() is a book written by Antonio de Nebrija and published in 1492. It was the first work dedicated to the

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the ...

and its rules, and the first

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...

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

Salamanca Salamanca () is a city in western Spain and is the capital of the Province of Salamanca in the autonomous community of Castile and León. The city lies on several rolling hills by the Tormes River. Its Old City was declared a UNESCO World Herit ...

in the year of its publication, the queen questioned what the merit of such a work might be; Fray Hernando de Talavera, bishop of Avila, answered for the author in prophetic words, as Nebrija himself recalls 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 a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
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, n ...
''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 conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

* Prosody and

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...

s *

Etymology Etymology () The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words ...

and

diction Diction ( la, dictionem (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 poem or story.Crannell (1997) ''Glossary'', p. 406 In its common meanin ...

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. The book established ten parts of speech:

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) 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 parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") 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 ...

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

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

s, interjections, conjunctions,

gerund In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiab ...

s and supines.

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 a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

usage, such as Lorenzo Valla'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 human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

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 Cristóbal de Villalón ( – ) was a Spanish professor and Renaissance humanism, humanist. He was probably a native of Villalón de Campos. He obtained a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Alcalá in 1525 and a Licentiate (degree), lice ...

, ''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 ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) 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 ...

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

References

External links

*(in English) Prologue to Nebrija's ''Gramática de la lengua castellana'', https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2016.131.1.197 {{DEFAULTSORT:Gramatica De La Lengua Castellana Spanish language Spanish grammar Grammar frameworks 1492 books 1492 in Spain

Contents

Impact

References

External links