The Emergence of Syntactic Categories in the History of Linguistics: From Medieval to Modern Age

This volume brings together studies developed from the international workshop The Emergence of Syntactic Categories in the History of Linguistics: From Medieval to Modern Age, held in May 2024 at the University of Palermo, Italy. The workshop gathered scholars of linguistics and philology to explore how syntactic categories were conceived and transformed from Late Antiquity to the early modern era. It aimed to address the underexplored emergence and conceptualization of syntactic structures, especially the notion of the ‘clause’ before its formulation in the Port-Royal Grammar (1660). The studies collected here examine a wide range of sources, from late antique Latin grammars to early modern vernacular and missionary texts. Taken together, they offer fresh critical insights into the continuities, transformations, and innovations that shaped the prehistory of modern syntactic theory.