Syntax in Antiquity

This title deals with problems posed by ancient grammar; specifically issues involving matters of syntax, semantics and themes bordering on the fields of logic and rhetoric. The editors contend that it is an anachronism both to say that there was no syntax in ancient grammar or to claim that ancient grammarians had identified syntactic functions or had to recourse to ‘transformations’. It is stressed that the source-texts have to be read from within, that the modern grammarian must place himself within the context in which these texts were written, read and commented upon. The various contributions contained in this volume provide evidence for the presence of syntactic ideas in an ancient grammar (and its reflection in medieval traditions); they also shed light on the close ties between issues now dealt with separately by syntacticians, semanticists or pragmaticists. The contributions essentially deal with the status of syntactic problems, the relationship between syntactic themes and the treatment of rhetorical and stylistic problems and the interest taken in discursive phenomena. The book also contains discussions of specific topics relating to the terminology or description of syntactic structures.