Page:The grammar of Dionysios Thrax.djvu/12

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Grammar of Dionysios Thrax.

A Word is the smallest part of an ordered sentence.[1]

13. On the Sentence (λόγος).[2]

A Sentence is combination of words, either in prose or in verse, making complete sense. There are eight parts of speech: Noun, Verb, Participle, Article, Pronoun, Preposition, Adverb, and Conjunction. The proper noun, as a species, is subordinate to the noun.[3]

14. On the Noun (ὄνομα).

A Noun is a declinable part of speech, signifying something either concrete or abstract (concrete, as stone; abstract, as education); common or proper (common, as man, horse; proper, as Socrates, Plato).[4] It has five accidents: genders, species, forms, numbers, and cases.

There are three Genders, the masculine, the feminine, and the neuter. Some add to these two more, the common and the epicene—common, as man, horse; epicene, as swallow, eagle.

There are two Species of nouns, the primitive and the derivative. A primitive noun is one which is said according to original imposition, as γῆ (earth); a derivative noun is one which derives its origin from another noun, as γαιήιος (earthborn). There are seven classes of derivatives: Patronymics, Possessives, Comparatives, Diminutives, Nominals, Superlatives, and Verbals. A Patronymic is properly a noun formed from the name of a father, improperly a noun formed from the name of another ancestor, e.g., Achilleus is called both


  1. Cf. Aristotle, Poetics, capp. xix.-xxii.; Waitz, Aristotelis Organon, vol. i. pp. 323 sq.; Steinthal, Gesch. des Sprachwiss., pp. 285 sqq.; J. Vahlen, Aristoteles Lehre von der Rangfolge der Theile der Tragœdie, in Symbola Philologorum Bonnensium, pp. 180 sqq.
  2. Aristotle (De Interp., cap. iv.) defines λόγος as "significant sound, whereof any one part is separately significant as an expression, but not as an affirmation." Cf. Schmidt, Beiträge, pp. 218 sqq.; Steinthal, Sprachwiss. bei den Gr. und Röm., pp. 568 sqq.; Lersch, Sprachphilosophie, Pt. II., passim.
  3. Directed against the Stoics, who made the προσηγορία a distinct part of speech.
  4. Aristotle (De Interp., cap. ii.) says: "A noun is a sound significant according to convention (θέσις = position), timeless, whereof no part is separately significant." Cf. Schmidt, Beiträge, p. 227 sqq.