Dionysios Thrax

Dionysios Thrax ( ancient Greek Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ Dionýsios ho Thrāx , German 'Dionysios the Thracian' ; Latinized Dionysius Thrax ) was an ancient Greek grammarian . He came from Alexandria and probably lived in the 2nd century BC. Chr.

Dionysius wrote the first Greek grammar by bringing together the knowledge that had been achieved in the Greek world by philosophers and philologists in the previous 400 years on language and grammar.

In his " Τέχνη γραμματική " ( Technē grammatikē , "grammatical science") the letters and sounds are treated first, then the inflection of verbs and nouns as well as word formation . The book thus contains a phonology and morphology of Greek.

So contains z. B. Paragraph 12 the noun that is quoted in the translation of Arens (1974: 23): “The noun is a case-forming part of a sentence which includes a thing, e.g. B. stone, or an act, e.g. B. Education, referred to and generally, z. B. human, horse, and especially, z. B. Socrates, is used. The noun has five different side effects: gender , type, form, number , case . … ”“ Form ”( σχῆμα ) means the distinction between simplex and compound (between simple, i.e. non-compound, and compound words). For “kind” ( εἶδος ) he gives u. a. the following examples: patronymic , possessive , comparative , superlative .

Dionysios Thrax also has the oldest elaborated system of metrics for verses with a classification and nomenclature of the feet of verse, which has prevailed in poetics to this day.

Dionysios Thrax anticipates contemporary considerations on the aspect and the verb forms . So there are other temporal functions of verb forms than deictic relations. He first distinguishes the three usual times. In the past, however, four subspecies are differentiated: "parakeimenos" ( παρακείμενος ), "hypersyntelikos", "aoristos" ( ἀόριστος ) and "paratatikos". Translated into the modern language of grammar, it refers to the grammatical forms of the perfect , past perfect , aorists and imperfect .

expenditure

• The fragments of the grammarian Dionysius Thrax . Edited by Konstanze Linke (= collection of Greek and Latin grammarians, 3). de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1977, ISBN 3-11-005753-0
• Dionysii Thracis Ars Grammatica; qualem exemplaria vetustissima exhibent subscriptis discrepantiis et testimoniis quae in codicibus recentioribus scholiis erotematis apud alios scriptores interpretem armenium reperiuntur . Ed. Gustavus Uhlig . Teubner, Leipzig 1883 (Greek-Armenian text edition)
• The teaching of the grammarian Dionysios (Dionysios Thrax, Tékhne grammatiké - German [with Greek parallel text]) . Trans. V. Wilfried Kürschner. In: Ancient grammar: Contents and contexts. Edited by Pierre Swiggers et al. Alfons Wouters (= Orbis / Supplementa, 7). Peeters, Löwen / Paris 1996, ISBN 90-6831-881-0 / ISBN 2-87723-307-3 , pp. 177-215
• The teaching of the grammarian Dionysios (Dionysios Thrax, Tékhne grammatiké - German) . In: De Tékhne Grammatiké van Dionysius Thrax: De oudste spraakkunst in het Westen. Pierre Swiggers - Alfons Wouters: Inleiding; Griekse tekst met Nederlandse vertaling en noten; Duitse vertaling (by Wilfried Kürschner); terminological apparaat en bibliografie (= Orbis Linguarum, 2). Peeters, Löwen / Paris 1998, ISBN 90-6831-992-2 , pp. 51-72

literature

• Eleanor Dickey: Ancient Greek Scholarship. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-531292-8 , pp. 77-80
• Frédérique Ildefonse: Denys dit le Thrace. In: Richard Goulet (ed.): Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques. Volume 2, CNRS Éditions, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-271-05195-9 , pp. 742-747

Web links

Wikisource: Dionysios Thrax  - Sources and full texts (Greek)

• Literature by and about Dionysios Thrax in the catalog of the German National Library
• His main work τέχνη γραμματική in ancient Greek