A General and Rational Grammar, Containing the Fundamental Principles of the art of Speaking, ... Translated From the French of Messieurs de Port-Royal

by Antoine Arnauld

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars.
Western literary study flows out of eighteenth-century works by Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Frances Burney, Denis Diderot, Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and others. Experience the birth of the modern novel, or compare the development of language using dictionaries and grammar discourses.
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The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition
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British Library

T113985

Messieurs de Port-Royal = Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot. With a half-title and a final leaf of advertisements.

printed for J. Nourse, 1753. [12],154, [2]p.; 12°

Genres: Philosophy, Linguistics, Language

170 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1660

About the author

Jansenist theologian and Cartesian philosopher Antoine Arnauld of France co-authored the Port-Royale Logic (1662) with Pierre Nicole.

Adherents of movement of Cornelis Jansen included Antoine Arnauld.

Contemporaries nicknamed this priest and mathematician of the leaders as the grand to distinguish him from his father.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine...

Reviews

[Karölchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

History repeats itself - Chomsky only reinvented the wheel =)


Very interesting and easy to read universal grammar. Nonetheless, I did expect a more general perspective due to the label "universal grammar". The Port-Royal grammar made me laugh a lot, as, from a contemporary perspective it was ridiculous how Lancelot and Arnauld 'proved' many of their assumptions, oftentimes only based on French and/or Latin examples. Except for some Greek and Hebrew examples (had to skip those :/ ), different languages were scarce.

All in all I'd recommend reading this to anybody interested in linguistics (and French), as it shows well that history repeats itself. Different frameworks take turns, always focussing on different aspects of language, and searching its origins in different places (be it discourse or cognition).