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1587), and Scioppius (Grammatica philosophica, 1628). It is deeply influenced by René
Descartes (1596–1650). In its second edition, the grammar includes an address to the
readers informing them of the publication of The Logic or the Art of Thinking by Arnauld
and P.Nicole, a work ‘based on the same principles’ which ‘can be extremely useful to
explain and demonstrate several of the questions raised in the Grammar’. The logic,
which underwent several successive changes until 1683, includes several chapters (II, 1
and 2) reproduced almost literally from the grammar. Other chapters study in detail
problems that had been dealt with cursorily or simply alluded to in the grammar. It is
necessary to compare the two works—the second one often casts further light on the
ideas on language in the first work—bearing in mind, however, that the successive
emendations may have altered the unity of the doctrine on certain questions.
The difference in purposes of the two works must also be taken into account. The
grammar deals with only three of the four ‘operations of the mind’ considered as essential
at the time: to conceive, to judge, to reason, and to order, stating that ‘All philosophers
teach that there are three operations of the mind: to conceive, to judge, to reason’ (II, 1).
Although the authors acknowledge that ‘exercising our will can be considered as one
mode of thinking’ distinct from simple affirmation, they study it only in connection with
the different ways of expressing it—optative, potential, imperative forms—in the chapter
on verbal modes (II, 6). The logic shows even more reticence as it avoids any allusion to
the expression of the will. Out of the three remaining operations, the grammar leaves out
the third one, reasoning, as being only ‘an extension of the second one’: ‘To reason is to
make use of two judgements to form a third’ (II, 1). Therefore, reasoning is studied in the
logic, which returns to the ideas developed in the grammar merely to deal, in the third
and fourth parts, with different ways of reasoning and the methods that enable one to
judge correctly and to reach the truth. The chapters of the logic that deal, more
exhaustively, with compound propositions are not a mere complement to the grammar,
even though they seem to be so, but a study of reasoning, whose aim, as the examples
analysed show, is apologetic and which should be situated in the context of the doctrinal
conflicts and the metaphysical controversies in which the ‘Messieurs’ of Port-Royal were
involved. As many commentators have pointed out (see for instance Chevalier, 1968;
Donzé, 1971), the grammar, limiting its study to the problems of conceiving and judging,
is a grammar of the single proposition. It lays down very firmly the simple sentence as
the central linguistic unit of discourse. This idea influenced grammarians for more than
two centuries.
CONTENTS
The grammar is composed of two parts. The first part, comprising six chapters, deals with
words as sounds and with the graphic signs that serve to describe them. The second,
which is more developed, deals, in twenty-four chapters, with ‘the principles and reasons
on which the diverse forms of the meaning of words are based’. The general plan follows
the traditional pattern in studying successively spelling (I, 1–2), prosody (I, 3–4), analogy
(II, 2–23), and syntax (II, 24). The original feature of the grammar is a new distribution
of the parts of speech and a justification of the procedure in a central chapter (II, 1) which
expounds the underlying principles of the plan followed. The second part studies in