What Graeco-Roman Grammar Was About (P. H. Matthews)

This introductory chapter provides a background of Graeco-Roman grammar. The Roman Empire was different from that of the European Middle Ages, and from the way it came itself to be perceived in the Renaissance. Therefore, part of the history of grammar in the west is of its adaptation to new circumstances and new pressures. Any grammar is a partial description of a language, which identifies certain kinds of unit and relations of certain kinds between them. Those established in antiquity in analyses of Greek and Latin were later taken as a model for the description of languages whose structure was in one way or another different. However, other units and relations came in time to be identified, which have since been taken up by scholars generally. A central aim then of this book is to make clear what the ancient model was.