Basic concepts of the Late Antique and Byzantine school grammar and philosophical theory of language: grammatists and philosophers on phone, onoma, rhema, logos and lexis

In the paper, we analyze the basic terminological apparatus of the Late Antique and Byzantine grammar and philosophical theory of language, as well as the conceptual grounds and problem spots that determined the divergence between the concept of language among grammatists and philosophers at the stage of formalizing the grammar and philosophical knowledge where, in the imperial world of the early and classic Byzantium, they acquired a stable form of school disciplines with a unified curriculum and a primordial authoritative text. The core subject of our study is thematization of differences and identities in the gramma and philosophical interpretation of the terms φωνή, ὄνομα, ῥῆμα, λόγος and λέξις. As primary research material for the philosophical school tradition, we engaged the commentaries on Aristotle’s “On Interpretation”, with the commentary of Ammonius of Alexandria in the first turn, for, as our paper demonstrates, it was the primary text of the Byzantine tradition of teaching the philosophical grammar and the guideline for newly written educative commentaries, paraphrases and scholia on “On Interpretation”. For its part, as research material for grammar school tradition, we took commentaries on Ars grammatica of Dionysius of Thracia that, being partly preserved in the educative codices of the scholia to this treatise that held in the grammar theory of language the similar place to the first six chapters of “On Interpretation” in the philosophical branch.