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τέχνη γραμματική

Posted: March 11th, 2012, 5:42 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Nikolaos recently quoted from τέχνη γραμματική, attributed to Dionysius Thrax (Διονυσίου τοῦ Θραικὸς):
Nikolaos Adamou wrote:Γραμματικὴ ἐστιν ἐμπειρία τῶν παρὰ ποηταῖς τε καὶ συγγραφεῦσιν ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ λεγομένων. Μέρη δὲ αὐτῆς εἰσὶν ἕξ. πρῶτον ἀνάγνωσις ἐντριβὴς κατὰ προσῳδίαν, δεύτερον ἐξήγησις, μετὰ τοὺς ἐνυπάρχοντας ποιητικοὺς τρόπους, τρίτον γλωσςῶνς τὲ καὶ ἱστοριῶν πρόχειρος ἀπόδοσις, τέταρτον ἐτυμολογίας εὕρεσις, πέμπτον ἀναλογίας ἐκλογισμὸς, ἕκτον κρίσις ποιημάτων, ὅ δη κάλλιστόν ἐστι πάντων ἐν τῇ τέχνῃ.
Grammar is empirical (knowledge) (of the general usage) of poets and prose writers (ὡς ἐπὶ τὸ πολὺ λεγομένων). It has six divisions, first expert (reading) with due regard to prosodic features; second explanation of the literary expressions found in the text; third, the provision of notes on particular words and on the subject matter; fourth, the discovery of etymologies’ fifth, the working out of grammatical regularities; sixth, the critical appreciation of literature, which is the finest part of all that the (science τέχνῃ) embraces.
As I take the translation from the Byzantine Grammarians, by Robert Henry Robins, page 44, I do have problems with the translation, and definitely ἀνάγνωσις is not just reading but aloud reading.
Wikipedia claims this is the first grammar written in Greek, written for teaching Homeric Greek to people who already speak Koine. Is that accurate?

Looks like both (1) reading out loud, with careful attention to prosody and (2) technical discussion of the language using metalanguage were part of this method, no?

Re: τέχνη γραμματική

Posted: March 11th, 2012, 6:44 pm
by MAubrey
Jonathan Robie wrote:Wikipedia claims this is the first grammar written in Greek, written for teaching Homeric Greek to people who already speak Koine. Is that accurate?
Probably not. Most don't think that Dionysius Thrax was actually the author of it at all. The bulk of it tends to be dated to around the same time as Apollonius Dyscholus' work.

Re: τέχνη γραμματική

Posted: March 14th, 2012, 10:24 am
by Jonathan Robie
MAubrey wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:Wikipedia claims this is the first grammar written in Greek, written for teaching Homeric Greek to people who already speak Koine. Is that accurate?
Probably not. Most don't think that Dionysius Thrax was actually the author of it at all. The bulk of it tends to be dated to around the same time as Apollonius Dyscholus' work.
Good website dedicated to Apollonius Dyscholus: http://schmidhauser.us/apollonius/.

It contains a history of grammar in Greece - I've only browsed it, but it looks useful:

2010. The Birth of Grammar in Greece, by Andreas U. Schmidhauser, in EJ Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 499–511

Re: τέχνη γραμματική

Posted: March 14th, 2012, 11:10 am
by cwconrad
Jonathan Robie wrote:
MAubrey wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:Wikipedia claims this is the first grammar written in Greek, written for teaching Homeric Greek to people who already speak Koine. Is that accurate?
Probably not. Most don't think that Dionysius Thrax was actually the author of it at all. The bulk of it tends to be dated to around the same time as Apollonius Dyscholus' work.
Good website dedicated to Apollonius Dyscholus: http://schmidhauser.us/apollonius/.

It contains a history of grammar in Greece - I've only browsed it, but it looks useful:

2010. The Birth of Grammar in Greece, by Andreas U. Schmidhauser, in EJ Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 499–511
But the guy's name is really Dyscolus, not Dyscholus. Dyscolus (Δύσκολος).The name really doesn't mean, as the spelling "Dyscholus" might seem to suggest, "trained in the school of hard knocks" or "knuckle-rapping schoolmaster" but "hard to get along with." Its opposite is εὔκολος, a word that I remember from Aristophanes' Frogs and the assertion there that Sophocles, unlike the quarreling Aeschylus and Euripides, was "sweet-tempered" both in life and in the underworld.

I don't know what it is about some of those Hellenistic literary figures but they've had some weird names. An associate of mine once wrote a book on Dionysius Skytobrachion (Σκυτοβραχίων), the "leather-armed."

Re: τέχνη γραμματική

Posted: March 14th, 2012, 11:51 am
by MAubrey
Jonathan Robie wrote:Good website dedicated to Apollonius Dyscholus: http://schmidhauser.us/apollonius/.

It contains a history of grammar in Greece - I've only browsed it, but it looks useful:

2010. The Birth of Grammar in Greece, by Andreas U. Schmidhauser, in EJ Bakker, ed., A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 499–511
Schmidhauser's work is quite good. I'm looking forward to his published work on the Apollonius' treatise on the pronoun and that chapter from Bakker (2010) is one of the better ones in that volume--most of which are excellent, but there are a few duds (the syntax chapter was a huge letdown).