HSITORY OF GRAMMATICAL STUDY

Credit for instituting grammatical study, as for so much else in Western civilization, must be given to the ancient Greeks—among these to Plato and Aristotle. Plato, here and there in his dialogues, and Aristotle, chiefly in the treatises Poetics and On Interpretation, dealt analytically with the letter (that is, a speech, sound), the syllable, the conjunction, the article, the noun, and verbs. Thus they initiated the “word and paradigm” model of grammatical analysis (a paradigm being an example of a conjugation or declension showing all the inflected forms of a word) that long dominated the field.

语法研究的历史

对建立语法研究的赞扬，正如西方文明中的其它许多东西一样必须归功于古代希腊人---其中就包括柏拉图和亚里士多德。柏拉图，在其对话中随处可见，而亚里士多德，主要在《诗学》和《解释篇》这两篇论文中，分析处理了字母（就是说，分析处理了说话、声音）、音节、连词、冠词、名词和动词。因此，他们开创了长期统治该领域语法分析的“单词和范式”模式（一种显示单词所有屈折形式的，有关词型变化或变格例子的范式）。

Greece.  It should be noted that Plato and Aristotle, like the Greeks in general, were not much interested in grammar a much; their contributions were incidental to their concern with broader issues, which can be called the nature-or-convention debate and the analogy-or-anomaly debate. The first had to do with whether words have a natural and ordained bonding, or identity, with the things they stand for or whether they have only an arbitrary and agreed-upon connection. The second had to do with whether language and the universe at large operate predictably and according to rule (analogy) or only by chance and rote (anomaly).

希腊。应该注意的是，柏拉图和亚里士多德，像一般的希腊人一样，对语法不太感兴趣；他们的贡献是伴随他们对广泛问题的关注而来的，它们被称为自然-或-惯例的辩论和类比-或-异常的辩论。首先必须关注的是，单词与它们代表的事物是否具有一种自然的，注定的绑定或同一性，或者它们只是具有任意的和商定的联系。第二必须注意的是，语言和整个宇宙的运行是否可预言，并根据规则（类比），或者只是通过偶然和机械式的过程（异常的）。

These were primarily what we could call philosophical questions, but they are important to the history of grammar in two ways. First, the effort to resolve them by speculation led, as we have seen, to the beginning of grammar. Second, much of the progress in grammatical analysis up to the present day has been stimulated by discontent with a previous method because it either overstressed or understressed the role of regularity and logic in language or because it stopped short of explaining apparent cases of anomaly. The whole study has been marked by a nagging desire to reduce the infinitely complex web of language to rules and a countervailing desire to acknowledge what seems to be capricious and creative language behavior. As the American scholar Edward Sapir observed in his book Language (1921), “Were a language ever completely’ grammatical,’ it would be a perfect engine of conceptual EXPRESSION. Unfortunately, or luckily no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.”

这些主要是我们可以称之为哲学的问题，但它们对于语法历史的重要性在于两个方面。首先，正如我们看到的那样，通过推测解决它们的努力导致了语法的开始。第二，迄今为止语法分析的许多进展都是由于对以前方法不满足的激发所至，因为它要么过分强调或低估了语言和逻辑规则的作用，要么是因为它无法解释明显的异常情况。整个研究的特征是，一种挥之不去的将无限复杂的语言网络简化为规则的渴望，同时又是一种抵消承认似乎是反复无常和创造性语言行为的渴望。就像美国学者爱德华·萨丕尔在其《语言》（1921年）一书中所观察的“如果一门语言始终都是‘符合语法的’，那么它将是概念表达的完美引擎。不幸或幸运的是，语言一直都在变化。所有的语法都有漏洞”。

The word-and-paradigm grammar sketched by Plato and Aristotle was enlarged by grammarians of the Stoic school of philosophy, whose works and even names have not survived. The earliest formal grammar that we have is the Grammatike Tekhne of Dionysius Thrax, an Alexandrian Greek of the 1^st century B. C., who built upon the stoic work. The Alexandrian school was more interested in literature than in philosophy, and Thrax’s brief summary of Greek grammar was meant to teach “the appreciation of literary compositions, which is the noblest part of grammar.” Thus Thrax gave us the first of thousands of “school grammars” that have made up the bulk of publication. Syntax, which Thrax had ignored, was the prime topic of another Alexandrian grammarian, Apollonius Dyscolus, who wrote in the 2d century A. D.

斯多葛哲学学派的语法家们扩展了柏拉图和亚里士多德概述的单词与范式语法，他们的作品，甚至名字都没有留下来。我们拥有的最早的正式语法是狄俄尼索斯·特拉克斯的《语法术》，他是一位公元前一世纪亚里山大学派的希腊人，依据斯多葛派的作品所著。亚里山大学派对文学比哲学更感兴趣，而特拉克斯的希腊语法概要是打算教授“对文学作品的欣赏，它是语法中最高贵的部分”。因此，特拉克斯给予了我们构成出版物主体的，成千上万的“学校语法”的第一部。特拉克斯忽略的句法成为了另一位亚里山大学派语法学家阿波罗尼奥斯·狄斯考鲁于公元二世纪写作的主要主题。

Rome.  The role of Rome in grammatical studies, as in most intellectual fields, was to adopt and develop with great thoroughness the works of Greek originality—and incidentally to fix the terminology and method of European grammar for about 1,800 years. The first important Roman grammatical treatise we know of is the De Lingua Latina (On the Latin Language) of Marcus Terentius Varro, who died in 27 B. C. Six of its some 20 original books survive. These include the morphology, which takes account of the ways in which Latin differs, especially in noun and verb inflections, from Greek.

罗马。罗马在语法研究中的作用，正如在大多数智力领域一样，是以极大的彻底性采纳并发展了希腊独创性的作品---并附带着在大约1800年里确定了欧洲语法的术语和方法。我们知道的第一篇重要的罗马语法论文是马库斯·特伦提乌斯·瓦罗的De Lingua Latina（《论拉丁语》），他死于公元前27年，20部原创书籍中的6部保留了下来。这些包括论及与拉丁语不同之处的词法，尤其是不同于希腊语名词和动词的屈折变化。

The most enduring Roman work in grammar was by Aelius Donatus, writing about 350 A. D., and Priscian, writing about 500 A. D. The Ars minor (Small Grammar) of Donatus runs to about 10 pages and presents the essentials of Latin grammar in the form of a catechism. It became the basic schoolbook of the European Middle Ages. Priscian’sInstitutiones grammaticae (Grammatical Instructions), more than 10 times as long, is the definitive product of Roman grammatical study. It is some measure of the status of Donatus and Priscian that they are the two grammarians found in Dante’s The Divine Comedy—Donatus in heaven and Priscian in hell (although not because of the length of his book).

最经久不衰的罗马语法著作大约是在公元350年由埃利乌斯·多纳图斯和大约在公元500年由普里西安所撰写的语法著作。多纳图斯的Ars minor（《小语法》）大约有10页，以问答教学的形式展示了拉丁语法的要素。它成为了欧洲中世纪基本的教科书。普里西安的Institutiones grammaticae（《语法惯例》），相比要长十倍，是罗马语法研究最终的产物。这是对多纳图斯和普里西安社会地位的某种衡量，以至于他们是在但丁《神曲》中发现的两位语法学家---多纳图斯在天堂，而普里西安却在地狱（尽管并不是因为其著作的长度）。

The Middle Ages.  If we interpret grammar narrowly as the study and codification of the “rules” or a language, the medieval period was not remarkably productive, being primarily concerned with Latin and generally content with Priscian. But “grammar” in two other senses was deeply interwoven in the intellectual life of the age. First, it was one of the first THREE (trivium) of the seven liberal arts, which became the primary structure of medieval education. Second, it was the topic of a school of semantic philosophers called modistae, whose concern was the ways in which being, understanding, and meaning are involved in linguistic EXPRESSION.

中世纪。如果我们将语法狭隘地解释为对“规则”或语言的研究和编纂，那么中世纪的时期并不是很多产的，主要是关注拉丁语，而通常是让普里西安满意的那种多产。但“语法”在另外两种意义上与那个时代知识分子的生活深深地交织在一起。首先，它是七门人文学科中的前三个（三学科）之一，它成为了中世纪教育的原始结构。第二，它是被称为摩迪斯泰学派家的语义哲学家流派的主题，他们关注的是存在、理解和意义在语言表达式中涉及的方式。

The trivium comprised grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (logic). Grammar in this curriculum was more like what we would call literary study. Grammar was studied in and through literary works, and literary works through grammar.

三学科包含语法、修辞和逻辑论证（逻辑学）。在这种课程中的语法更像是我们所称的文学研究。在文学作品中并通过文学作品研究语法，并通过语法研究文学作品。

The modistae, so called because their books were generally entitled De modis significandi (On the Modes of signifying), commenced the tradition of speculative or philosophical grammar. This tradition, which has been revived in the 20^th century by Noam Chomsky and other American linguistic scholars, is of course reminiscent of the earlier Greek concern with the nature-or-convention debate.

因为他们的书籍，所谓的摩迪斯泰学派通常都被冠以De modis significandi（论意义的方式）的名头，倡导推测或哲学语法的传统。这种传统在20世纪被诺姆·乔姆斯基和其他的美国语言学者所复活，当然这让人想起了早期希腊所关注的自然-或-惯例的辩论。

On the side of “rules” grammar, the Middle Ages produced a few accounts of the European vernacular languages, perhaps in part stimulated by Dante’s remarkable De vulgari eloquentia (On the Vernacular Language), written early in the 14^th century, in which Dante appraises and praises his native Tuscan (the Italian language spoken in Tuscany) over against Latin.

在“规则”语法方面，中世纪产生了一些对欧洲本地语言的描述，也许部分是受到但丁非凡的写于14世纪早期De vulgari eloquentia（《俗语论》）的刺激，在书中，但丁评价并赞扬了他的母语托斯卡纳语（在托斯卡纳说的意大利语言）。

The 16^th and 17^th centuries.  The Renaissance and the age of discovery and exploration profoundly affected the history of grammatical study by dethroning Latin and reacting against scholastic philosophy. Grammars of non-European languages began to appear, and the vernaculars were more seriously studied and described. Around the year 1600 it was no longer possible to say “grammar” and mean simply “Latin,” because grammars of Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, and Polish, for example, were then in print. Latin grammar, to be sure, was still a prime study, and during this period it was brought essentially to its present stage.

16和17世纪。文艺复兴时期和发现与探索的时代，通过废黜拉丁语和反对经院哲学深刻影响了语法研究的历史。非欧洲语言的语法开始出现，而且方言受到了更认真地研究和描述。大约在1600年，例如，说到“语法”而且仅仅是意味着“拉丁语”已不再可能了，因为当时已印刷了希伯来语、法语、西班牙语、意大利语和波兰语的语法。的确，拉丁语依然是一门主要的研究，而在这段时期，它已基本发展到了它现在的阶段。

English grammars of the traditional type—that is, based on Priscianic Latin grammar—proliferated as schooling became more common among all social classes. The work of William Bullokar (A Booke at large for the Amendment of Orthographie for English Speech, 1580) and of John Wallis (Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae, 1653) were the standards. Such teaching grammars are clearly analogous in their aim and origin to the English dictionaries and the guides to pronunciation that began to appear at the time.

传统类型的英语语法---换言之，基于普里西安的拉丁语法---随着学校教育在所有社会阶层中变得更为普遍和激增。威廉·布洛卡的著作（《英语口语拼写法修订手册》，1580年）和约翰·沃利斯的著作（《英语语法》，1653年）成为了标准。这样的教学语法在它们的目的和起源上显然与当时开始出现的英语词典和发音指南是相似的。

By the end of the 17^th century, reaction against scholastic philosophy had generated two opposing standpoints that were to be crucial in the progress of grammar. These can be called the positivist-empiricist position—associated with Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Sir Isaac Newton—and the rationalist position—associated with Rene Descartes and some of his followers. The positivist-empiricist position, being the dominant groundwork of science, underlay the linguistics of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The rationalist position underlay the 17^th and 18^th century grammars, variously called philosophic, universal, or general. They are typified by the Grammaire generale et raisonee (General and rational Grammar), or Port Royal Grammar, of 1660, chiefly attributable to Antoine Arnauld of the Port Royal des Champs religious community.

到了17世纪末，与经院哲学的对抗产生了两种对立的立场，以至于在语法的进展中至关重要。这些可被称为实证主义--经验主义立场---与弗朗西斯·培根、约翰·洛克以及艾萨克·牛顿爵士有关---以及理性主义立场---与勒奈·笛卡尔和他的一些追随者有关。实证主义--经验主义立场是主导科学的基础，奠定了19世纪和20世纪早期的语言学。理性主义立场奠定了17和18世纪被称为哲学的、普遍的或一般的不同语法。它们的典型代表是1660年的Grammaire generale et raisonee（《普遍唯理语法》），或《波尔·罗瓦雅尔语法》，主要归功于香榭丽波尔·罗瓦雅尔修道院宗教社区的安托万·阿尔诺的贡献。

These treatises, somewhat in the spirit if not the scholastic manner of the medieval speculative grammar, sought to explain linguistic usage ultimately by explaining the nature and function of the human mind, and they sought to show that an abstract “universal grammar,” spanning all languages, could be hypothesized.

这些论文，即使不是中世纪推测性语法的经院方式，也有几分精神，试图通过解释人类思维的本质和功能来最终解释语言的用法，而且他们试图展示，可以假设一种跨越所有语言，抽象的“普遍语法”。

Perhaps under the influence of the Port Royal grammarians, John Wilkins in 1668 wrote a grammar of English (An Essay towards a Real character, and a Philosophical Language), incorporating bold and non-Priscianic modes of analysis. But his book and the Port Royal Grammar had no effect on the teaching of grammar. From this period dates one of the most distressing and obvious conditions in the situation of grammar---the disparity between scholarly and scientific grammar and the grammar taught in the schools. The latter has lagged behind by 100 years or more.

也许在波尔·罗瓦雅尔语法学家的影响下，约翰·威尔金斯于1668年撰写一部英语语法（《关于真实符号，与哲学语言的论文》），将大胆的和并非普里西安的分析模式合并在一起。但他的书籍和波尔·罗瓦雅尔语法对语法教学没有什么影响。从这一时期开始，在语法的条件中最让人苦恼和最明显的状况之一，是在学术和科学语法与在学校教授的语法之间的明显差异。后者已落后了大约100年或更久。

Non-European Grammatical Study.  Grammatical analysis and thought were not, of course, a European monopoly. The Muslims, for example, concerned over the possible loss of pure Arabic, had excellent grammars as early as the 8^th century. Early Hebrew grammars were mostly produced in Spain, under Muslim influence. The Hindus, alarmed over changes in Sanskrit that might impair the sacred Vedas, had the incredibly thorough and phonologically “modern” work of the Sanskrit grammarian Panini, perhaps as early as the 4^th century B. C. The Chinese developed their own linguistic and lexicographic studies by at least the 2d century A. D. Japan produced the grammatical genius Fujitani Nariakira, who in the 18^th century, without the benefit of prior work, wrote an original and imaginative morphology and syntax of Japanese.

非欧洲的语法研究。当然，语法分析和思考并不是欧洲的专利。例如，穆斯林就会忧虑失去早在8世纪就已有出色语法的，纯粹的阿拉伯语。在穆斯林的影响下，早期的希伯来语语法多半产生于西班牙。印度教徒担忧梵文的变化可能会损害神圣的《吠陀经》，也许早在公元前4世纪，梵文语法学家帕尼尼已进行了非常全面的和音系学上的“现代”工作。中国至少在公元2世纪已发展了他们自己的语言和词典编撰研究。日本产生了语法天才Fujitani Nariakira，他在18世纪在没有前人研究的情况下写出了原创的，且富于想象力的日语词法和句法。

The 18^th century.  Interest in language, from the philosophical to the practical matter of correctness, was at flood tide in 18^th century England. Grammars and treatises on language poured out at a rate hardly equaled since. Yet, for all the ferment, 18^th century work was more an impediment than an advance because most of it was based on the conviction that perfect—had degenerated alarmingly, but could be restored to its primal condition by effort and pugnacity. That is, the century was dominated by versions of the nature-or-convention debate and the analogy-or-anomaly debate, with which grammatical studies had begun more than 2,000 years earlier, and the prevailing view was thoroughly prescriptive and idealistic in spite of the concurrent triumph of empiricism in other fields.

18世纪。在18世纪的英格兰，人们对语言的兴趣，从哲学的正确性问题到实践的正确性问题，如潮水奔腾。从那时起，有关语言的语法和论述几乎以相同的速度涌现出来。然而，在所有的动荡中，18世纪的工作与其说是进步，不如说是一种阻碍，因为大多数工作都是基于让人担忧，退化了的完美信念，不过通过努力和好斗可以恢复到它最初的状态。也就是说，那个世纪是由各种版本的自然或惯例的辩论和类比或异常的辩论左右的，而语法研究早在2000多年前就已开始了，尽管经验主义在其它领域获得了同时胜利，但流行的观点完全是规定性的和理想主义的。

The standard grammars were Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), which clamped ironbound logic on the language, and Lindley Murray’s English Grammar (1795), “the grammar which,” as one scholar says, “by its combination of the elements of conservative and authoritarian liking held the field for years.” Joseph Priestley’s grammar (the Rudiments of English Grammar…, 1761,) based on observation rather than prescription and desire, went largely unnoticed. Priestley was ranged, after all against giants like Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson, as well as a contentious body of clergymen-turned-grammarians.

标准语法是罗伯特·洛斯的《简明英语语法入门》（1762年），它将严密的逻辑牢牢固定在语言上，而林德利·默里的《英语语法》（1795年），“这种语法”正如一位学者所说“凭借其喜好的保守主义和权力主义元素的结合多年来统治着该领域”。约瑟夫·普利斯特利的语法（《英语语法入门》1761年），是基于观察，而不是指定与欲望，在很大程序上被忽视了。毕竟，普利斯特利所面对的有像乔纳森·斯威夫特和塞缪尔·约翰逊这样的卓越人物，以及由牧师转变成语法学家的有争议的团体。

The Port Royal Grammar was translated as early as 1708, and in 1751, James Harris published Hermes, or a Philosophy Inquiry Concerning Universal Grammar. In 1776, George Campbell, in The Philosophy of Rhetoric, pronounced a commonsense judgment on universal grammar; “In propriety there cannot be such a thing as an universal grammar, unless there were such a thing as an universal Language.”

《波尔·罗瓦雅尔语法》早在1708年就被翻译了，而在1751年，詹姆斯·哈里斯出版了《赫尔墨斯，或关于普遍语法的哲学探究》。1776年，乔治·坎贝尔在《修辞的哲学》中，对普遍语法做出了常识性判断；“在礼节中，不存在像普遍语法这样的东西，除非有像普遍语言这样的东西”。

The 19^th Century.  In linguistics the 19^th century is the golden age of historical and comparative studies, but in the narrower history of grammar it is relatively arid. Traditional grammar was found to be a sufficient framework for the “reconstruction” of Proto-Indo-European, the work into which the energies of the century were poured. See INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE.

19世纪。在语言学方面，19世纪是历史和比较研究的黄金时代，但在较狭义的语法史上它却是相对枯燥的。人们发现传统语法对于原始印欧语系的“重建”是一个充分的框架，从事的该项工作倾注了整个世纪的能量。参阅印欧语系词条。

Little attention was paid either to the philosophical bearings of grammar or to the problems of more accurate grammatical description until the last decade of the century, when the Swiss Ferdinand de Sanssure began lecturing on general linguistics at the University of Geneva after a brilliant career in historical linguistic. Saussure’s aim was to establish the study of living language, or language in general, on the same sort of scientific basis that had been achieved for historical linguistics. His lectures, published posthumously in 1916 as Cours de linguistique generale (Course in General Linguistics), were the immediate begetters of the 20^th century “revolution” in grammar.

人们很少关注语法的哲学关系，也很少关注更准确的语法描述问题，直到那个世纪的最后十年，当时瑞士人费迪南德·德·索绪尔在历史语言学辉煌的生涯后，开始在日内瓦大学讲授普通语言学。索绪尔的目的是在取得历史语言学同样的科学基础上，建立对有生命的语言或一般语言的研究。他的讲座取名为Cours de linguistique generale（普通语言学教程），在他去世后的1916年出版，是20世纪语法“革命”的直接开创者。

 The 20^th Century.  Although Saussure was not a grammarian, his influence on grammatical study has probably been greater than that of any other man in history. His insights were especially fertile in the United States, partly because American linguistic scientists were working with American Indian languages and other languages that simply could not be described by the Priscianic, and ultimately Aristotelian, grammar. Here the pioneers were Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and specially Leonard Bloomfield.

20世纪。尽管索绪尔不是一位语法学家，但他对语法研究的影响可能要比历史上任何其他人都要更大。在美国，他的深刻见解尤其深远，部分原因是由于美国语言学家是在研究美洲印第安语和其它无法用简单的普里西安的方法描述，以及最终用亚里士多德式的语法来描述的语言。这里的先驱是法兰兹·鲍亚士，爱德华·萨丕尔，尤其是伦纳德·布洛姆菲尔德。

Bloomfield’s book Language (1933) is the indispensable bible of American structural-descriptive linguistics. Bloomfieldian linguistics and its particular kind of grammatical study, based upon empiricist philosophy and behavioristic psychology, held undisputed sway from the 1930’s to the mid-1950’s, when the transformational-generative doctrines of Zellig Y. Harris and especially of Noam Chomsky were promulgated as a challenge and reaction.

布洛姆菲尔德的书《语言》（1933年）是美国结构性-描述语言学不可或缺的权威著作。当策林·Y. 哈里斯，尤其是诺姆·乔姆斯基公布的转换性-生成学说作为一种挑战和回应时，布洛姆菲尔德学派以经验主义哲学和行为主义心理学为基础的语言学及其特殊的语法研究，从20世纪30年代到20世纪50年代中期一直占有无可争议的统治地位。

                                              2022年8月4日译

（译者注：该词条部分位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第13卷，第152页至154页）

待续部分：COMTEMPORARY GRAMMATICAL STUDIES 当代语法研究。