Der "Torsimany" und die scholastische Grammatik

Abstract

Lluís d'Averçó's Torsimany is usually linked to the tradition of the Leys’s d‘Amors, that is, to the compendiums of troubadour language and poetry. It is interesting to ask whether Occitan and Catalan grammarians knew the scholastic linguistic theory, which was more interested in the universal characteristics of the language, or whether they were completely separated from it by being interested in the mere description of the language and the poetics. A specific detail allows us to refine the possible affiliations of Torsimany: the treatment of declension cases and the meaning of the problematic term "(h)abitut" that Casas Homs, the editor of Torsimany, identifies too directly with "article". It can be shown that Lluís d'Averçó actually understands this term in a broader way: as the designation of all kinds of case relations (including prepositions and adverbs if they have the function of designating cases). This leads us to the assumption that d'Averçó had direct contact with the Latin works of the Modistae.