La teoria grammaticale di Robertus Kilwardby: un approccio metalinguistico

Robert Kilwardby was archbishop in Canterbury (1272), Cardinal in Porto (1278), studied in Oxford and then moved to Paris, where he held lectures on grammar and logic. He has been discovered in the last decades and seems a significant figure in the landscape of the linguistic studies under the scholastics in 13 th century for his writings in Aristotelian logic and grammar theory. Most of his works and commentaries remained unedited, some other works have been wrongly ascribed to him, so that it was difficult to build a correct image of the depth of his thinking. Especially Kilwardby’s works on grammar, commentaries to Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticaeand De ortu scientiarum, show his innovative vision of grammar as a science, of syntax as a scientific matter through his role as a representative of the intentionalism. His linguistic interest for the syntax and the parts of speech and his exact terminology contributed to the development of linguistic thought and grammar theory in the thirteen century.