Tesnière's Dependency Grammar and its application in teaching Latin - a Slovenian experience

1. Tesnière's Dependency Grammar and its application in teaching Latin - a Slovenian experience Formal Linguistics and the Teaching of Latin Venice, 18.-20. 11. 2010

2. Outline • Tesnière’s work in Slovenia • Classical languages in Slovenian educational system • Dependency Grammar as solution to some teaching problems

3. Tesnière in Slovenia • He learned the language. • He initiated the first systematic research of the Dual in Slovenian. • He published an Atlas of the use of Dual in Slovenian. • He published the results of the project in a book that is still one of the main publications on the topic of Dual in Slovenian. • Along the way, he divided Slovenian dialects in the main 8 groups.

4. Tesnière in Slovenia • 1920-1923

5. Latin and Greek in Slovenia 1910-2000

6. Latin as a “formal tool” • Latin is of no direct use, but • it is useful to convey general linguistic notions.

7. Why not? • It is a way to make Latin teachers do with less teaching hours. • A welcome excuse to push Latin classes out of lower years of education as being "too difficult". • If you fall from that height, there is little chance of surviving it.

8. They are of little practical value.In the time of a crisis, one has to economise, so „less useful“ subject have to be, at least temporarily, defunded.There is little interest in learning it.Latin is an important instrument/language of the Church.Why should Latin and Greek be abolished? • They are of no practical value. • There is little interest in learning them. • In the time of a crisis, one has to economise, so „less useful“ subjects have to be, at least temporarily, defunded. • Latin is an important instrument/language of the Church.

9. Easy translation • quo quis ingenio minus valet, hoc se magis attollere et dilatare conatur, ut statura breves in digitos eriguntur et plura infirmi minantur. (Quint. Inst. II, 3, 8-9) (22 words) • kolikor kdo po naravi manj velja, toliko se bolj poskuša vzpenjati in širiti, kakor se po postavi majhni postavljajo na prste in šibki največ grozijo. (25 words) • and the less talented a man is, the more he will strive to exalt and dilate himself, just as short men tend to walk on tip-toe and weak men to use threat (31 word)

10. Problems of Constituent analysis • Pater filio librum dedit • Antiochus epistulis bellum gerit • Quod si humaniter mecum questus esses, libenter tibi me et facile purgassem.

11. Phrase syntax S …………………………………………………….. NP VP ……………………………………………………… H M V C

12. Case syntax cases ............................................................................. accusative dative genitive ablative ............................................................................. NP VP

13. „one of“ • unus multorum • unus de tribus • unus e captivis

14. What‘s in a name? • The Genetive and the Preposition are nothing but different realisations of one and the same function. • All of it is Genetive.

15. A simple solution? • Translation • Translatif = • Conversion • Conversion Marker

16. Touratier on “translation” (p. 17) • Cette façon de présenter les choses est un peu excessive • et a l'inconvénient de lier exclusivement les fonctions syntaxiques aux classes syntaxiques de morphèmes.

17. Advantages • It does not overburden the teacher. • It does not confuse the students with additional linguistic terminology. • It can replace the previous time-consuming separate presentation of syntactical features.

18. How to do it? • A simple sentence. • Alternatively, a word group • Explanation of simple and double conversions.

19. Tesnière's Dependency Grammar and its application in teaching Latin - a Slovenian experience Formal Linguistics and the Teaching of Latin Venice, 18.-20. 11. 2010