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Parataxis in Provençal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

Comparative philologists have long since recognized that the logical relation of mental concepts need not find expression by means of words. Viewed from the standpoint of pure logic a sentence like “I think he will come” contains a subordination; but the student of historical grammar rightly regards it as exhibiting two independent, if not unrelated, sentences. It is altogether likely that such a method of juxtaposing concepts was the only one that prevailed in remote antiquity and that in the course of time such a loosely connected sequence of clauses developed into one organic whole. The fact of parataxis is now established for all branches of the Indo-European family, and Hermann has proved that grammatical subordination was unknown in the “Ursprache,” being developed in the daughter tongues by means of the specific determinants of the originally independent sentence. Notwithstanding these results, there is still a plentiful lack of agreement among scholars in regard to the definition of the term parataxis and to the degree of extension to be ascribed to it.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1906

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