Port-Royal Grammar

The Port-Royal Grammar (originally Grammaire générale et raisonnée contenant les fondemens de l'art de parler, expliqués d'une manière claire et naturelle, "General and Rational Grammar, containing the fundamentals of the art of speaking, explained in a clear and natural manner") was a milestone in the analysis and philosophy of language. Published in 1660 by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, it was the linguistic counterpart to the Port-Royal Logic (1662), both named after the Jansenist monastery of Port-Royal-des-Champs where their authors worked. The Port-Royal Grammar became used as a standard textbook in the study of language until the early nineteenth century, and it has been reproduced in several editions and translations.^[1] In the twentieth century, scholars including Edmund Husserl and Noam Chomsky maintained academic interest in the book.

Arnauld and Lancelot's approach to language is historical, comparative, and philosophical. Discussing the essence of French, they give examples from Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, and German. Their work is influenced by the Modistae Grammar of Thomas of Erfurt, and later grammars and textbooks authored by scholars including Julius Caesar Scaliger, Sanctius, Petrus Ramus and Claude Favre de Vaugelas, Other influences include Andreas Helwig's etymology, Francis Bacon's universal language project, and works by philosophers including René Descartes, and Blaise Pascal.^[1]

A core argument of Arnauld and Lancelot's general and rational grammar is that language reveals human thought structures which are based on the logic of predication. The notion is that all thought structures are based on logic and refrain from outside judgment.^[2] All languages are similar because there is only one logic. Their connection between logic and grammar has much to with the idea of the vocabulary concluding the logic of a statement, that arguments within arguments lead to an unsaid logical deduction.^[3]

This idea was elaborated by Edmund Husserl in his treatise of universal grammar in 1920. He published the first formulation of generative grammar, which he based on "pure logic".^[4] Husserl's aim was to provide a counter-argument to a psychologistic view of language and logic.^[5] David Hilbert and Rudolph Carnap further developed Husserl's model, leading to the creation of Categorial Grammar in the 1930s through 1950s. More lately, phenomenologists criticized it for using simple predicates instead of modern complex ones.^[6]