Charles Mbo

INTRODUCTION The writing of a scientific work (thesis, memory of DEA, scientific article...) is the result of a choice of subject and an adequate development of the work schedule. Several factors come into account in this step, including research. In the past years and centuries, scientific research was a luxury, in the sense that we needed books to achieve it. But today, with the developments in this domain, new information technologies are an asset to produce an essay. As part of this practical work of scientific English, we present the project of our memory of PGD (Postgraduate Diploma). Thus, as the teacher requested we will give the summary of our project without listing the different parts. SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT MEMORY Generally in Latin, words’ order doesn't matter. Its study is a major issue of the syntax. It might focus on the clause, the sentence, the syntactic … Words order studies in Latin generally fall into various categories: the studies on the typology, the studies on the pragmatics and the studies that follow more or less MAROUZEAU’s work. At these different levels, they provide interesting and important items for a better understanding of the variability of words order in Latin. Among the various aspects addressed by Jules MAROUZEAU, we wanted to focus on words’ order on only one aspect, namely “noun phrase. Several groups of words are used in the logical sequence and the organization of a sentence or even a text. The new grammar calls it syntagm. This is why we often talk about noun phrase, verbal phrase, and pronominal phrase according to their meaning, their content and their nature. The term syntagm comes from the Greek SYN (together) and tagma (rank). The syntagm is a linguistic unit consisting of a set of linguistic forms (phonemes, words, or phrases) that are in a sequential relationship to one another. It is a group of words forming a unit in the organization hierarchy between A and B, that is, the two elements are not on the same level. The syntagm A and B form a hierarchical organization.1 Example: Haec novi iudicii nova forma terret oculos. This new form of a new court scares people. 1 MIMBU, H, Cours de syntaxe du latin L2, UPN 2008, Inédit. Paul De MEESTER defines the syntagm as “an ordered set of items around a support and forming with him a complex syntactic unit. We distinguish the phrase or syntagm whose support is a noun, called noun phrase (NP) and the verbal phrase whose support is a verb.”2 From the syntactic point of view “the noun phrase is a combination of elements that has the same function as a name and is the constructional equivalent of a name.”3 In other words, a phrase or syntagm is a group of words having a meaning. Combining theory and practice, we will focus our search on the noun in the book XI of Apuleius’s Metamorphoses. The originality of our research lies in the fact that so far no research has ever been made on the order of words in the eleventh book of the Apuleius’s Metamorphoses. Addressing the noun phrase as used by Apuleius in book XI of Metamorphoses, we would like to answer the following questions: 1. What form of the noun phrase is the most used, Adjective + Name or Name + Adjective, that is the anteposition or the postposition? 2. What form of adjectives is the most used, the determinative or the qualifier (the objective or the subjective)? 3. Does the use of the noun phrase matches MAROUZEAU’s studies? 4. Does Apuleius use a great variability of the internal order of the noun phrase? 5. Finally, does the whole of nominal phrases affect the message in the global sense of the book XI of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius? The reading of the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius made us discover a high frequency of noun phrase: Apuleius uses all forms of adjectives: determinative and qualifier, objective and subjective, the anteposition and the postposition. 2 3 DE MEESTER, P, Notes inchoatives pour une didactique de latin, Lubumbashi, Saint Paul, 1989 TOURATIER, C, syntaxe latine, Louvain-la-Neuve, Peeters, Bruxelles, 1994 The way he uses it follows the work of MAROUZEAU. Finally, the high frequency of objective adjectives adds a sense at the XI of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, because throughout this book, he communicates his thought with his public. All scientific research requires methods. For this study, we will initially use the analytical method. We will proceed in the following way: Reading of the text Inventory of nominal phrases Analysis of nominal phrases Then, we will use the hermeneutics to interpret the results. Apart from the introduction and theoretical frameworks, our work unfolds in three chapters: The first will deal with generalities: § Summary of the book XI § The language of Apuleius § The order of the words in Latin The second will focus on the presentation of the corpus: § Inventory § Analysis of noun phrases The third chapter will focus on the interpretation From time immemorial, Jules MAROUZEAU was the first to study the word order in Latin in a systematic manner in its various aspects: the noun phrase, the simple sentence (verb and its complements) and the expressions of the statement. The works of MAROUZEAU have influenced the Latinists to the extent that the latter have avoided studying the order of the words as a systematic study. It took years, more than fifty years to see the reborn of the work on the order of the words.4 What is involved in MAROUZEAU’s method? It is to determine the basic construction and to describe the syntax groups that it contains: the adjective and the noun, the adjective and the genitive; the preposition and the noun, the verb and the complement. In his analyses, he involved various factors such as the semantic values of the words involved, the balance of the sentence, the intentions of the parallelism or contrast. To prove the originality of this method, Joseph Greenberg, American linguist, in April 13-14, 1961, proposed at the conference on language universals (Doobs Ferry, New York) about the same criteria for a typological classification of languages. Latin was not included in Greenberg’s study, but he joined Marouzeau because he classified them by minimum units adjective-noun, preposition-noun.5 Olga Spevak proposes to consider the directions taken by the researches on the order of the words after Marouzeau and he presents a few new proposals to interpret the internal order of the noun phrase. The order of the words “variables” studies fall into three categories: § The typology § The pragmatic § The studies that directly follow the Marouzeau line. From typology, studies establish basic order, according to the criteria proposed by Greenberg, and to compare the linguistic phenomena observed in the worldwide languages and that of Europe. The Romance languages have been identified as “SVO” languages, having this dominant order S (subject), V (verb), O (object), with other characteristics summarized by the formula “the term governing is followed by the governed word”: the preposition is followed by the noun, the noun is followed by the adjective. Latin is often considered to be a language of the type “SOV” in which the governed word should be 4 5 SPEVAK, O, l’ordre des mots en latin, article 25, in REL, Société des Etudes latines, Sorbonne 2015 GREEBERG, J, universal of language, Cambridge, the MIT press,1963,2ème edition followed by the term governing. This rule does not always apply in Latin because Latin has a lot of prepositions but not postpositions. The construction of the genitive followed by the prepositions is minority. In pragmatic, these studies are conducted in varied theoretical linguistic (generative grammar), the functional perspective of the sentence or functional grammar, looking at the order of the words from the point of view of the information provided by a statement. In general, the proposal of terms of a sentence corresponds to the following principle: the element that is already explicit in the previous context comes before, the new element comes after. The third category is the one that follows Marouzeau’s studies. As we said above, Marouzeau approach was to determine the basic construction and to describe the syntactic groups that make it: adjective and noun, adjective and genitive, preposition and noun, verb and complement. The internal order of noun phrase. We want to talk first of the noun phrase and the order of its components. Studying the order of the words in Latin means studying a highly stylized language where such order can match, not only a linguistic tendency, for example the anteposition, of a certain adjective, but also the style of the author. To explain the variability of the order “adjective noun governing,” Marouzeau considered a difference between the qualifying adjective and the determinative adjective.6 The qualifying adjective “bonus” tends to be placed before the noun, but the determinative adjective, for example “meus” is placed after. The sub-categorization of adjectives leads to the following conclusion: § The adjectives that express a property inherent to the referrer or the proposed qualities are often postponed or placed after if the author does not communicate his personal assessments. 6 Marouzeau, L’ordre des mots en latin, volume complémentaire, Paris, les belles lettres, 1953 § The adjectives that express the judgment and the indication of a relative place emanating from the speaker: their place are the result of a personal assessment or an intellectual operation are preposed or placed before, i.e. “good or great” may be objective or subjective . Objective if the author does not express his personal assessments, but indicates the qualities in general: postponed or placed after. Subjective if the author expresses his personal assessment: preposed or placed before. Second, adjective and genitive, MAROUZEAU has offered to speak about the “determinative supplement” in parallel with the determinative genitive. Here, we identify the syntagm that makes up the genitive: § Noun + genitive § Adjective + genitive The great variability of the place of the genitive and of the adjective can have various reasons. Among them, the fact that the syntagm with a noun and a complement to the genitive brings together two nouns, each of which has more often a referent. The postposition of the genitive is often applied in particular to the case where the definition, the report to an individual, covers about the use of the discriminative adjective and like it, the noun in the genitive is postponed. The noun for the genitive is in second place (postponed) if the notion that it expresses is general in nature and requires no comment.7 The anteposition of the genitive is observed when the genitive is devoid of the “discriminative” value or that it is not used to specify the noun governing. The genitive which the referent is known in the context favours the anteposition. 7 Marouzeau, op cit page 28 This study allowed us to categorize three types of studies: § The typology § The pragmatics § The works of Marouzeau. As to the works of Marouzeau, we understand that in the noun phrase consisting of a noun and an adjective, the adjectives having objective value are postponed, and those having subjective value are preposed. The postposition is in correlation with a certain type of adjective (the determinative) and the anteposition with another type of adjectives (the evaluative). Chantal Kircher studied the order of words in a few nominal phrases of Caesar's civil war. In her study, she focused on the place of the adjectives dependent on nouns ‘animus, dies, locus, populus and tempus.’ According to her study, adjectives are beyond the scope of tight semantic classes. The semantics vary according to the semantic value of the noun in which it is used. It follows that an adjective can be used with different values “assignment of any particular value to an adjective is a cognitive operation”.8 So, according to her review, primary adjectives are preposed to the noun it supplements, and the relationship, determinative adjectives, are postponed. She justified exceptions by the fact that the syntagm is preceded by a preposition, and that it has two coordinate adjectives or that two nouns have the same adjective. She cites other factors that affect the placement of adjectives; these factors include the predicate position of an adjective. Olga Spevak studied “the place of the determinants and their combinations”. She focused on the anaphoric is, the demonstratives hic and Ille, the undefined (aliquis, quidam), the quantifiers numerals and non-numerals (omnis multus and nullus) and the possessives. 8 KIRCHER, CH, L’ordre des mots dans quelques syntagmes nominaux de la guerre civile de César, cité par OLGA SPEVAK, in dans le syntagme nominal en latin, Paris, Harmattan, 2010, pge15 According to her analysis, the determinants in general are preposed, except the possessives. In the case of nominal phrases containing at least two determinants, these multiply their positioning, more often, entirely before the noun. She said that, the order of the determinants is not fixed: the order of the undefined and of the quantifiers is semantics, but that of the anaphoric or the demonstratives depends on pragmatics. The order of the possessives depends on the free variation. BIBLIOGRAPHY BASIC WORKS REFERENCE APULEIUS, Metamorphoses, MAROUZEAU, J, the order of the words, supplementary volume, Paris, Belles letters 1953 SECONDARY WORKS REFERENCE AMACKER, A, Word order and subordination, the traiectio at Varro, in Garcia Hernandez edition “Word order in Latin in some nominal phrases of Caesar's civil war”, in O.SPEVAK, (edition) the phrase noun in Latin, Paris, Harmattan 2010 BADER, F, the formation of nominal compounds in Latin, Paris 1962 CALLEBAT, L, Form and modes of expression in the works of Apuleius, in ANRW II, number 34, 2,1994 CALLEBAT, L “The prose of the metamorphoses, Genesis and specificity” in Aspects I, number 26, 1976 CALVANO, C, verborum ordo in Latino sermone -) FREDOUILLE, J.C, Apuleius metamorphoseon liber XI, Paris 1975 ERNOUT, A, Aspects of the Latin vocabulary, Paris 1954 MAROUZEAU, J.C, the order of the words in Latin in the Latin sentence Volume 1: nominal groups, Paris Champion 1922 MEDAN, P, Apuleius. Metamorphoses, book XI. Latin text with critical and explanatory comment, Paris 1925 MIR, J.M, De verborum ordine in oratione Latina: Latinitas XVIII, 1970 OTHER WORKS OR STUDIES The idea of grammatical sentence and its expression in Latin, thesis Lille 1977 A book on the style of Apuleius New Latin grammars Books on the life of Apuleius (if the first chapter will deal with his life)