Introduction
This paper examines the grammatical and pedagogical innovations of Notker Labeo, monk of the Abbey of St. Gall, focusing in particular on his treatment of the adverbium in relation to the praepositio and coniunctio (see also Grotans Reference Grotans2006). Notker’s contribution to the transmission of Aristotelian logic in the tenth century stands out not only for its intellectual scope – he was the first medieval translator of Aristotle – but also for his decision to render scholastic texts in Old High German, anticipating later vernacularisation strategies (see also Cotticelli-Kurras Reference Cotticelli-Kurras and Bartolotta2021b). His bilingual method, which integrates Latin lemmata with vernacular explanations, responds directly to the didactic challenges of a diglossic environment in which Latin was no longer a spoken language.
Our analysis concentrates on the semantic and functional boundaries of the adverbium, a category frequently situated at the intersection of other parts of speech (PoS). Drawing on sources such as the Glossae of St. Gall, Ælfric’s Grammatica, and later scholastic commentaries, we explore how Notker’s vernacular glosses engage with the inherited Latin grammatical tradition. Particular attention is given to the ways in which Latin metalanguage was translated, paraphrased, or partially retained to serve pedagogical purposes for non-native Latin speakers (Holtz Reference Holtz1983; Reference Holtz and Picard1991).
Through this lens, we investigate how early medieval grammarians contributed to the formation of a bilingual metalanguage and how this shaped the conceptual tools available both to teachers and learners. The final sections will reflect on Notker’s broader pedagogical aims and the role of the vernacular not simply as a linguistic support but as a medium of grammatical reasoning in its own right. The final part of the paper will focus on how Notker and his contemporaries translated and interpreted Latin grammatical metalanguage.
The impact of Priscian’s Institutiones on medieval grammatical analysis
The rediscovery and progressive diffusion of Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae marked a turning point in early medieval education. While Donatus’s Ars Minor and Ars Maior had long worked as practical manuals for basic instruction, Priscian’s more systematic and theoretically grounded grammar offered a deeper framework rooted in both Latin and Greek rhetoric and grammar. His detailed treatment of syntactic relationships, with special reference to books XVII and XVIII, aligned grammar with dialectics, attracting the ambitions of the Carolingian intellectual elite.
This transition from Donatian pragmatism to Priscianian analysis unfolded gradually and somehow unevenly across Europe. It was shaped by institutional developments such as the rise of scriptoria, the glossing tradition, and the integration of grammar into the trivium. Priscian’s grammar thus facilitated not only the teaching of Latin but also the emergence of a true grammatical metalanguage, enabling abstract reflection on linguistic form.
The authority of Priscian’s text was reinforced through glosses, commentaries, and pedagogical compilations, which mediated his Latin framework for diverse audiences throughout Europe (Law Reference Law1982; Reference Law1997). In this context, texts such as the Ars Ambrosiana, the Ars Bernensis, and the glosses of St. Gall reveal how scholars adapted classical categories to multilingual settings and for pedagogical purposes, at least in certain cases, especially concerning the glosses. These adaptations often involved translating key grammatical terms into vernacular equivalents or explicating them through culturally resonant analogies – practices that laid the groundwork for a bilingual, and eventually vernacularised, grammatical discourse.
Priscian’s rediscovery
With the Carolingian Renaissance, Priscian’s Institutiones Grammaticae became a cornerstone of the scholastic curriculum. While Donatus had long served as the standard for introductory grammar, Priscian offered a more expansive model that was analytical in structure, rich in syntactic theory, and also suited to the growing intellectual aspirations of the monastic schools (Law Reference Law and Mckitterick1994).
Said shift from Donatus to Priscian was gradual and conditioned by the evolving needs of educators and the increasing availability of texts. Donatus’s concise format was ideal for beginners, but Priscian’s broader scope enabled a more reflective engagement with language. This pedagogical transformation also marked a transition from practical language instruction towards a metalinguistic awareness of grammatical form, rooted in logic and dialectics (also refer to Luhtala Reference Luhtala and Coffey2021, 52ff.).
The integration of Priscian’s framework into grammar teaching supported the emergence of Schulgrammatik, the scholastic grammar tradition that would shape linguistic instruction for the successive centuries. His influence was not merely theoretical, as it reshaped the very methods through which Latin was taught and understood.
Pioneers in medieval grammar
The intellectual revival in the Carolingian period gave rise to a new generation of scholars who redefined Latin grammar as a tool for advanced theological and philosophical discourse, and intellectuals such as Alcuin of York played a central role in this transformation. As a matter of fact, Alcuin’s work integrated dialectical reasoning with traditional grammatical categories, laying the groundwork for a more systematic approach to syntactic analysis.
They developed a metalinguistic framework that moved beyond memorisation, incorporating principles of ordo naturalis and logical classification to clarify grammatical relationships. Innovations marked a decisive step towards the formalisation of syntax and the refinement of linguistic theory. As later noted by scholars such as Irvine (Reference Irvine1994), Grotans (Reference Grotans2006), and Cotticelli-Kurras (Reference Cotticelli-Kurras, Lambert and Bonnet2021a–c), the work of these grammarians established the conceptual and methodological foundations upon which vernacular traditions, such as Notker’s, would later build.
Glosses and lexicons
Glosses and lexicons, which are often dismissed as merely ancillary tools for reading comprehension, in fact played a far more central role in the formation of grammatical thought in the Early Middle Ages. While their immediate function was to help students navigate Latin texts, their underlying pedagogical and theoretical value lay in their ability to mediate between Latin as a codified language and the vernaculars that constituted the lived linguistic reality of the students. In this respect, glosses and lexicons should not be seen as marginal aids but instead as dynamic instruments of metalinguistic reflection and cultural transmission.
These texts allowed classical grammatical categories – especially those formalised in Priscian’s Institutiones – to be adapted to multilingual and diglossic contexts. By translating key terms such as nomen, verbum and adverbium into vernacular equivalents, often enriched with explanatory paraphrases or conceptual analogies, glossators contributed to the creation of a bilingual grammatical consciousness. In doing so, they preserved the Latin tradition while constructing a vernacular metalanguage capable of engaging with it on its own terms.
Ars Ambrosiana
Among these works, the Ars Ambrosiana stands out, as it integrates Priscian’s grammatical analysis and metalanguage, blending it with Donatus. This is an anonymous commentary on Donatus’s Ars Maior, written between 650 and 800 and preserved in the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana, in Milan. The author was probably a continental scholar who used, but sometimes misunderstood, an Irish grammatical source. As Amsler (Reference Amsler1989) points out, the Ars Ambrosiana provides a technical and dialectical commentary, focusing mainly on metalanguage. This work serves as evidence of the intricate interplay between grammar and dialectics, illustrating the meticulous efforts of scholars to dissect and categorise linguistic components.
Ars Bernensis
The Ars Bernensis is another early medieval grammatical text that represents a synthesis of earlier Latin grammatical traditions of Donatus and Priscian. This integration reflects a wider trend in medieval Europe, particularly in the eighth and nineth centuries, where scholars sought to consolidate and improve their understanding of Latin grammar by incorporating the comprehensive and detailed approaches found in Priscian’s works.
St. Gall glosses
Another notable contribution is the St. Galler Schularbeit, a compendium of annotations added by scholars at the Abbey of St. Gall. These glosses, which are primarily found in manuscripts dating from the nineth to the eleventh centuries, were created with the intention of assisting students who were not native Latin speakers in comprehending Latin texts. One particularly noteworthy manuscript (MS), catalogued as MS 904, is a transcription of Priscian’s work, created by Irish scribes between the years 850 and 851, reaching St. Gall after 888.
The manuscript contains an extensive commentary, comprising over 9,400 interlinear and marginal glosses, one-third of which are in Old Irish. These glosses are also relevant for the history of medieval education and linguistics, demonstrating how classical knowledge was preserved, adapted, and transmitted in a multilingual scholarly environment.
It is important to note that the glosses provided for the section on syntax are somewhat limited in scope and primarily serve the purpose of translating the given examples. Nevertheless, it is possible to cite a few examples from the section dealing with the verb:
uerbo accidunt octo: significatio siue genus, tempus, modus, species, figura, coniugatio et persona cum numero, quando affectus animi diffinit. Sciendum autem, quaedam uerba inueniri difectiua quorundam supradictorum accidentium et hoc uel naturae necessitate fieri uel furtunae casu (De verbo II, p. 369, lines 16–20)Footnote 1
One of the most notable features of this passage is the gloss on the Latin diffinit (‘defines’, see Figure 1), which is translated into Old Irish as cinness, a relative verbal form of cinnid Footnote 2 (‘to fix, settle, define’). This gloss (Sg. 137b3) is not a mere lexical substitution but a reconstruction of the grammatical action as a relational and agentive process. The relative construction presupposes a subject (‘the one who defines’), a syntactic feature characteristic of the Insular exegetical style which often recasts abstract Latin verbs into relational clauses to better reflect native conceptual models of agency and causality. This recoding continues in a glossed explanation concerning the absence of certain grammatical attributes, which Latin grammarians explained through a dichotomy between naturae necessitate and fortunae casu. The Irish glossator reinterprets these in culturally grounded terms. The former is rendered ní airicc aicned, meaning ‘it is not found [except] in nature’ or ‘nature necessarily possesses it.’ Here, aicned Footnote 3 (‘nature’) and airicc Footnote 4 (‘finds’) establish the absence as ontologically determined – built into the very nature of the linguistic item.
Figure 1. Passage from De verbo II, page 369, lines 16–20 (e-codices – Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland), with the gloss in Old Irish for cinness highlighted in red.
In contrast, furtunae casu is glossed with the striking phrase fadidmed aicned acht dondecmaing or anisiu, which may be interpreted as ‘nature would have allowed it, were it not for what happened’. This gloss introduces a counterfactual frame of reasoning and hinges on the verbal form fadidmed, a secondary future or conditional of the Old Irish verb fo-daim, which bears a semantic field encompassing ‘to suffer, endure, allow, tolerate, or submit to’.
The verb fo-daim Footnote 5 (proto-form of daimid) is richly recorded in legal, hagiographic, and grammatical sources and is often used to describe both physical endurance (fodaim apostroiph ‘suffers apostrophe’, Sg. 15b5) and moral or metaphysical acceptance (co rodiglum … ar n-ancride fair … do neoch forodamar ‘from all that we suffered’, PH 2219). Its conditional form fadidmed thus introduces not only grammatical contingency but an element of ethical and metaphysical concession – suggesting that nature would have ‘suffered’ or ‘permitted’ the attribute, had it not been for accidental interference. More interestingly, this is not mere paraphrasing: The use of fo-daim in this context reveals a culturally encoded epistemology in which concepts such as definition, absence, and contingency are understood not only through logic but through experience – what a thing must endure (fo-daim) or what nature refuses to accept. The glossator’s application of this verb constructs a theory of grammatical exceptionality that is both agentive and responsive: Attributes are missing either because nature refuses to produce them (i.e. ní airicc aicned) or because some event has disrupted their course (i.e. fadidmed aicned).
This passage reflects a dichotomy central to the Platonic thought: the distinction between what arises by Nature and what occurs by Chance, as articulated in Laws 888e and Republic 381b. In both works, Plato argues that what is constituted by Nature or by Art resists change, while what arises by Chance is unstable and contingent (Marino Reference Marino, Ferrarello and Giacchetti2015). The Irish glossator reinterprets this dichotomy in culturally resonant terms. Naturae necessitate is glossed as ní airicc aicned (i.e. ‘it is not found [except] in nature’), framing absence as an ontological condition inherent to the linguistic item, akin to Plato’s idea of Nature as a stable, confining force. Conversely, fortunae casu is rendered fadidmed aicned acht dondecmaing anisiu, meaning roughly ‘Nature would have allowed it, had it not been for what happened.’ The use of the conditional form fadidmed (from fo-daim) introduces a counterfactual mode of causality, suggesting not just logical contingency but a metaphysical concession: Nature is imagined as an agent that ‘suffers’ or ‘permits’ exceptions under duress.
The adopted translation strategy does more than paraphrasing, as it reveals a distinct epistemology in which grammatical anomalies are not inert gaps but responses to deeper principles. The glossator, by using fo-daim, reconfigures the Latin framework through a lens that aligns with Platonic causality yet articulates it in relational, experiential terms, turning linguistic defectivity into a drama of agency, resistance, and interruption.
The tension between diglossia and bilingual education
In the Middle Ages, we may identify a situation of diglossia, particularly within ecclesiastical and literary contexts. The sociolinguist Charles Ferguson (Reference Ferguson1996) defined diglossia as the use of two distinct varieties of language within a given community (see § 3.2). On the one hand, it is logical to assume that, since Latin was the dominant language of literacy, education would naturally take place in Latin. This assumption is supported by almost all educational materials. However, the situation in monastic and ecclesiastical schools, particularly in early medieval Germany, may have been different.
In France, for example, the spoken vernacular was still closely related to Latin, making it more accessible to students.
Conversely, Latin was always a foreign language in Germany. The students often hailed from linguistic backgrounds similar to, but distinct from, those of the Romance languages, thereby rendering the vernacular a feasible but frequently indispensable option.
Notker Labeo’s grammatical work at the Abbey of St. Gall exemplifies a pragmatic and theoretically informed response to the challenges of teaching Latin in a diglossic context. Latin, the language of scholastic and liturgical authority, was increasingly remote from the vernacular competence of students, particularly in German-speaking regions. Notker’s solution was not to replace Latin but rather to render its grammatical logic accessible through the structured integration of Old High German.
Towards a bilingual education
Far from being a simple translator, Notker crafted a pedagogical method grounded in the use of bilingual discourse. His commentaries and didactic texts strategically combine Latin terminology with vernacular explanations. This approach allowed learners to grasp complex grammatical categories, many inherited from Priscian, through conceptually transparent equivalents in their native language.
By pairing Latin nomen, verbum, and coniunctio with OHG namo, uuort, and geuugeda, Notker established a metalinguistic framework in which the vernacular functioned not merely as a support but as a medium of grammatical thought. His work marks a crucial step in the vernacularisation of Latin grammar, demonstrating how linguistic pedagogy could evolve to meet the cognitive needs of a multilingual scholastic audience.
Notker was among the forerunners of the use of the vernacular language in an organised manner within the context of education. His works were not merely word-for-word translations; rather, they were characterised by a high degree of analytical rigour and were designed with the specific objective of rendering complex Latin texts accessible to German-speaking students.
His translations frequently included comprehensive explanations of Latin grammar and syntax in the vernacular, establishing a bilingual framework that students could use to comprehend and debate linguistic concepts.
Diglossia in teaching Latin
According to Ferguson (Reference Ferguson1996), superposed variety of language, designated here as ‘high’ (H), is employed in formal contexts, whereas regional variety, labelled here as ‘low’ (L), is used in everyday communication. From a sociolinguistic perspective, Latin is situated within high variety, characterised by its highly codified superstructures and long-established grammatical history. In contrast, the vernacular languages, none of which were codified within a grammatical framework as in Latin, are positioned in the low variety, being the languages of everyday life and informality.
The extent to which the vernacular was used in early medieval German schools remains unclear.
As Grotans (Reference Grotans2006) observed, it is highly probable that teachers frequently employed the vernacular when their students lacked sufficient proficiency in Latin. This leads to the development of two possible methods: the natural method and the eclectic method.
The ‘natural method’ involved the exclusive use of Latin to immerse students in the language. This approach was particularly pertinent when educators were foreign nationals who were not conversant in the local vernacular. However, this approach was not always successful, and in many instances, educators were compelled to adapt by utilising the vernacular.
This leads to the ‘eclectic method’, which was a more prevalent approach, wherein Latin served as the foundation for instruction, but teachers occasionally employed the vernacular to elucidate complex concepts.
To illustrate, the St. Galler Schularbeit includes basic grammatical terminology translated into Old High German (OHG). The objective was not to supplant Latin with the vernacular, as the vernacular was employed as a pedagogical tool to facilitate students’ comprehension of Latin concepts, reflecting a pragmatic approach to education. It was within this context that Notker made a pivotal contribution, integrating the vernacular into his pedagogical texts by providing OHG translations alongside Latin explanations. This represented a significant shift in educational practice, whereby the vernacular assumed a more prominent role in the curriculum, evolving from an oral tradition to written texts.
The employment of a mixed Latin/German language, frequently designated as Mischsprache or ‘macaronic prose’, represents a noteworthy aspect of Notker’s work. In this instance, German functions as the foundation for the language, with Latin terminology and illustrative sentences integrated throughout. Each language is maintained in its original grammatical structure; therefore, Latin is not ‘Germanised’, nor is German ‘Latinised’, except in a few cases.
Teaching grammar in the Old High German context: the case of Notker
Latin influence on Old High German syntax can be recognised where a syntactic peculiarity is represented by the wide reproduction of Latin accusativus cum infinitivo in the Old High German syntax, where the infinitive can refer to the present or to the past. Evidence of this construction can also be found in the following example based on the translation of Boethius’s Latin De consolatione Philosophiae and in De interpretatione.
Notker and Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae
A particularly revealing case of Notker’s method is found in his translation of Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae, where the interweaving of Latin philosophical terminology and Old High German syntax reaches a remarkable level of sophistication. In this work, Notker does not simply translate Latin content into the vernacular. Rather, he constructs a hybrid linguistic register in which Latin diffinitio, syllogismus, and argumentum are retained as unaltered lemmata within a predominantly OHG framework.
The decision to retain the Latin forms of these technical terms is far from accidental. On the one hand, it reflects the authoritative status of Latin philosophical vocabulary; on the other hand, it corresponds to the pedagogical necessity of introducing students to the language of dialectics and logic through controlled exposure within a familiar grammatical environment. To preserve their conceptual integrity while contextualising them through vernacular explanations, these terms were embedded in German syntax without morphological adaptation:
Hîer îst ze uuîzenne. dâz diffinitio ôuh êigen instrumentum îst philosophorum. ad disputandum. sámo so argumentum îst. unde syllogismus… Argumentorum loca fún den sie sedecim. ratiocinationum modos. uîginti sex. áber diffinitio num mísselîho. uuânda cicero lêret únsih in topicis quatuor modos. uictorinus rhetor quindecim. Dêro quindecim modorum. îst échert éinêr. dér proprie diffinitio hêize. die ândere hêizent mêr descriptions (Notker’s Boethius [Nb] III, 169, 28–170, 5).Footnote 6
This strategy is consistent with what scholars have termed macaronic prose or Mischsprache. It is a deliberately constructed linguistic blend in which Latin and vernacular elements coexist without full assimilation. In Notker’s work, the result is not a chaotic fusion but a disciplined code-switching, often at the level of phrase or clause. For example, he may begin a sentence in Old High German, insert a Latin term such as a syllogism in its canonical form, and then proceed to gloss or paraphrase its meaning with vernacular vocabulary (Luiselli-Fadda Reference Fadda2007; Cotticelli-Kurras Reference Cotticelli-Kurras, Lambert and Bonnet2021a; Reference Cotticelli-Kurras and L.A.2021c):
In universalibus uero quæ similiter dicuntur. non est uera s. affirmatio. uera autem negatio. Ut putasne omnis homo sapiens est? Non. Igitur omnis homo non sapiens est. Hoc falsum est. Sed uera est s. negatio. Non igitur omnis homo sapiens est. Ube man uraget so samo fóne allen. ist mànnolih uuîse? unde ánderer chît néin. unde éner sar fóne diu nâh sprîchet. so íst mànnolih non sapiens. so hábet er gelógen. Omnis homo non sapiens est. taz ist infinita affirmatio. unde ist lúgi. samo so er chade negando. nullus homo sapiens est. Sprîchet er aber. finitum nomen negando. non omnis ergo homo sapiens est. samo so er chade affirmando particulariter quidam homo sapiens est. taz ist uuâr.Footnote 7 (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Notkeriana [= Ni], Ni56, 18–57, 5).
The section in Old High German in this passage is best understood not as a close rendering of the Latin text but rather as a paraphrastic commentary embedded within the grammatical discourse. Notker begins by translating the base example sentence omnis homo est sapiens as ist mannolih uuîse (‘man is wise’), but in the subsequent analysis, he reverts to the Latin formulation, particularly when handling logical distinctions. As in the first passage, much of the technical vocabulary, i.e., terms such as affirmatio, negatio, and infinita affirmatio, are kept in Latin, anchoring the vernacular exposition within the scholastic tradition.
This macaronic style, characteristic of Notker’s prose, closely resembles phenomena known in diglossic speech communities as code-switching and code-mixing. Notker alternates between Latin and OHG both across and within sentences. On a broader level, this mode of writing represents a deliberate pedagogical strategy: The German commentary acts as a cognitive scaffold that mediates the acquisition of Latin logic and grammatical metalanguage.
For instance, in the passage In universalibus vero quae similiter dicuntur, Notker introduces Latin logical distinctions regarding universals and their negations but supplements them with vernacular paraphrases that illustrate the pragmatic consequences of such propositions. Statements such as non igitur omnis homo sapiens est are juxtaposed with OHG interpretations (so ist mànnolih non sapiens), reinforcing conceptual clarity without diluting logical rigor. The Latin expression is not merely retained as a gloss but also functions as a performative linguistic anchor within the didactic structure.
Thus, this practice serves multiple purposes: It preserves the epistemological authority of scholastic Latin, initiates learners into the discursive practices of logic, and illustrates the operation of abstract concepts through a more accessible linguistic register. Notker’s pedagogy does not simplify philosophical grammar for the sake of accessibility but rather constructs a mediated intellectual space where learners engage with complexity through structured linguistic hybridity.
Ultimately, Notker’s prose embodies a broader tradition of grammatical-philosophical commentary stretching from Priscian to the Modistae. The retention of terms such as diffinitio and argumentum in Latin affirms the constitutive function of scholastic metalanguage – it is not merely descriptive but generative of the conceptual world it articulates. In this sense, Notker’s bilingual method becomes an epistemological site where language, logic, and learning coalesce (cf. Cotticelli-Kurras Reference Cotticelli-Kurras, Lambert and Bonnet2021a–c).
Notker and Boethius’s De interpretatione
To illustrate, in his rendering of Boethius’s De interpretatione, Notker commences with a German paraphrase but incorporates Latin terminology and structures to convey philosophical or technical meanings: He deliberately built an OHG metalanguage for logic and grammar, displacing Latin as the sole vehicle of technical terminology. For example, on page 401 of the St. Galler Schularbeit, Notker glosses the eight parts of speech as follows:
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Nomen → námo
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Pronomen → fúredáz nomen
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Verbum → uuórt
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Aduerbium → zûozedé mo uerbo
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Participium → téilnémunga
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Coniunctio → geûugeda
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Praepositio Footnote 8 → fúre sézeda
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Interiectio → úndéruuerf
By coining consistent OHG equivalents for each category, Notker provided German-speaking pupils with an autonomous metalanguage – no longer parasitic on Latin – and thus enabled them to discuss and analyse PoS in their native tongue. This was part of a broader shift, already evident in his classroom practice, that Grotans (Reference Grotans2006, 145) describes as ‘facing-page loose translations with copious footnotes’: a pedagogy that ‘enhances the role of the vernacular and brings it from the oral domain to parchment’.
At the same time, Notker employs strategic code-switching, such as inter- and intra-sentential mixing of Latin and German so that he can drill Latin technical terms (e.g. argumentum and syllogismus) while using OHG for explanatory commentary and syntactic parsing. In the context of De interpretatione, this meant German-language glosses to key Aristotelian and Boethian concepts (e.g. ‘categorical proposition’, ‘opposition’, and ‘true/false’), punctuated and arranged so as to guide both meaning and oral performance.
Translating metalanguage in Germanic grammar
In the St. Galler Schuleratrbeit on lines 4–8 of p. 401, key grammatical terms such as noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, participle, conjunction, preposition, and interjection are listed alongside their OHG translations, demonstrating a practical approach to language instruction where the vernacular played a significant role in teaching fundamental grammatical concepts.
The terms presented in this text represent the fundamental grammatical concepts that would have been taught to all students at the outset of their grammatical studies. With the exception of the fundamental concepts of ‘noun’ and ‘verb’, the translations exhibit a high degree of structural and etymological similarity to their Latin counterparts.
Code-switching and code-mixing in Notker
Notker’s macaronic prose bears resemblance to the linguistic phenomenon of code-switching and code-mixing, which is prevalent in diglossic speech communities. This phenomenon is characterised by the blending of languages within a single utterance. Notker’s work demonstrates the occurrence of code-switching at both inter-sentential and intra-sentential levels. Moreover, in his Old High German translation of Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae, Notker Labeo again transforms Latin scholastic terminology into a vernacular metalanguage, this time not only by coining German equivalents for logical categories but also by embedding performance and parsing cues directly into the text. First, he intersperses deictic markers in German (and occasional Latin technical terms) to guide the lector through complex periodic syntax. For example, after rendering the conditional period Si confundat copia pleno cornu tantas opes, he adds ‘Hîer íst suspensio uocis.’ …‘Hîer íst depositio.’ Thus, he signals where to suspend and drop the voice at clause boundaries, an explicit vocal metalanguage previously unrecorded in Latin-only treatments of Boethius.
Second, Notker adopts the alphabetic construe marks of the insular tradition to reorder Latin word order for vernacular comprehension but then glosses each segment in OHG. Plate 2 of St. Gall MS 844 shows his linking marks alongside an OHG retranslation that repositions subject (S), verb (V), and object (O) into a Germanic SV(O) pattern, enabling students to ‘see’ or read German syntax mapped onto Latin paradigms. He also departs from his Latin exemplars, sometimes fronting participles or prepositional phrases to mirror native topicalization, thereby forging a truly German metalinguistic register (Grotans Reference Grotans2006). In book III, 9, for instance, Notker places the participle and adjunct before the verb cluster, reflecting OHG information structuring even when this ‘breaks’ the Latin model. Taken together, these techniques highlight that Notker’s De consolatione not only renders Boethius intelligible to German-speaking students but also inaugurates an autonomous Old High German metalanguage, one in which voice, syntax, and terminology are explained and practised in the vernacular rather than exclusively in Latin.
Explaining fundamental terminology: ‘pronoun’ and ‘adverb’
The elaboration of metalinguistic terminology is evident in the Old High German (OHG) translations for ‘pronoun’ and ‘adverb’, where the Latin terms for ‘noun’ (nomen) and ‘verb’ (verbum) are incorporated into the German translation. For example, instead of the expected furedaznamo and zuozedemouwort, the terms appear as furedaz nomen and zuozedemo uerbo. By adopting a bilingual, etymologically conscious method, one can reconstruct the pedagogical setting in which a magister explains Latin grammatical terminology to German-speaking students. For example, nomen is translated as namo, a direct lexical equivalent in Old High German that preserves the semantic core of ‘name’. The compound pronomen is explained analytically as standing ‘in place of’ (fure, that translates Latin pro) the nomen, thus elucidating the term’s morphological composition and syntactic function. Similarly, verbum is translated as uuort, another near-identical semantic match, while adverbium is explained through a prepositional construction (zuo, from Latin ad), indicating its relational orientation towards the verbum.
This strategy is also used for more complex terms: Participium becomes teilnemunga, literally ‘part-taker’, a calque that captures the grammatical function of the participle, as it shares properties of both nouns and verbs. Coniunctio is translated as geuugeda, from the verb geuuigan (‘to yoke, join’), reflecting its role as a syntactic connector. This metalinguistic approach exemplifies Notker’s sophisticated awareness of both Latin morphology and Germanic compounding strategies. Rather than providing ad hoc vernacular translations, he systematically exploits the derivational potential of OHG to mirror the structural semantics of Latin terminology. His method is philologically significant because it does not merely aim at surface equivalence but rather preserves the logical and functional relations between grammatical categories. These vernacular renderings are not spontaneous neologisms but deliberate constructs, often aligning with pre-existing word-formation patterns in the Germanic lexicon.
Such bilingual explanations reflect a didactic environment attuned to the cognitive and linguistic needs of learners situated in a diglossic context. Importantly, in the specific case of pronouns and adverbs, Notker does not coin synthetic German compounds such as furedaznamo or zuozedemouwort, which would have been possible within the morphosyntactic affordances of OHG. Instead, he retains the Latin lemma (nomen, uerbo) in its canonical form, placing it after a vernacular prepositional phrase ( furedaz, zuozedemo). This deliberate graphic and lexical separation forestalls the potential semantic opacification that might result from calquing and thereby foregrounds the Latin term as a distinct cognitive object within a German syntactic frame.
This practice of retaining Latin elements within a vernacular context is similar to the aforementioned Mischsprache and represents a transitional stage in the vernacularisation of scholastic discourse, in which Latin retains its epistemological authority yet becomes accessible through explanatory scaffolding in the native language. The spacing of these mixed expressions, in which nouns and verbs are isolated rather than agglutinated, reveals an intentional avoidance of hybridity in morphological structure. This may have been done to preserve the recognisability and authority of the Latin grammatical lexicon.
This strategy reflects Notker’s pedagogical expertise and signals the emergence of a vernacular metalanguage based on the formal categories of Latin grammar. This phase is unique in the intellectual history of the Germanic world, as it was during this time that the teaching of grammar became a site of linguistic innovation, negotiating the borders between two systems of knowledge and expression. The text layout is also relevant, as we can see that Latin terms are intentionally kept separate from the German explanations by spacing them out, thus avoiding any confusion from mixing the languages in compound forms.
Following the translations of the parts of speech, a fragmentary discussion on the characteristics of nouns is presented in lines 9–17.Footnote 9 This discussion concerns the properties that are said to affect or ‘happen to’ the nouns in question. This section comprises an Old High German translation and an elucidation of fundamental terms, including qualitas, comparatio, and genus.
Although the list of grammatical terminology is relatively straightforward and accessible, it is evident that this section is intended for an audience with a basic understanding of Latin.
The Old English tradition: the adverb in Ælfric’s Grammatica
Another example given by Ælfric offers a good comparison with Notker’s technique.
A few years later, the English monk Ælfric undertook the translation of a grammatical text into Old English. His work was based on the Excerpta ex libris Prisciani. There is a notable similarity in the terminology employed by Notker, although there are a few notable exceptions.
In the Latin preface to his translation, Ælfric set out his intention to provide assistance to young students by offering them a version in their native language, which they could utilise at the outset of their education until they reached a level of maturity where they could comprehend Latin independently (Melazzo Reference Melazzo and Bartolotta2021).
Ælfric believed that the use of the learners’ mother tongue was an essential first step in their education, not an end in itself, although he was aware that his didactic choice would not appeal to many.
Using loan words, loan formations, and semantic loans, Ælfric created an Old English metalanguage and learning techniques (Chapman Reference Chapman and Coffey2021, 65ff.).
If we consider the two translations of ‘adverb’, Notker’s translation is more faithful to the original adverbium, yet Ælfric’s wordes gefera is not entirely lacking. Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756), for instance, based her Rudiments of Grammar for the English Saxon tongue on Ælfric’s translation of Priscian and employed wordes gefera as well. It is also noteworthy that she is the first woman whose grammar has survived. The necessity of adherence to the Latin model results in the establishment of exact correspondences with the Donatian and Priscian models, which in turn gives rise to a specialised formulation of the lemma. However, whereas Notker employs the vernacular to elucidate the function of the adverb, Ælfric presents a more colloquial account of its role (Toupin Reference Toupin2005; Reference Toupin2010).
Conclusions
The transition from Donatus’s grammar to Priscian’s marked a shift towards a more detailed and comprehensive study of language, reflecting a greater intellectual engagement with its fundamental principles. The production of glosses and lexicons was of great consequence during this period, as they translated Latin grammatical terms into vernacular languages, thereby rendering these complex ideas more accessible to those who could not speak Latin.
Notker’s approach to metalanguage was characterised by a distinctive strategy to enhance the accessibility of Latin for students. This was achieved through an eclectic method, by employing Old High German in conjunction with Latin in his translations and commentaries. Educators such as Notker Labeo and Ælfric achieve their pedagogical goal by systematically using vernacular languages alongside Latin. This pragmatic use of the vernacular exemplifies the flexible methodologies employed by medieval educators in a diglossic environment, where both Latin (the ‘high’ language) and the vernaculars (the ‘low’ languages) were used in educational contexts.
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