Speculative Grammars of the Middle Ages by G. L. Bursill-HallReview by: John A. TrentmanFoundations of Language, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 481-484Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25000929 .

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REVIEWS 481

G. L. Bursill-Hall, Speculative Grammars of the Middle Ages, The Hague, Mouton, 1971, 424 pp., Dfl. 70,-.

Whether his historical claims have been universally accepted or not, it can

hardly be denied that a major impetus for the modern study of past theories of language has been Professor Chomsky's publication of Cartesian Lin

guistics. Soon after its publication it was remarked that some of the charac teristics of Cartesian grammar that he noted were by no means original with

Descartes or any other 'Cartesian' but came from late scholastics who in turn were carrying on a tradition received from the philosophical logicians and grammarians of the middle ages.1 There now seems to be little doubt that there are very important continuities in thought between the middle ages, so-called, and the renaissance, so-called, which have often been neglected in the past and which historians of ideas have only recently explored in any detail. This is as true in the history of ideas about language as in the history of ideas about anything else, and it was inevitable that a renewed interest in

thought about language in the seventeenth century should lead to renewed interest in thought about language in earlier centuries.

Some of the most interesting of such thought is to be found in the medieval authors of what was commonly called grammatica speculativa. These authors were also often called modistae after their interest in and writing about what were called the modi significandi. They have been considered, at least in

passing, in a number of books and articles, but here we have at hand a book

aiming at a critical examination in some detail of the grammatical theories of

the modists. It is, furthermore, a work that considers these theories, not

solely from the point of view of an antiquarian scholar, but from that of one trained in modern linguistics. For that reason it should be of quite general interest to linguists, philosophers, and historians of these disciplines. Pro fessor Bursill-Hall aims at a consideration of the modists within their own

temporal context, but he recognizes that comparisons with modern linguistic theorists are inviting, particularly, of course, comparisons with Chomsky and the transformationalists. For example, he concludes about the modists, "Like Chomsky today, they sought to postulate a universal theory of gram

mar but, unlike Chomsky, their theory of grammar did not aim to provide a

grammar for individual languages; their object was to produce a grammar that was universal, the grammar of the human mind." (333)

The work begins with a general history of grammar in ancient and medieval

Europe. It is a useful summary, but the reader might well be referred (as Professor Bursill-Hall acknowledges) to R. H. Robins, A Short History of

1 Especially see the review by Vivian Salmon, Journal of Linguistics 5 (1969), 165-187.

Foundations of Language 13 (1975) 481-484. All rights reserved.

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482 REVIEWS

Linguistics (London, 1967), for more material of this sort. Moving to his

subject, the author follows this with two further introductory chapters, one concerned primarily with terminology and the other with the modists' second-order account of the structure of their systems of grammatical description, their "metalanguage", to use the author's term. The next three

chapters deal with the subject that is at the heart of Professor Bursill-Hall's

study, the modists' theories about the partes orationis. He follows these

chapters with a chapter on syntax in the modists' theories, indicating in the

process how these speculations are related to the descriptions of partes ora tionis. He concludes: "Once the analysis of the modes of signifying of the

partes orationis was complete, then and only then could the syntax of these

partes in terms of their modes of signifying be described. Thus, we see the whole grammatical process of the Modistae, starting with 'vox' and ending with the completed sentence." (326) Then, in conclusion, he offers us some

speculation about the relations between the theories of the modists and modern linguistic theory. Finally, printed as appendices, we have a number of very useful charts, schematically and perspicuously comparing some of the

leading modists with respect to terminology and the general structures of their theories. First, there is a table of definitions of the various modes as found in Martin of Dacia, Siger of Courtrai, and Thomas of Erfurt. Then,

we have what the author calls "Diagrammatic Expositions of the Metalan

guage, the Different Partes Orationis, and the Syntactic Theories of Siger de Courtrai and Thomas of Erfurt" followed by a diagram of the declinable and

indeclinable partes orationis and a table of accidents and accidental modes as found in Donatus, Priscian, Martin, Siger, and Thomas. Finally, we have a

glossary of important technical terms as they are defined by Martin, Siger, and Thomas.

These appendices and, indeed, the careful work of description that Professor Bursill-Hall generally does in this book will be extremely useful to the historian of linguistics and to anyone interested in the subject who finds it difficult to appraise the work of the modists from the variety of textual

materials available to us in editions of very different quality and accessibility and could use an easily accessible and perspicuous presentation of some of

these theories in an organized form. What this reviewer finds less useful, because less successful, in the book is the author's interpretative approach to his subject, which also necessarily colours his comparisons with modern theories. Just what is it precisely that can be meaningfully compared? The author expresses his concern about making the wrong sorts of comparisons.

Without doubt one can ask silly questions about the theories of the modists and get silly answers or no answers in response. Analogously, one might ask,

for example, whether Ockham had decision procedures for his propositional

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REVIEWS 483

calculus and get, at best, gibberish in response. There is no such thing in medieval logic as a modern quasi-axiomatic system; nevertheless, the

philosophical presuppositions of the medieval logicians can be meaning fully compared with those of later logicians, and with qualifications certain

specifically logical matters can be compared (an obvious example is the fact that in Ockham and other medieval logicians we find analogues to the so called De Morgan rules). On the matter of comparisons, however, some of Professor Bursill-Hall's comments give one pause. He seems fond of saying things like, "The modern linguist will reject their theories because he rejects the whole system of thought they reveal" (36), or, "we reject modistic gram

mar, as indeed we must, because we reject the whole intellectual system which

engendered their theories" (334). But who are the we, and why do they reject whatever it is that they reject? If one cannot answer questions like this with

precision, one easily falls into an uneasy and untenable tension. This is the tension between asserting, on the one hand, a kind of historical relativism that says that every age is entitled to its own 'world view', which must be understood strictly in its own terms such that questions of its truth or falsity cannot arise, or, on the other hand, a kind of naive historicism that in effect

gives preference to whatever (and deciding is no easy matter!) might be the 'modern' world view. This sort of historicism in effect declares what is

'modern', without any clear proof, to be true and all other views to be

unacceptable, things that we must reject. Stated thus baldly, this is a real muddle because it is clear, first, that the conjunction of these views is absurd since they are logically incompatible with each other and, secondly, that both of them are open, at least without extensive qualification, to very serious objections. This is not the place to review these familiar objections, but it must at least be noted that the burden of proof is obviously on the

scholar who would base his methodology on one of them (and not the absurd

conjunction of the two!) to show his clear awareness of these difficulties and

objections to his position and to defend his position with arguments. Un

fortunately, it is not sufficiently clear exactly what is Professor Bursill Hall's position; he gives us a number of provocative suggestions but does not state his presuppositions with the necessary precision; nor does he support them with the requisite arguments. I think the answer to these problems must be found in trying to distinguish philosophical questions from strictly linguistic ones and in the light of such a distinction seeing how to treat

methodological questions about the status of defining criteria for linguistic theory.2 One of the things that has made Professor Chomsky's historical

2 This is argued in my 'Speculative Grammar and Transformational Grammar: a Compa rison of Philosophical Presuppositions' to appear in History of Linguistic Thought and

Contemporary Linguistics, (ed. by H. Parret), forthcoming De Gruyter, 1975.

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484 REVIEWS

studies, whatever some might think of their details, so interesting for scholars in a wide range of disciplines is that he is quite clear about the fact that he is

dealing with philosophical positions that can be meaningfully compared and the fact that a careful study of their histories and development can be of

significant modern interest and applicability.3 A certain uncertainty about background presuppositions together, para

doxically, with an occasionally strident tone (declaring what we must or must not believe) is commonly found in doctoral dissertations, and, indeed, we find in the Introduction that the work under review is substantially the author's dissertation, presented in 1959 (!). For the lamentable delays so common in publication nowadays we cannot fairly blame Professor Bursill

Hall, but it seems a pity that he was not able to exercise his maturer judge ment and reflection to reconsider some of the philosophical problems with his interpretation as it stands. There is not scope in a brief review like this to do more than to suggest what some of these problems are, and, in any case, I should not like to convey an unbalanced picture of the work and

discourage readers from appreciating the very significant service that Pro fessor Bursill-Hall has performed in describing in an ordered way some of the most important theories of the medieval speculative grammarians.

McGill University JOHN A. TRENTMAN

3 Cf. Harry M. Bracken, 'Chomsky's Cartesianism', Language Sciences (1972), 11-16.

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