: agent, location, negation, diminutive, etc., which should have received a universal expression in a universal language. At the same time, semantic relationships were established between words, including formally non-derivative ones; components of the meaning of certain words were identified, which in the “ideal language”, for the sake of regularity, should have been designated separately. Thus, already in the 17th century. to one degree or another, they were engaged in what in modern linguistics is called component analysis and the study of lexical functions.

In artificial languages there had to be a grammar, in particular a certain set of grammatical categories. In this case, naturally, they took as a basis a set of categories of known European languages, most often Latin, but with certain adjustments: the category of gender was excluded as illogical. The contrast of parts of speech in a number of projects, including those of I. Newton and J. Wilkins, was not considered necessary: their words acted as names, and the designations of actions or states were made through the addition of regular word-forming elements. Nevertheless, such names could, if necessary, have indicators of tense or mood.

In terms of expression, language designers were more likely to focus on the structure of the Hebrew language with a three-letter root and “service letters.” The very system of “primary elements” (letters rather than sounds) was built on the basis of the Latin alphabet. Some of the scientists who created the “ideal” language considered the Chinese language, known to them only by hearsay, as one of the models: the hieroglyphic writing system, focused not on sound, but on meaning, seemed to be a possible prototype of a semantic language.

At the same time, the creators of universal languages, based on the analysis of phenomena, again Romance and Germanic languages with the addition of Hebrew, approached a number of issues deeper than the authors of the “Grammar of Port-Royal”. First of all, this relates to semantic analysis. Modern researcher of linguistic construction of the 17th century. L.V. Knorina rightly wrote: “Artificial languages are descriptions of the deep semantics of a natural language, performed at an outstanding level.”

However, this side of the activity of this group of scientists was not noticed by contemporaries. All studies of this kind saw only the creation of “ideal languages” as such. And the task of “devilonizing” the linguistic world was too clearly utopian. The projects of “ideal languages” themselves were often associated either with the mystical search for world harmony, or with attempts to restructure society on utopian foundations; It is not for nothing that one of the creators of the universal language was the famous utopian Tommaso Campanella, author of “The City of the Sun.” Some of the projects did not gain publicity; in particular, I. Newton’s project, which remained in the manuscript, was first published in the original only in 1957. Other experiments of this kind were popular in the 18th century, but gradually they began to be forgotten. If the “Grammar of Port-Royal” has always been known, at least by hearsay, then the works of the 17th-18th centuries. in the field of constructing “ideal” languages did not have any influence on the science of the 19th century. and the first half of the 20th century. Only in recent decades have the works of J. Wilkins, I. Newton and others begun to attract attention, and it turned out that much of them is relevant.

The very idea of creating a world language, having gone to the periphery of the science of language, continued to develop later. Some linguists were fond of it, the most famous of whom was N. Ya. Marr, and from the second half of the 19th century. it was reflected in the creation of Esperanto and other auxiliary languages. However, their creators no longer sought to reflect the structures of things in the structures of words and used, albeit in a modified form, real roots and words of real languages.

Literature

Alpatov V. M.“Grammar of Port-Royal” and modern linguistics: (Towards the publication of Russian publications) / V. M. Alpatov // Questions of linguistics. - 1992. - No. 2. - P. 57-68.

Knorina, L.V. The nature of language in the linguistic construction of the 17th century / L. V. Knorina // Questions of linguistics. - 1995. - № 2. - pp. 110-120.

In our country, several years ago, two of its publications were published almost simultaneously: “General and Rational Grammar of Port-Royal” (M., 1990); “The Grammar of Port-Royal” (L., 1991) (further quotations are from the Moscow edition).
The work of I. Newton in Russian translation: Semiotics and computer science. Vol. 28. M., 1986.

1660 – “General and Rational Grammar” - without specifying the authors.

Port-Royal - convent, center of advanced thought, noun. circle of scientists.

The grammar was written in French and was very quickly translated into English. Reprinted many times. It begins the development of a number of problems in the general theory of language ( the beginning of the emergence of general linguistics)

Formulate principles underlying language in general

Rely not on the conclusions of logic and on the Latin language, but on generalization and comparison of several languages

For the first time in history it is being done reliance on empirical material, questions are raised about the relationship universal and specific in languages

The material used is Latin, French, Spanish, IT, Greek, German, other Greek, other Hebrew.

2 parts grammar:

1. Phonetics and graphics

2. Grammar

The introduction defines grammar (g is the art of speech).

The most convenient signs are the sounds of the human voice; in order to prolong their existence and make them visible, writing signs were invented.

Part 1 – “About letters and writing signs”

Quite often, letters turn out to be empty signs that have no sound. – homme

They give a description of the syllable, write about stress, the word itself is something that is pronounced and written separately.

On the reform of the spelling of the French language. Champs - campus (latin), chantes - cantus (latin).

According to Lanslo, extra letters are very useful, because... contribute to the establishment of analogies between languages. He suggested marking unpronounceable letters with a dot.

A method for easy learning to read in any language– you need to start with the most common letters, simple words.

Part 2 – “Etymology”

Form principles of classification of parts of speech. Language consists of signs that reveal what is happening in the mind.

2 classes of parts of speech:

1) Designating communication object(name, pronoun, nar, clause, article, preposition)

2) Designating way of thinking(verb, conjunction, interjection)

The art of speaking has been turned into a real science. A general theory of languages is impossible without going beyond the boundaries of one language.

Up to the 14th century. Linguistics was dominated by traditions coming from antiquity. During the Renaissance, there was a surge of interest in linguistics for the following reasons:

1) National languages are created and developed, numerous normative grammars of modern European languages appear - English, German, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Czech, Slavic.

2) As a result of the discovery of America in 1492, the sea route to India, and Magellan’s trip around the world, linguistic horizons were expanded and languages were studied on an international scale. Introducing Europe to a huge number of new exotic languages, including Sanskrit.

The discovery of Sanskrit and the acquaintance of European linguists with it caused interest in the problem of the origin of languages, a search for ancient roots and a common source of languages known at that time, since the obvious similarities between Sanskrit and modern European languages could not be accidental. A hypothesis arises that exactly Sanskrit is the proto-language of European languages, this hypothesis was subsequently not confirmed, however, historical research in this direction were of great scientific importance, because they became prerequisites for development a new revolutionary direction - comparative historical linguistics. Acquaintance with a large number of new languages posed the important task of discovering the reasons for their similarities and differences, which is also the beginning of comparative historical linguistics. Revival of interest in ancient culture. The authority of the church is replaced by the authority of the ancient world, and the study of Greek and Latin is revived.

The appearance of the first theory dates back to this period. grammars. It became the universal grammar of Arno and Lanslot. It is based on common universal features inherent in all languages, the common nature of all languages, and the common properties of words. This grammar represents the beginning of the scientific study of language, because it represents an attempt scientifically comprehend the structure and functioning of natural language in all the diversity of languages of the world, to reveal their unity and indicate their specificity. The material for this grammar was languages that were representatives of the most significant cultures and allow us to identify the common foundations of languages: Greek, Latin, other Hebrew, French, English, German, Spanish, Italian. "Grammar" reveals universal categories, which allow you to describe both a single language and all other languages. It also describes basic ways of developing thoughts, i.e. the mechanism of language functioning is described, and examples of syntactic structures in various languages are given.

On the other hand, European grammars of the 15th-17th centuries. in one way or another connected with the Reformation. Some grammarians developed and propagated the philological hopes of the Reformation; others opposed her.

Just as the initiative to translate Scripture into vernacular languages came from Protestants (see §95), so the first Slavic grammars were created by Protestants. This is the Czech grammar of the Protestant priests Philomat, Optat and Gzel (Namešt, 1533); the first Polish grammar of the Calvinist, later Socinian Peter Statorius-Stoenski (Krakow, 1568); the best in the 16th century Czech grammar by Jan Blagoslav, head of the Protestant community of the Czech Brothers (manuscript 1571); the first Slovene grammar, compiled by one of the leaders of Slovene Protestantism, Adam Bohoric (Wittenberg, 1584).

However, grammarians were not a specifically Protestant phenomenon. They were also created by Catholics and Orthodox Christians. The grammar could also have a counter-reformation orientation. These are the first printed East Slavic grammars - “Adelfotis”, the grammars of Laurentius Zizanius and Meletius Smotrytsky. They were compiled by Orthodox scribes to support the Church Slavonic language. Just as the Gennadievsky biblical code of 1499 and the “Ostrog Bible” of 1581, printed on its basis, resisted reformation attempts to translate Scripture into popular languages, so the grammar of Meletius Smotrytsky was the largest philological action in defense of the cult supra-ethnic language Slavia Orthodoxa.

At the same time, there are new features in Smotritsky’s position. In its grammar there is no attitude towards the Church Slavonic language, widespread in Orthodox literature, as a sacred and exclusive language *; There are no usual Orthodox discussions about the special “grace” of the “Slavic” language or its superiority over Latin. Meletiy Smotrytsky does not evaluate languages based on religious principles and de facto recognizes their equality.

* Wed. Apology of the Church Slavonic language as the language of the Holy One and giving salvation from the Orthodox Ukrainian monk John of Vyshensky (XV? century): “God Almighty<..>it is better to baptize in the Slovenian language, rather than in Latin"; saints and saints "be saved and sanctify the same holy language Slovenian originate" (Vishensky I. Works / Preparation of the text, article and commentary. I.P. Eremina. M .; L.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1955. P. 192, 194). However, the interpretation of the Church Slavonic language as a sacred language was not canonical in Orthodoxy.

In Smotritsky’s grammar, the opposition of Church Slavonic as a sacred language to the folk language (“simple language”) as a non-sacred, secular language is largely removed. In the preface to the grammar, written in “simple language,” Smotritsky recommends turning to it when teaching the “Slavic” language. In the text of the grammar itself, he often explains Church Slavonic forms or phrases using “simple language,” including translating Bible verses into it. Smotrytsky’s attitude towards grammar itself was also new: Protestant sober, far from attributing sacred and theological significance to grammar.

The reformation sound of Smotritsky's grammar was muted when it was republished in Moscow (1648), “naturally,” without the name of the author, who became a Uniate in 1627. All explanations and translations in the vernacular language were excluded from the grammar text. Smotritsky’s modest preface on a “simple language” was replaced by anonymous (going back to the writings of Maxim the Greek) Church Slavonic discussions about the holiness of the “Slovenian” language and the godly grammar with mention of the main Orthodox authorities (Basily the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom). In the Moscow edition, the format and font were enlarged, and the margins became wider. Combined with lengthy prefaces and afterwords, this adds significantly to the weight of the book. It contained cinnabar headings and initials. All this gave the Moscow grammar of 1648 a solemn and impressive appearance, making it “the official publication of Moscow literacy” (Yagich, 1910, 30).

Thus, in the 17th century. grammar still belonged to the church. The grammarians were written by church people for church schools. The grammarians were based on the language of Scripture and taught to understand this language. Grammarians could still be the subject of denominational controversy and partiality; It still made sense to define grammars as Orthodox, Jesuit or Protestant.

Not only the religions of Scripture (Revelation), but also all written religious and intellectual traditions, almost simultaneously with the codification of doctrine, come to the need to interpret the written authoritative text. In general, a return to what was written down, to the need to understand what was said before (and not at the moment of speech), is always associated with certain difficulties in understanding speech - due to new conditions in o r i c h n o g o perception. The greater the time and distance that separates the author of a text from its later reader, the greater the differences between the contemporary reader and subsequent readers in the interpretation of the text. Therefore, following the codification of teaching, or even simultaneously, methods for determining the meanings of individual words, statements and entire works are developed - in a given culture, a commentary tradition is emerging as a tool for preserving and transmitting authoritative knowledge.

The first commentary schools in cultural history emerged almost simultaneously in the 6th century. BC: in Ancient Greece, in the religious and philosophical brotherhood of the Pythagoreans, founded by Pythagoras (c. 540-500 BC), and in ancient China, in the circle of the closest students and followers of Confucius (551-479 BC). It is no coincidence that it was in the school of Pythagoras that the famous ipse dixit “he said it himself” was born - as the motto of the guardians and transmitters of authoritative knowledge (see §56). The Pythagoreans were the first to compose commentaries on Homer. They discovered the phenomenon of the allegorical meaning of words and statements (understanding allegory more broadly than is now accepted - as all kinds of indirect, figurative, symbolic, allegorical meanings).

In China, commentary concerns in the school of Confucius led to the creation of the first in history explanatory dictionaries. They provided explanations of difficult hieroglyphs extracted from the texts of Confucius. In the 4th century. BC. detailed commentary treatises appear: individual passages from Confucius are interpreted here, retold “in their own words” or simply translated into modern language(History, 1980, 95).

Judaism, as a religion of Scripture, with its characteristic especially careful and partial attention to the word, gave semasiology new impulses. The rabbinic sages in the Talmud taught to distinguish 32 methods of interpreting the Mishnah (see §82) - this is comparable to the system of tropes and figures (including “figures of thought”) in ancient rhetoric, but with the significant difference that the Talmud taught analysis, i.e. interpretation of the text, and rhetoric - synthesis, i.e. generation of text.

An outstanding contribution to semasiology was made by the famous Judeo-Hellenistic thinker Philo of Alexandria (c. 25 BC - c. 50 AD), according to S.N. Trubetskoy, “a mediator between philosophy and Revelation.” Related by origin to the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, he received a brilliant Greek education, Philo combined pagan philosophy and Jewish monotheism in his work. A.F. Losev wrote about Philo: “This Jewish philosopher is in love even with Homer and Hesiod and tries, through all kinds of allegorical interpretations, to bring this ancient Greek wisdom closer to the biblical manner of thinking.<...>Philo applies Greek philosophy and especially Stoic Platonism for the interpretation of the Bible and especially the Pentateuch of Moses" (Losev, 1980, 82-83).

According to Philo. The "Pentateuch" is an allegory that has a spiritual meaning that is subject to interpretation. Every word of Scripture has a double reading: a fiery sword - and a “fiery sword” and “logos, word”; sky and field are not only “sky and field”, but also “a soul full of strength and power”; salt is both “salt” and “constancy”; etc. True understanding, according to Philo, presupposes awareness of the connection (similarity and difference) of two meanings - the literal meaning of the interpreted text and its allegorical spiritual meaning. To reveal the “spiritual meaning”, Philo develops a special interpretation technique, using, firstly, the method of diaeresis* and, secondly, the “ten Aristotelian categories” - essence, quality, quantity, relation, action, suffering, possession, position, time and space (for details see: Losev, 1980, 114-128).

Philo's ideas about the non-unique meaning of the text were found further development in patristics and later Christian hermeneutics. The doctrine of the four meanings of Scripture (literal, allegorical, historical and sacred) was popular. In the margins of the Bible of the famous Italian preacher G. Savonarola (1452-1498), his own handwritten notes are preserved, in which he gives six interpretations of biblical verses about the six days of creation. Here are six interpretations of the first day: 1) Literal interpretation: Day one. Sky. Earth. Light. 2) Spiritual interpretation: Soul. Body. The driving mind. 3) Allegorical interpretation in relation to the Old Testament: Adam. Eve. Ray (of future redemption). 4) Allegorical interpretation in relation to the New Testament: The people of Israel. Languages. Jesus Christ. 5) Moral interpretation: Soul, body in the sense of mind and instinct. Light of Redemption. 6) Similar interpretation: Angels. People. Vision of the Lord (exposition given from the book: The Middle Ages in its monuments / Edited by D.N. Egorov. M.. 1913. pp. 274-275).

* Diaresis (Greek diairesis – distance, division, discrimination) – methodical technique in Platonic dialectics, consisting in a consistent and stepwise dichotomous (binary) division of generic categories into species.

Thus, the need to preserve authoritative knowledge and transmit it in an authentic form led to the emergence of traditions of commenting on significant texts. In different cultures, one of the main phenomena of semasiology was discovered and realized quite early - the phenomenon of polysemy, i.e. ambiguity of a linguistic sign (word, lexical phrase, statement)*. It is natural that ambiguity was understood quite broadly and indiscriminately (including different types polysemy, allegory and symbolism). In various traditions, commentators and custodians of authoritative texts came to create explanatory dictionaries. The dictionary form of representing knowledge still remains the main genre for describing meanings in semasiology.

* Polysemy (from the Greek polys - “many” and sema - “sign”) - the presence of different, but to some extent related meanings for the same word (or phrase); in semiotics - the possibility of different interpretations of a single sign or a certain sequence of signs (text, film, piece of music and so on.). 122. Addition of the main lexicographic genres
in Slavic cultures (XI-XVII centuries)

The minimum comment (so to speak, “unit of commenting”) is a gloss*, i.e. an explanation of a single unclear word or expression in a given text. In handwritten books, glosses were often made either in the margins of the manuscript (opposite the line where it occurred unknown word), or between lines (so-called interlinear glosses). Later, glosses began to be combined into collections of interpretations and glossaries. The oldest glossaries for Homer date back to the 5th century. BC, i.e. to the very beginning of the ancient Greek commentary tradition.

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EUROPEAN LINGUISTICS OF THE XVI-XVII CENTURIES. "GRAMMAR OF PORT-ROYAL"