The Concept of Inchoativity in Works of Latin Grammarians

This article touches upon the idea of inchoativity in the works of Roman grammarians. It aims to observe the development of the usage of the term inchoativus in the Roman grammatical tradition. The study is based on Latin grammatical treatises dating back to the 3rd-7th centuries A.D., the most part of which was published by Heinrich Keil in the second half of the 19th century. Besides Keil's edition, the article refers to recent editions of grammatical treatises. The study was conducted using three digital textual databases including Corpora Corporum, Digital Library of Latin Texts, and PHI Latin Texts. The Latin adjective inchoativus (or inco-hativus, а less common spelling), which literally means ‘inceptive, initial', is attested in three meanings and is used in collocations concerning verbal tense, verbal inflection, and conjunctions respectively. The first two usages were widespread and refer to verbal categories, while the last one is attested only once. The article is divided into two parts. The first one discusses collocations with types of verbal tense such as gradus ‘grade, degree', distantia ‘distance', differentia ‘difference', discertio ‘difference', species ‘aspect' and tempus ‘tense' itself. The second part deals with Roman grammatical categories including forma ‘form', qualitas ‘quality', species ‘aspect', genus ‘voice', figura ‘figure'. The study draws a conclusion that the adjective inchoativus/incohativus is used with categories of tense and aspect only in the works of early grammarians including Probus, Sacerdos, Diomedes, Charisius, and PseudoProbus. However, these grammarians also mention this term with regard to verb forms ending in -sco. Mostly, inchoativity is bound with the Roman verbal category of forma, which can be observed in the works by Dositheus, Phocas, Eutyches, Audax, Pseudo-Victorinus, Donatus and his commentators Sergius, Servius, Pompeius, Cledonius, and Julian of Toledo, and species (Macrobius, Priscian), which is not to be confused with the species of tense mentioned above. Pseudo-Asper is the only Roman grammarian who exceptionally puts inchoativity into the category of figura and spells inchoativus as incohativus. If the category of forma is absent, inchoativity is reckoned to be a verbal quality (Diomedes). Inchoativity is included into the category of voice in case voice is regarded as a subcategory of quality (Sacerdos, Pseudo-Probus, and Cledonius). In respect to forms ending in -sco, inchoativity is a manifestation of the so-called grammatical category of quality.

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