Über die Bezeichnung des Indikativs bei den römischen Grammatikern des 1. und 2. Jh.
2011
The principal subject of the contribution is analyzed within the context of the general doctrine of the Latin and Greek verb. This general doctrine underwent basic changes in the work of the most prominent Roman grammarians. The interplay of different philosophical and rhetorical doctrines had a large impact on the evolution of grammatical theory. At the beginning of the period we see a Latin word qualitas, which was related with the Stoic Greek notion poiotēs, being used as a term for modal forms of the verb. This particular definition of modal forms seems to be due to Pliny the Elder. Having reconsidered the Stoic doctrine of speech acts and, more generally, the verbal expression of movement and state, the grammarians of the first century AD began to use the adjective horistikos and its Latin counterpart finitivus as a term for the indicative mode. Terentius Scaurus (fl. between 117 and 138 AD) introduced the term modus instead of qualitas in the field of modal forms. Aware of the meaningless use of the term finitivus in some special case, Scaurus replaced it with the term pronuntiativus, which had been taken over from rhetoric and which had a larger meaning than its Greek counterpart apophantikos. Moreover, he replaced the term ordo with the more particular term coniugatio in the description of conjugations. The doctrine of Flavius Caper (2nd half of the 2nd c. AD) marked a return to a number of Stoic ideas. The unfortunate finitivus was replaced by indicativus in order to say a word with a similar but larger meaning. Caper, however, thought it inappropriate to use the term indicativus with regard to the future that did not yet exist. So he introduced a special mode promissivus. In the meantime he replaced the term infinitivus and its twin infinitum with modus perpetuus. The term indicativus, however, seems to be the only invention of Caper to have survived in the posterior tradition.
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