Antoine Arnauld
The General and Rational Grammar (1660), written at Port-Royal by the theologian Arnauld and the grammarian Lancelot. It derives the one rational grammar behind all languages from the three operations of the mind — the parts of speech, the verb as affirmation, and the analysis of the "hidden sentence." Read from the French.
Reading Arnauld & Lancelot's General and Rational Grammar (1660) — the Wager That the Shape of Language Copies the Shape of the Mind
At the convent of Port-Royal outside Paris, the theologian Arnauld and the grammar teacher Lancelot wrote a small book. Instead of listing the usages of a single language, they tried to derive the one rational grammar behind all languages from the operations of the mind. The parts of speech, the essence of the verb, the hidden sentences — all of it is a copy of the mind's acts of conceiving and judging. The whole picture, from the French, with plain diagrams.
Reading Arnauld & Lancelot's General and Rational Grammar in Plain Language (Part 1): Look Inside Your Head, and Grammar Appears
A grammar book that opens by asking what speaking even is. The difference between merely picturing something and flatly declaring it, and why a sentence like 'the earth is round' always has three moving parts — the first half of the General and Rational Grammar, in plain language.
Reading Arnauld & Lancelot's General and Rational Grammar in Plain Language (Part 2): the Verb That Declares, and the Sentence Hidden Inside a Sentence
Why is 'Peter lives' really made of one word doing two jobs? How many sentences are actually hiding inside 'God invisible created the world visible'? The two most famous discoveries in the General and Rational Grammar, in plain language.
Substantive and Adjective: What Does "White" Actually Mean?
"White" means whiteness. But not simply — it means it distinctly, while at the same time vaguely pointing at some "something." Reading Arnauld's concept of connotation from Part II, Chapter II of the Port-Royal Grammar.
Anatomy of the Verb: Person and Number, Tense, and the Verb Inside "I Think, Therefore I Am"
Where did the "I" in "I see" go? How person and number get folded into a verb ending, how three simple tenses generate three compound tenses, and — reading a line from the Discourse on Method — the discovery that a verb can sometimes mean "existence" itself. From Part II, Chapters XIV–XV and XVIII of the Port-Royal Grammar.
The Relative Pronoun and the Hidden Sentence: How Many Judgments Fold Into One Word?
Latin quorum, French que, Greek ὅτι — utterly different in shape, yet explained by a single principle. A relative pronoun can carry two roles at once, "pronoun" and "conjunction," or lean on just one of them. Reading the sequel to Chapter IX of Part II of the Port-Royal Grammar, through examples in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek.