Medieval Commentators on the Notion 'persona agentis' in Priscian's Syntactic Theory

Bibliographic Data

ID4965597
AuthorsKarin Margareta Fredborg (University of Copenhagen, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume41
Issue2-3
Pages219-245
Publication date2014-10-30
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistoriographia Linguistica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0302-5160 • E-ISSN: 1569-9781
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/hl.41.2-3.02fre
OpenAlexW2029358746
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited20

Medieval syntactic analysis ranges from simple word order parsing in prescriptive grammars to sophisticated discussions of first and secondary constructibles in modistic, dependency grammars. What combines these two levels is found in Priscian's use of actants: (1) persona agentis (= Apollonius' 'understood nominative'), (2) verb phrase, and (3) persona patientis, in this paradigmatic word order, corresponding to an underlying structure with an active verb, e.g., audio te "I hear you" corresponding to audieris a me "You are heard by me", seruio tibi "I am a servant to you", seruieris a me "You are served by me". In medieval understanding, more complex sentences are reducible / convertible to such active / passive constructions, if one includes their particular notions of government, where verbs govern the nominative and / or oblique cases, always in separate dyadic combinations, e.g., "I hear", "hear you

Humanities · Infinitive · Linguistics · Nominative case · Persona · Verb · Word order · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Linguistics and language evolution · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy

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