Tesni

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

• Tesnières work in Slovenia
• Classical languages in Slovenian educational
  system
• Dependency Grammar as solution to some teaching
  problems

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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.

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Tesnière in Slovenia

• 1920-1923

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Latin and Greek in Slovenia 1910-2000
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Latin as a formal tool

• Latin is of no direct use, but
• it is useful to convey general linguistic
  notions.

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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.

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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.

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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 najvec
  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)

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Problems of Constituent analysis

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

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Phrase syntax

• S
• ..
• NP VP
• H M V C

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Case syntax

• cases
• ..................................................
  ...........................
• accusative dative genitive ablative
• ..................................................
  ...........................
• NP VP

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one of

• unus multorum
• unus de tribus
• unus e captivis

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Whats in a name?

• The Genetive and the Preposition are nothing but
  different realisations of one and the same
  function.
• All of it is Genetive.

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A simple solution?

• Translation
• Translatif
• Conversion
• Conversion Marker

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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.

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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.

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How to do it?

• A simple sentence.
• Alternatively, a word group
• Explanation of simple and double conversions.

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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