Grammar

Giorgio Buccellati – April 2026

Scholarship and beyond

The fundamental first step in the appropriation process is to provide a knowable universe. To just perceive things in their physical reality, as they come out of the ground, projects a very low degree of knowledge. To “study” these “things” means to see them in their full context, i. e., in their formal traits both as individual elements and as members of wider classes.

Any excavation manual does this. In our case, the grammar provides a more articulate presentation of goals and methods than is normally the case.

The relevance of grammar

A properly construed grammar is the trampoline to archaeological hermeneutics, going through epistemics and semiotics. There are three major steps in the process.

Identification of patterns. – Models have to be recognized as defined by objective formal traits.
Correlation of patterns. – A grammaticalized universe makes it easier to establish patterns and to see how they correlate. The formal dimension is well estalished and objective. Hence it is especially in the syntax that we see how grammar can be relevant for hermeneutics.
Inference. – On the basis of such correlations, one may then safely and arguably draw inferences based on the regularity of the patterns.

Archaeological awareness

Thus it is that grammar caters to the first two degrees of awareness we have seen as indicative of heritage. The ancients had a native awareness of grammar, just as they were native speakers of their language. Archaeologists reconstruct the grammar and thus become native carriers of the culture, hopwever derivatively. The claim is that, just as a linguist who might confront a native speaker of a “dead” language would understand and be understood, if only as a foreigner exhibiting a strong “accent”; just so, a scholar dealing with an ancient culture would identify with the values and mores of that tradition, if only as a stranger approximating the deeper perception of the natives.

The term “renaissance” comes to mind. Being “re-born” meant gonig beyond an extrinsic, merely philological knowledge of the past. It claimed a vital re-appropriation of what was perceived as a broken tradition. The whole movement may indeed be seen as a major hermeneutic experiment.

References

B mKB 2024 Balzan Dirt and People pp.21-23

Cipolla 2025

Christian Greco

Wylie 2023