ABSTRACT
The Indian scholar Paˉn. ini, as discussed in the previous chapter, showed that a systematic study of the structure of words and phrases was not only possible, but also necessary, in order to understand the meanings imprinted in them better and in order to assess their aesthetic effects. In Greece, the philosopher Aristotle (384-322 bce) put forward the view of language as a formal system that could be analyzed methodically by identifying the parts of a sentence. He called the main ones the subject and the predicate, and he connected the study to logical method-hence the Greek term lógos to refer to both “word” and “study” (section 1.1, previous chapter), thus identifying language as the means through which logical thinking manifests itself. Aristotle’s ideas inspired others to look at language in a similar way, including the scholar Dionysius Thrax, who lived between 170 and 90 bce. Thrax showed how the parts of speech related to each other systematically in the construction of sentences. He named them nouns, verbs, articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, and participles-categories adopted by the Roman Priscian, in the sixth century ce, becoming subsequently the basis for writing the grammars of vernacular (non-Latin) languages in the medieval and Renaissance periods in Europe, even if the t between Thrax’s categories and the languages was not always perfect. The same sentence divisions are used to this day.
