GRAMMAR

The base of the Trivium

The Trivium?

The base of the Quadrivium

Together, the Trivium and the Quadrivium form the Seven Liberal Arts

“Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.”

― Ambrose Bierce, “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”

The word grammar comes from the Greek grammatikē technē, which means: “art of letters”. By the 14^th Century, Old English had a grammar system: stæfcræft. This was far more complex than todays English. Its meaning:

·      ‘the art of grammar’,

·      ‘skill in letters’, or

·      ‘learning’.

From the 14^th Century, this meaning was supplanted by the French connotation of the word, restricting it to "rules of a language to which speakers and writers must conform”.

A German print AD 1500 shows the goddess Wisdom or Sophia as the source of the Pythagorean concept of the seven liberal arts. arts. The love of wisdom or the "philio of Sophia" is the meaning of the word Philosophy. Wisdom’s lifeblood pours into all of the arts and crafts drawn as seven young men. Proverbs 9:1 says: “Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars”.

The concept evolved further in Rome and again in the “so called” dark ages (6^th to 11^th Century). With the renaissance came its refinement as the seven liberal arts and sciences.

Go back to who started it all: the Greek philosophers. Aristotle believed the liberal arts were those subjects that were suitable for learning by a freeman.  He contended that a freeman should not seek practical skills but should strive for moral and intellectual excellence, the goal being theoretical and philosophical knowledge.   He further believed if a man was capable of pure thought, he was capable of leadership of those who merely possessed the practical skills.  

These principles evolved in Greece and Rome and even withstood the “dark ages” which enveloped Europe from roughly the Sixth Century until the Eleventh Century. 

During this period, Western European culture was virtually blotted out and what little education remained was confined to the church till the ninth century: the Dark Ages. Then, under Charlemange, education expanded. While still ecclesiastical in organization, educational efforts fanned the flame of intellectual curiosity. 

By the 11^th Century, Europe had begun to emerge from its darkness into a degree of political and social stability. With this emergence came a renewal of the spirit of learning, which was nurtured for nearly four hundred years until it would burst forth during the Renaissance. Education during these centuries was based on Aristotle’s precepts which led to the identification of the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences.  

The trivium includes those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to mind, and the quadrivium, those aspects that pertain to matter. Study of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) is a prerequisite for studying the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).

For the medieval student, the trivium was the curricular beginning of the acquisition of the seven liberal arts. As such, it was the principal undergraduate course of study. From that contrast, between the simpler trivium and the more difficult quadrivium, arose the word trivial.

So what are these three ‘trivial’ elements?

·      Grammar: concerned with the thing as-it-is-symbolized. It is the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought. It was and is the art of correct writing and skillful speaking;

·      Logic: concerned with the thing as-it-is-known. It is the art of right thinking. Unlike physical or social science or philosophy, it is not concerned with the reality about which we are thinking, but only with the operations of thinking itself; the ability to carry on a conversation or argue in a wholly rational manner with the thoughts carefully linked together and

·      Rhetoric: concerned with the thing as-it-is-communicated. It is the art of communicating thought from one mind to another; the art of using language in such a way as to make the desired impression upon the hearer or reader. Generally speaking, rhetoric covered the whole subject of composition, both oral and written.   In rhetoric we see the interplay of both grammar and logic.

Fundamental to the concept of the Trivium is the concept that language evolves from the very nature of being human.

·      Because we are rational, we think;

·      because we are social, we interact with other people;

·      because we are corporeal, we use a physical medium.

We invent symbols to express the range of practical and theoretical experiences that make up our existence. Words allow us to leave a legacy of our experience to delight and to educate those who follow us. Because we use language, we engage in a dialogue with the past and the future.

Grammar is the basis of order in communication. Logic and rhetoric are separate but interconnected. Each forms one of three parts of the trivium. All have speech as their subject.

Note: speech, not words.

It is not difficult to see that these three elements of the trivium are distinct arts. Each of them must consider speech in its own way. Speech belongs properly to the composite of the human body and the rational soul, which is immaterial. This soul has operations in common with the body, such as fear or anger, as well as other operations proper to itself, such as thinking. Speech can be therefore ordered to something immaterial as well as to something material.  

Logic considers speech insofar as it manifests some immaterial, universal intention, together with all those things that follow such universality. 

Rhetoric considers speech insofar as it manifests not only thoughts but also the passions common to body and soul. 

The grammarian considers the making of the instrument per se. Without the instrument, there is no order to order. Grammar does not primarily concern itself with how the instruments it creates are used: it provides reference to ensure that usage is logical and ultimately pleasant. If it does not achieve this, it adapts the instrument.

Stradivari knew the order of his instrument to music making, though he did not, precisely as a violin maker, know how to play this instrument ‘inspiringly’. So the grammarian considers speech as an artifact capable of expressing thought and even passion. He or she does not consider speech as a vehicle to attain a further end.  Rather, he considers the proper principles by which speech itself is formed. 

The grammarian considers what makes a word to be a noun, a verb, or some other part of speech, and the order these parts of speech have to one another. Thus he ultimately considers the constructions that arise from the order between such words as from their proper causes. The user uses what is useful in his application of the principles of grammar.

The grammarian monitors those causes, and recognises that in their usage, he does not dictate: he provides a foundation which may or may not be followed. If it is not followed, he must ask why, and adapt.

The 21^st Century

Consider the 21^st century grammarian: IT, texting, internationalism…

In today’s age, the grammarian must ensure that grammar (which provides the structure), logic (which provides the meaning) and rhetoric (which is the interplay of both) remain interconnected. The grammarian only considers the order in words insofar as it is a principle of sentences.  He is concerned with developing a ‘mode of signification’, whether or not the nature signified is a substance logically: e.g.: ‘man’, ‘humanity’, ‘whiteness’. 

Likewise he considers the relation of action to a subject and an object insofar as this produces certain kinds of verbs. He sees that the concept of action has produced a distinct schema or template by which the active, transitive verb is formed as an instrument to his intellect, without attention to the reality signified or its definition. He sees the words as defining, but not being the action or reality; by themselves, the words are immaterial. This is a pen? No. This is this.

The grammarian does not consider the modes of signifying (words) as revealing things per se. He is not primarily concerned about the manner in which those things are conceived. He sees these as constituting parts of speech with the power to be brought together to form a certain whole, the sentence, the mind’s principal instrument for expression.

In this way, Grammar is the colours on a palette. It is art: art that ensures that order can be determined from, by, of and for reason. He sees that grammatical constructs drawn from the modes of signifying logic and ensuring communication are instruments of the intellect in expressing its thoughts. 

Is grammar a fixed, immutable order or a speculative art?

It derives from and purports to determine the way we speak. Speech is distinguished from the sounds of most animals, by its order to the expression and communication of human thought.  The art concerned with speech as an instrument of thought, is among the ‘speculative’ or ‘theoretical’ arts which are ordered to particular, yet speculative, ends. 

Grammar exists. Does logic, rhetoric? Sense follow? Absolutely not. Give Salvador Dali some paint and he produces what some see as ‘art’. Give da Vinci a palette and he also produces what some see as art.

It is the same with the grammatical palette: verbs, nouns, tenses, structures, connotation and so on. In this sense grammar is always a speculative art, no matter how practical the manner of its study is, no matter how slavish its use is. Should we follow grammar? In at, did da Vinci? Did Dali? In their own ways.

Language, which grammar seeks to order, grows and changes apace in the hands of different practitioners. Grammar distinguishes each mode of signifying and recognises each one in the various parts of speech. As a liberal art, it studies and adapts. The grammarian continually considers universally and in principle the operation of all speakers. Insofar as his consideration is distant from the particular act of speaking, it can be called speculative.

But what he is analysing is the practical application of grammar’s principles. In medicine, as in grammar, a principle is made practical: the practitioner analyses the effect of his application of the speculative. It works?  Fine. Keep it. It does not? Reconsider. Change.

So mote it be with grammar.

Note, however, that, it is not speculative in the sense that it does not have some opus or is not ordered to operation. Of course it is logical: it derives from and directs logic in its recommended structure. Its ‘remoteness’ as an analytical science allows it to embrace in a universal manner unending opera and operationes. 

Thus ‘speculative grammar’ is an art: the art of observation and expression; an art that evolves as logic and rhetoric evolve. Though the modes of signifying that grammar studies, whether or not found in all languages, have a kind of universality, these modes only exist in the particular languages that embody them.

They exist in sounds determined by convention. They vary in one place and another and at one time and another; within and without a culture. Conventions change. Grammar adapts.

An art is liberal insofar as it is ordered to the intellect’s satisfaction. In this way ‘liberal’ adds some notion to ‘speculative.’  The speculative art produces some work that belongs immediately to reason, but the liberal art considers that work in a manner that serves man’s intellect and thus makes him free.

So any consideration of a particular language ordered merely to defining the habits of speaking, reading, or writing that language without attention to the principles by which it is an instrument of the intellect shares little in the liberal character of this art. 

One cannot make the art ‘servile’. One cannot change the nature of the art. But one can use the art in a servile way. In so doing, one fails.The liberal character of grammar demands that in the consideration of a particular language, even in its idioms, one sees the order in words as an instrument the intellect forms for the expression of its thought. 

To the extent that the grammarian fails to consider how this continues to develop, he fails to understand the role of his art. He does not consider grammar in the manner appropriate to the free man, who lives for his own sake and thus for the sake of the highest faculty.

 The importance of grammar

It is hard to define the importance of grammar in a society that creates school system where you can graduate from high school without ever having one single grammar class. We learn to speak instinctively by listening to our parents, the people around us and then we start imitating what they say. We learn how to speak without having the slightest idea of what “grammar” is.

In medieval times, grammar referred to the grammar of Latin and Old Greek languages… both having complicated grammatical systems with a very elaborate structure of declination and conjugation – cases, tenses, modes etc. Understanding such intricate structures was not only about being able to speak the language. At that time, Latin was the language of the educated – usually priests.

What is grammar today? Today, teaching a foreign language focuses on the practical skills of using the spoken language. It hard to find compelling reasons in favour of studying the grammar of any language.

Sometimes there is a misconception that a language has grammar only when the language has been written. This is far from true. The grammatical structures are there and we learn them during the process that is called language acquisition – we just don’t know, we are not aware of the underlying grammatical rules and structures that make our speech intelligible by other speakers of the language.

In this regard, grammar is the body of the rules, the totality of the complex linguistic conventions that make a tongue understandable for each member of that community. Certain basic notions and concepts are found in all languages: names for things and beings (nouns), names for their attributes (adjectives), words denoting actions (verbs) and the capacity to combine those in a specific order to convey an idea (sentences). And the discipline describing and organizing the rules pertaining to these concepts – is the grammar.

Communication is the key component of our social skill set. There is almost no job description without mentioning “good communication skills”… However, if you think of it: good and clear communication is based on a firm grasp of the language rules, while using an adequate vocabulary and the right words and having clear-cut thoughts that are worth communicating.

Some researchers say there is no thinking “outside” the language – we use language not only as an instrument for communicating but also as the primary tool for our thinking. Even those that claim to have thoughts as “blinking and sparkling” images and associations of ideas – when they try to explain it they need language. With its rules, known as grammar, with its words, known as nouns, verbs and other parts of speech.