“Constructio and related terms in Medieval grammars: toward a theory of syntax

Between the eleventh and the twelfth century, a consistent termi- nology develops to denote certain syntactical relations between words, like “dependency”. This concerns the relation between the predicate and its arguments as well as the prepositions and their nouns, or, in a noun phrase or finally in a verbal phrase, between subject and predi- cate. The elaboration of a set of terms coming from the Late Latin tradi- tion and an innovated conception of the role of grammars culminates in the syntactic theory of the Modistae. As Covington (1984: 42) and later Kneepkens (1990: 140 and passim) have already claimed, at the center of the metalinguistic reflection lies the term constructio with its history and network of related terms. I devote this part of my research to my esteemed friend Lucio, who shares with our research group1 the troubles of the intriguing history of the beginning of (modern) syntac- tic thought in the Middle Ages and its intertwinements with rhetoric.