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On Grammatical Terminology and Aspect in Particular
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
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It is over fifty years now since the formation of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology, and the presentation of its Report and it seems to be high time that teachers of languages considered, first, how successful they have been in carrying out its recommendations, and secondly, what modifications are called for in the light of more recent knowledge. The Committee was a strong one, with E. A. Sonnenschein in the chair and R. S. Conway as the original secretary, both representing the Classical Association; the Modern Language Association, the English Association, and various educational bodies sent equally distinguished representatives. Their recommendations, apart from a few reservations by individuals on comparatively minor points, were unanimous, and have on the whole won fairly general neglect, not as a rule through disagreement with them, but simply because it was less trouble to go on using whatever terms one had been in the habit of using before, however inconvenient, confusing, or inexact they might be. Before discussing the recommendations it seems desirable to glance at the history of the ‘old’ terminology in order to see what was unsatisfactory about it and why it needed to be changed.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1962
References
page 72 note 1 Report of the Joint Committee on Grammatical Terminology (London, 1911).Google Scholar The Interim Report was presented in 1909.
page 72 note 2 Sandys, J. E., A History of Classical Scholarship, i (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1906), 90.Google Scholar
page 72 note 3 Ibid. 97.
page 72 note 4 Ibid. 146 ff.
page 73 note 1 Entwistle, W. J. and Morison, E., Russian and the Slavonic Languages (London, 1949), 103.Google Scholar
page 73 note 2 Burrow, T., The Sanskrit Language (London, 1955), 295 f.Google Scholar
page 73 note 3 The imperatives, and perhaps the subjunctives and optatives, seem to have aspect but not time, but raise some problems that cannot be discussed here.
page 74 note 1 Walters, C. F. and Conway, R. S., Deigma (2nd ed., London, 1928), 70.Google Scholar See also Thompson, J., Murray's Greek Grammar (London, 1902), 323 and 343.Google Scholar
page 74 note 2 Ibid. 268.
page 75 note 1 Op. cit. 269.
page 75 note 2 Delotte, A., Le Verbe grec (Paris, 1953), 36.Google Scholar
page 75 note 3 J. Thompson, op. cit. 344.
page 75 note 4 See Oxford Classical Dictionary (1949), 288.Google Scholar
page 75 note 5 J. E. Sandys, op. cit. i. 175.
page 75 note 6 Ibid. 202.
page 76 note 1 Robins, R. H., Ancient and Mediaeval Grammatical Theory in Europe (London, 1951), 40.Google Scholar
page 76 note 2 Ibid. 56.
page 77 note 1 Conway, R. S., The Making of Latin (2nd ed., London, 1938), 116.Google Scholar
page 77 note 2 Op. cit. 65.
page 77 note 3 Madvig, I. N., Latin Grammar, tr. Woods, G. (Oxford, 1863), 86.Google Scholar
page 78 note 1 e.g. ‘The pluperfect as the preterite of the perfect denotes the past state’ according to Palmer, L. R., The Latin Language (London, 1954), 308.Google Scholar
page 78 note 2 Cf. Behaghel, O., Short Historical Grammar of the German Language, tr. Trechmann, E. (London, 1915), 137.Google Scholar
page 79 note 1 Report, 8.
page 79 note 2 Ibid. 17, n. 1.
page 79 note 3 Ibid. 29.
page 80 note 1 Ibid. 17.
page 81 note 1 It is, naturally, the form used to include the other times as well as the present, e.g. ‘I write every day’.
page 82 note 1 In English we use the aorist not only for the single act (‘he strikes’, ‘he struck the bell’) but also for the habitual or repeated act (‘he strikes’, ‘he struck the bell every day’). Latin prefers the imperfect for these uses.
page 83 note 1 Report, 31.
page 83 note 2 Ibid., 29, 30.
page 84 note 1 Quicherat, L., Thesaurus Poeticus (2nd ed., Paris, 1875)Google Scholar; Elmer, H. C., Latin Grammar (New York, 1928).Google Scholar
page 84 note 1 Purdie, E. and Saunders, M. B., Matriculation Latin (London, 1932), vi.Google Scholar
page 85 note 2 e.g. a past subjunctive (either past imperfect or past perfect) is used in both verbs of an unfulfilled condition.