Modistic Grammar under Debate . Lorenzo Valla and the Humanist Reconfiguration of Linguistic Heritage in Syntax (13th–15th c.)

This paper reconstructs the Modistic project (grammatica speculativa) as a scholastic attempt to establish grammar as a universal scientia grounded in a triadic alignment of being, understanding, and signifying (modi essendi — modi intelligendi—modi significandi). It then traces how internal tensions (intentionalism, contextual meaning, semantic instability) and late scholastic anti-Modist critiques, especially the Destructiones modorum significandi, undermine the ontological guarantees of Modism while preserving a sophisticated syntactic metalanguage (constructio, regimen, congruitas). The paper argues that Lorenzo Valla does not merely “oppose scholasticism”, but inaugurates a new epistemological regime in which grammatical authority is relocated from metaphysical correspondence to usus, textual evidence, and rhetorical clarity. In this regime, syntactic relations persist yet become increasingly implicit, embedded in philological evaluation rather than codified as speculative theory. Finally, the paper integrates the medieval doctrine of oratio mentalis (Ockham, Buridan, Pierre d’Ailly) into this trajectory and explains why the Mental Language Hypothesis largely disappears from early modern visibility before re-emerging in modern frameworks (Port-Royal/Chomsky; Fodor). The result is a unified model of continuity-through- transformation: syntax persists, but its legitimating foundations, disciplinary alliances, and forms of explicitness are reconfigured.