Metalinguaggio a Port-Royal: alla ricerca di un pensiero sintattico

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight how the instances of reflection on syntax as an object of modern thought identified the School of Port-Royal as the turning point that led grammar to split from logic and focus attention on the sentence and more generally on syntax. However, the complex and articulated genesis of this process unfolds through the elaboration of diverse works revolving around the Grammaire and the Logique, in which grammar and logic are not so exactly separated, contrary to conventional perspectives. The investigation, from a metalinguistic perspective, of grammatical terminology in the works of the School of Port-Royal has allowed us to collect a certain amount of data, significant for the formation of certain concepts, identifying a syntactic thought, that have undergone an evolution in a path that arrives at the metalanguage, subsequently recognising specifically grammatical elements.