() is a book written by

Antonio de Nebrija Antonio de Nebrija (14445 July 1522) was the most influential Spanish humanist of his era. He wrote poetry, commented on literary works, and encouraged the study of classical languages and literature, but his most important contributions were i ...

and published in 1492. It was the first work dedicated to the

Spanish language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

and its rules, and the first

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

of a modern European language to be published. When it was presented to Isabella of Castile at

Salamanca Salamanca () is a Municipality of Spain, municipality and city in Spain, capital of the Province of Salamanca, province of the same name, located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is located in the Campo Charro comarca, in the ...

in the year of its publication, the queen questioned what the merit of such a work might be; Fray

Hernando de Talavera Hernando de Talavera, Hieronymites, O.S.H. (c. 1430 – 14 May 1507) was a Spanish clergyman and councilor to Queen Isabel of Castile. He began his career as a monk of the Hieronymites, Order of Saint Jerome, was appointed the queen's confess ...

, bishop of Avila, answered for the author Nebrija in a letter addressed to the monarch:

''After Your Highness has subjected barbarous peoples and nations of varied tongues, with conquest will come the need for them to accept the laws that the conqueror imposes on the conquered, and among them our language; with this work of mine, they will be able to learn it, as we now learn
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
from the
Latin Grammar Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, numbe ...
''.Quoted by Henry Kamen at the outset of ''Empire: how Spain became a world power, 1492–1763'', 2002.

Nebrija divided his study of the language into four books: *

Orthography An orthography is a set of convention (norm), conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, punctuation, Word#Word boundaries, word boundaries, capitalization, hyphenation, and Emphasis (typography), emphasis. Most national ...

* Prosody and

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

s *

Etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

and

diction Diction ( (nom. ), "a saying, expression, word"), in its original meaning, is a writer's or speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression in a piece of writing such as a poem or story.Crannell (1997) ''Glossary'', p. 406 In its c ...

Syntax In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...

A fifth book was dedicated to the teaching of Spanish as a

foreign language A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a specific country. Native speakers from that country usually need to acquire it through conscious learning, such as through language lessons at schoo ...

. The book established ten parts of speech:

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

participle In linguistics, a participle (; abbr. ) is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from a verb and used as an adject ...

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

interjection An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling, situation or reaction. It is a diverse category, with many different types, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curses (''da ...

s, conjunctions,

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ger) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, it is one that functions as a noun. The name is derived from Late Latin ''gerundium,'' meaning "which is ...

s and

supine In grammar, a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages. The term is most often used for Latin, where it is one of the four principal parts of a verb. The word refers to a position of lying on one's back (as opposed to ' prone', l ...

Impact

Works had previously been published on

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

usage, such as

Lorenzo Valla Lorenzo Valla (; also latinized as Laurentius; 1 August 1457) was an Italian Renaissance humanist, rhetorician, educator and scholar. He is best known for his historical-critical textual analysis that proved that the Donation of Constantine w ...

's (1471), but was the first book to focus on the study of the rules of a Western European language besides Latin. Following its publication, grammar came to be considered as the discipline concerned with the rules of language, until the advent of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

as a scientific discipline in the 19th century. Other grammars of the Spanish language followed: * Antonio de Nebrija, ''Reglas de orthographia en la lengua castellana cõpuestas por el Maestro Antonio de lebrixa'' ("Rules of orthography .., 1517)
bdh.bne.es
* Juan de Valdés, ''Dialogo đla lengua'' ("Dialogue on the language", ca. 1535, manuscript)
bdh.bne.es
* Andrés Flórez, ''Arte para bien leer y escribir'' ("The art of reading and writing well", 1552) * Martín Cordero, ''La manera de escribir en castellano'' (1556) * Cristóbal de Villalón, ''Gramática castellana'' ("Castilian grammar", 1558) * Gonzalo Correas, ''Ortografia kastellana, nueva i perfeta'' ("Castilian orthography .., 1630)
bdh.bne.es
*

Real Academia Española The Royal Spanish Academy (, ; ) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with national language academies in 22 other Hispanopho ...

, ''Gramática de la Lengua Castellana, compuesta por el Real Academia Española'' ("Grammar of the Castilian language", Madrid, 1771)
bdh.bne.es

External links

* Online version of text by Asociación Cultural Antonio de Nebrija * (in English) Prologue to Nebrija's Gramática de la lengua castellana

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gramatica De La Lengua Castellana Books about the Spanish language Spanish grammar Grammar frameworks 1492 books 1490s in Spain 1492 in Europe

Contents

Impact

External links

References