The origins of ‘anaphora’ and ‘deixis’. Ancient theories on articles and pronouns.

Anaphora and deixis are widespread notions in linguistic analysis. Traditionally considered to be related to each other, they indicate the processes according to which a linguistic unit derive its interpretation from, respectively, something that was mentioned earlier and the situational context. But there is no agreement as regards the definition of such terms as they describe linguistic strategies at different levels: morpho-syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Since the beginning of modern linguistics in the middle of 19th century the study of anaphora and deixis is strongly related, following the traditional part-of-speech system, to the classes of pronouns and articles and, according to more recent studies, of determiners. But what are their origins from a metalinguistic point of view? In what stages of Western linguistic thought were they created? In which contexts have they been used? The answer must to be sought into the Ancient Greek language and linguistic thought, starting with the philosophical perspective on language introduced by Plato. The present dissertation has investigated the domain of use of anaphora and deixis in ancient texts, especially Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the grammarians, i.e. Apollonius Dyscolus, the text of Tékhne Grammatiké by Pseudo-Dionysius Thrax and the scholia to the Tékhne. Such analysis highlighted that Apollonius was the first who intentionally used anaphora and deixis in a theoretical opposition. In particular in the two treatises on pronouns and on syntax he developed a systematic theory of anaphora and deixis based on the common semantic feature of definiteness and different syntactic constraints (e.g. NP constraints like the impossibility for a deictic pronoun – but not for an anaphoric one – to be determined by an article). Apollonius’s work greatly influenced not only the later Greek grammarians, but also the Latin grammatical tradition: thanks to Priscian’s Institutiones the Greek dichotomy of anaphora and deixis was re-interpreted in the light of the Latin language and explained by the new terms of relatio and demonstratio, producing a complex metalanguage which will be transmitted to modern times throughout the centuries.