The Grammatical Theory of the Modistae

Abstract

Until the end of the 12th century, grammar was one of the trivium (artes sermocinales), which taught one to speak and write properly following the model of the classics and the precepts of Donatus and Priscian. However, in subsequent centuries another ars sermocinalis, dialectic, gradually began to invade the field of grammar. Unlike Pere Hèlias, who still distinguished between these two arts, Peter Abelard steered the pathway towards a general theory of language which was both grammatical and epistemological. This interest in conceiving of language as a general theory of the linguistic sign was captured and systematised by a school of grammarians called the Modistae, who over the course of a century—from the mid-13th to the mid-14th—strove to develop a theory of language (scientia sermocinalis) that was based on the assumption that language reflects the structures of thinking while also reflecting the structures of reality. In accordance with scholastic Aristotelianism, the Modistae upheld that because they exist, things possess certain properties or ways of being (modi essendi) that are captured by the mind through innate forms of comprehension (modi intelligendi), which are in turn expressed by the universal forms of language (modi significandi).