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- Title
De macht der gewoonte.
- Authors
PEETERMANS, ANDY
- Abstract
Until the mid-twentieth century, studies of ancient linguistic thought ascribed an important role to the polemic controversy that would have been especially fierce in the second century BC, between adherents of two opposed views: analogism and anomalism. Although views have changed on the status of this controversy, the two concepts involved are still useful to describe ancient views on linguistic normativity as expressed e.g. by Varro, Cicero and Quintilian. Analogism refers to the idea that language tends towards the systematic and the regular. Language users must aim to follow these analogical rules as closely as possible. By contrast, the anomalist view states that language is unsystematic, ruled instead by the whims of consuetudo (the arbitrary way in which a community happens to use its language). Varro was convinced of the desirability of a language that is in accordance with the analogistic principles of system and regularity, but also realized that language can only change by means of the general consent of the language community as a whole. Cicero and Quintilian both insisted on the primacy of consuetudo as a normative criterion, but differed in their answers to the question as to which group of speakers should provide the one model others should follow.
- Publication
Lampas, 2016, Vol 49, Issue 2, p130
- ISSN
0165-8204
- Publication type
Article