La gramática española y su enseñanza en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII y principios del XIX (1768-1815).

Abstract

Spanish Grammar and its teaching during the second half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century (1768-1813) goes into the analysis of the grammatical treatises published from the enactment of Carlos the Third's royal letters patent ("Real Cédula de Carlos III") (1768) by which teaching Latin humanities in Spanish language becomes compulsory to the education reform in 1813 which proposes to make official the teaching of Spanish grammar in the secondary school. Twenty eight manuals are taken into consideration in this study. They form the corpus which is examined in an external and internal perspective: On the one hand, the importance of the relationship between the treatise and the scholar institution (teachers, schools, students, regulatory agencies, the State, etcetera) is pointed out. On the other hand, the theoretical contents are analysed from the Linguistic Historiography point of view, and specifically the area of Grammaticography. The results obtained show a cause-effect relationship between the multiplication of grammar manuals for Spaniards in the period studied and the peak of the scholar institution, thanks to the Enlightenment ideology and its followers. Moreover, advances on grammatical theory can be observed because of the need to adjust the Latin traditional model inherited to the following factors: 1) the capabilities of the students; 2) the specific characteristics of the Spanish language; 3) the new theoretical trends coming from France, originally represented by Port Royal's Rationalism and the general grammar rewritten by its followers and later by Du Marsais' and Condillac's ideas.