[Continuem]

On its behalf, the defenders of Latin use classical reasoning hanging on history. Couturat & Leau, in the due critique of the proposal, made use of a collection of arguments against the learned language, which even now constitute one of the most complete lists on the topic, and one which will sound very familiar to us. The irony of it is that Couturat & Leau argue against the purpose of recovering the classical language in the very context of the search for an international auxiliary variety. The contradictions and the troubles attached to the search for an international language are also part of the topic and would deserve a more delicate analysis. Here we have some of the propositions which make up the Couturat & Leau refusal:

1) Malheureusement presque tous les faits allégués appartiennent au passé; 2) Les savants sont de moins en moins obligés de savoir le latin, à mesure qu'on s'eloigne du temps où le latin était l'unique langue scientifique; 3) Combien d'années d'études faudrait-il pour pouvoir écrire et parler, nous ne disons pas comme César, mais correctement? (...) c'est une langue beaucoup trop difficile et trop longue à apprendre; 4) Ce qui constitue proprement une langue, ce n'est pas son vocabulaire, mais sa grammaire. (...) La grammaire est tout: c'est elle qui fait le caractère d'une langue, c'est elle qui en fait la difficulté; 5) Mentionnons une dernière difficulté, celle de la pronunciation du latin, qui diffère beaucoup d'un pays à l'autre; 6) D'autres vont plus loin: ils admettent la liberté du solécisme, du barbarisme et du néologisme (...). On obtiendrait ainsi une série de "dégradations" du latin, à l'usage des diverses classes de personnes qui ont besoin d'une L.I. (...) C'est serait non seulement l'anarchie, mais la cacophonie parfaite (Couturat, passim).

At the beginning of our century, current common sense could more or less accept and aprove of this curious collection of arguments. The list included many different aspects, and its coherence prevailed. But giving a name was better than arguing. The fact of giving a name closes a whole process and assures understanding. Things become more transparent if they are summed up in some words. The key phrase that summarizes the arguments is probably "dead language". The notion of dead language enjoys today a very broad consensus. Nobody seems to doubt which languages it applies to and its meaning seems fixed. It establishes an easy link with the past and with "pre-sociolinguistic speculation", as we may call it. This is at least what school programmes tell us about the term. But we have to recall here that the spread of education may be responsible for some fixations of meaning.

Accordingly, let is take a glance at education and what has been said about the topic. First of all, the fourth point (4) of Couturat & Leau stands out fiercely. Grammar is everything. Grammar has obviously been the first and the only chapter of the programme, as far as modern teaching of Latin is concerned. August Comte (1882) dedicated some strong adjectives to grammarians that taught grammar isolated from contexts. The time for free speculation with grammar was still to come, but the question is that teaching a language without contexts of use renders it useless. We could call grammaticalization the process by which the whole paradigm of references of a language is reduced to grammar procedures. The practices of modern philology have reinforced this approach. The emphasis that Couturat & Leau put on these aspects, bringing out the difficulties in grammar and obviating the growth of vocabulary, responds to the same trend.

In the heart of this context, Charles Bally (1935) tried to bring out some of the arguments that supported the grammatical view. Bally seemed to accept the actual state of things and wondered about the purpose of teaching classical languages:

Pourquoi l'étude du latin est-elle utile? Est-ce parce qu'il est l'écho de l'histoire d'une grande nation? (...) Ou bien serait-ce, comme on le répète sans cesse, parce que le latin est le porte-voix de la pensée grecque? Mais nous savons quelle déformation le génie hellénique a subie en passant à travers des cerveaux romains (...). D'où vient alors que le commerce des lettres classiques affranchit l'esprit en lui donnant ce quelque chose de souple et de délié qu'on nomme esprit de finesse (...)? Il n'y a là rien de bien mystérieux; le latin, pour des raisons très simples, nous oblige à penser "autrement". Il est construit sur un autre plan que nos langues modernes; grâce aux flexions, les mots conservent leur individualité au sein de la phrase; la construction libre fait de la phrase même un organisme original (...). C'est pour toutes ces raisons que le latin est un merveilleux instrument d'assouplissement; il familiarise l'esprit avec l'imprévu, lui donne le sentiment de l'accidentel, du contingent (...) (Bally 144-145).

We find here a curious justification for the grammatical approach. If grammar skills can aid thinking, we don't have to worry about sociolinguistic context. Bally's argument about close connections between grammar and thinking was welcomed. Its merit was to have put those intuitions in the foreground. Latin was worth learning because of its intrinsic interest. Likewise, it was better to learn classical Latin, instead of other varieties. In classical Latin you will found a great deal of purity and style. As before, you don't have to look at sociolinguistic requirements. The bias towards classical Latin is still alive in our school programmes.

About the same years, Antoine Meillet supported a more complex opinion. In Les langues dans l'Europe nouvelle (1928) he devoted a chapter to Les langues savantes, including the possibility of their relegation. Perhaps we should now reread his sociolinguistic survey, and try to appraise it from our context. As a matter of fact, the final shift from Latin to vernaculars was not perceived as a breakdown of a variety of wider communication because of the early promotion of the main European vernaculars. This process was followed by the relegation of other less favoured varieties, but Meillet was unyielding with the minority question:

Dans une région où coexistent un parler local et une langue commune de civilisation, les habitants qui, soit par leur situation sociale, soit pas leur degré avancé de culture, soit par les relations qu'ils possèdent au dehors, sont tenus de connaître la langue commune sont ceux qui ont un prestige. (...) Et, en vertu de la tendance qui pousse les hommes à se rapprocher des classes supérieures et à les imiter, tout le monde tient à connaitre cette langue comune. (...) Le parler local ne sert plus qu'aux relations de famille, aux rapports privés. Il s'emplit d'éléments étrangers; il se vide de son originalité. (...) Le parler local est inutile le jour oû toute la population, connaissant la langue commune, est bilingue. Les jeunes n'éprouvent plus alors le besoin de connaître le parler local; s'ils l'on entendu dans leur enfance, ils l'oublient à l'âge mûr (Meillet 147).

Instead, Meillet was fully aware that national languages carried out a solid cultural purpose that spread throughout the main European countries. He undertook a public defence of national languages. One of the reasons was that he relied on their historical resources. Latin had a role to play in this act. Meillet was not thinking of the romance area. In his survey, he pointed out that Latin usage had been the pattern through which the different European languages had shaped their vocabulary and categories. He stressed active and creative aspects:

Il y a entre les langues du groupe roman et celles du groupe germanique un parallélisme dû à ce que ces langues se sont développées dans des conditions pareilles, sous les mêmes influences, à ce qu'elles ont sans cesse agi les unes sur les autres, à ce que ceux qui les parlents ont constamment communiqué les uns avec les autres (Meillet 309).

Besides these well-founded arguments, he could not avoid a strong statement about the future at the end of Les langues savantes, after a brief review of some learned varieties like Armenian, Sanskrit or Persian. His opinion about the facts he knew blocked his appraisal of changes in other directions:

Mais le latin ne sert plus, ne servira plus de langue commune. Il y a eu en Europe, ou du moins en Europe occidentale, une langue de civilisation commune; il n'y en a plus. Et l'Europe actuelle appartient aux langues nationales (Meillet 188).

The main problem with this argument is that fixing the present in this way means closing accessibility to the past. Meillet mishandled these possibilities. His position represents a fair compromise between the cultural and political requirements of his time. Like everybody, he admitted some facts but he failed to realize others. As for us, the question is in which aspects the Europe of the twenties described by Meillet matches our perception of present-day Europe. The answer depends on a clear positioning about the main sociolinguistic patterns.

From the beginning of the eighteenth century the defenders of Latin have probably been its worst allies. The arguments on its defence have produced a counter-argumentation so coherent and unbending as that of Couturat & Leau. This has been the main trend until now. In contrast, perhaps we sould be more at ease if we take into account a recent approach coming from the philosophy of science. Cosmopolis (1990), Stephen Toulmin's inquiry into the historical sources of European thought, starts from a sharp criticism of the status of formal sciences in modern society and intellectual life in general:

In the search for a "rational" method which took a central place in 17th-century science and philosophy, Descartes' agenda was only one variant. This decontextualized ideal was a central demand of rational thought and action among "modern" thinkers until well into the 20th century. In due course, further variants joined it: the economist's equation of "rationality" with efficiency, for example, and Max Weber's view of the "rationalization" of social institutions. These further twists, however, were still directed at issues that could be judged by rational, objective and preferably quantitative measures, and they too left little room for cultural or personal idiosincrasies (Toulmin 200).

Toulmin's approach, coherent with his philosophical programme, is rich in reflections about the need of a context:

One aim of 17th-century philosophers was to frame all their questions in terms that rendered them independent of context; while our own procedure will be the opposite --to recontextualize the questions these philosophers took most pride in decontextualizing. The view that modern science relied from the very start on rational arguments, divorced from all questions of metaphysics or theology, again assumed that the tests of "rationality" carry over from one context or situation to another, just as they stand (...) (Toulmin 21).

Even if he doesn't mention it, the social expectations of "modern" science were a crucial factor in the relegation of Latin. But the main novelty of Toulmin's survey on history is his appraisal of European Humanism:

From Erasmus to Montaigne, the writings of the Renaissance humanists displayed an urbane open-mindedness and skeptical tolerance that were novel features of this new lay culture. Their ways of thinking were no subject to the demands of pastoral or ecclesiastical duty (...). In spirit, their critique was not hostile to the practice of religion, just so long as this was informed by a proper feeling for the limits to the practical and intellectual powers of human beings. (...) The theological modesty of the humanists owed much, of course, to the recovery of classical learning and literature. (...)

Renaissance scholars were quite as concerned with circumstantial questions of practice in medicine, law, or morals, as with any timeless, universal matters of philosophical theory. In their eyes, the rhetorical analysis of arguments, which focused on the presentations of cases and the character of audiences, was as worthwhile --indeed, as philosphical-- as the formal analysis of their inner logic: Rhetoric and Logic were, to them, complementary disciplines (Toulmin 25-27).

Starting at another end, Cosmopolis represents a fresh inspiration, with philosophy entering into the argument. Stephen Toulmin probably gets its right when he points out another trend of intellectual behaviour. Language building should be a particular case of community building. We cannot think of community building processes without taking into account the building of common references. Relations between countries may also be of the Gemeinshaft-type. Then, a different kind of shared communication is needed and this also includes a revision of our implicit arguments against the past.

Thank you very much

REFERENCES

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ARACIL, Ll. V. (1988): Breu història del llatí europeu, ms., Barcelona: Club d'Amics de la Unesco [Ed. by J. Estany].

BALLY, C. (1935): "Pourquoi apprend-on le latin?" in Le langage et la vie, Zurich: Niehans.

COMTE, A. (1852): "Théorie positive du langage humain", in Système de politique positive, Paris: Carilian-Goeury, Dalmont.

COUTURAT, L. & L. LEAU, "Les langues mortes", in Histoire de la langue universelle, Paris: Hachette.

DOUGLAS, M. (1987): How Institutions Think, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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GUSDORF, G. (1973):"Présuposés de la linguistique: modernes et anciens", in L'avénement des sciences humaines au siècle des Lumières, Paris: Payot.

HAZARD, P. (1946): La pensée européenne au XVIIIème siècle, Paris: Fayard.

LÁZARO, F. (1949): Las ideas lingüísticas en España durante el siglo XVIII, in: Revista de Filología Española, anejo XLVIII, Madrid: CSIC.

MEILLET, A. (1928): Les langues dans l'Europe nouvelle, Paris: Champion.

TOULMIN, S. (1990): Cosmopolis, New York: Free Press.

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