Ancient roots of European linguistics: Apollonius Dyscolus on grammatical number
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to show how Apollonius Dyscolus, the most prominent Greek
grammarian of Antiquity, characterized the grammatical category of number and what
issues related to this category he addressed in him treatise On Syntax. A thorough
analysis of the treatise showed that the basic terminology used by the grammarian
in reference to the category of number is to be found already in the Τέχνη γραμματική
attributed to Dionysius Thrax, while Apollonius pays attention primarily to the semantics
of this category and to syntactic issues. His interest in semantics is manifested in him
regarding the number of verbs as an anaphoric and meaningless category, focusing on
the elliptic nature of semantics of personal pronouns of the first and second person plural,
pointing to the contextually determined phenomenon of expressing plurality by the
article in singular, as well as – regarding certain nominal compounds – noticing some
discrepancy between their grammatical number, determining the set of their referents,
and the numeral aspect of what is implied by their lexical semantics. The syntactic matters
related to grammatical number were discussed by Apollonius in the context of participles
in plural used with collective nouns in singular, and verbal finite forms in singular used
with neuter nouns in plural.
Keywords:
ancient grammarians, Apollonius Dyscolus, grammatical numberReferences
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