The structure of Latin: words made visible
In science, three-dimensional models of molecular and other structures are constructed and used for conceptual enrichment and for teaching. The structure of the DNA molecule was imagined and built as a theoretical model by Watson and Crick long before actual DNA could be seen through a microscope. The scientists deduced the logic of its elegant double-helical structure from already-known facts about its constituent parts.
We have all been told about the “structure” of language. I decided to attempt a structural analysis, and sculptural expression, of Latin grammar, inspired by Watson and Crick’s DNA example. The project required the deduction of logical and visually informative material structure from known facts about an entirely abstract entity; the result was a series of models, one for each of the parts of speech. The group is a representation in the physical world of a mentally-existent set of relationships, relationships essential within the Latin language—which is a communal work of art made by human beings over centuries. The models give physical form to the aspects particular to each part of speech, and to salient characteristics of each of these aspects (for example: verb tenses are prickly, conjunctions join one idea to another). Colors indicate the agreement of various elements with one another in gender, number, and so on. The system is designed for those who, at least in part, learn visually.
The decisions necessary to arriving at this physical manifestation of an abstract reality were only vaguely imaginable in advance and were strongly influenced by the materials at hand (cardboard, thread, bamboo skewers, plastic toy parts, wooden forks, ribbons). Final forms were discovered in the making, although their essential characteristics were dictated by the parts of speech themselves. Those forms could be different, but the fundamental relationships among them would have to be the same. Such relationships exist everywhere and in everything, despite the fact that they cannot be described in words or numbers—they are real but not material, and are clearly fundamental to everything that is real.
Since Latin grammar is basic to all the Romance languages and to English, grammatical structure is closely similar in all those languages, and models could be used for easy assessment of their differences. Any abstract structure (i.e. having no material existence) could be represented in this way: a system of government, a genealogy, a religion, the plot of a novel, a psychosis.
The models were intended to be an aid to learning. The fragility and idiosyncracy of my hand-made constructions meant that they couldn’t be much handled and at the same time were impractical for production in any number, so modified versions were machine-made in wood and spray-painted. I also wrote and illustrated detailed “notebooks” to accompany the Verb and the Noun. These were designed to emphasize the features and relationships most essential for the beginning student. They are organized and illustrated so as to make it clear that the language is an inherently logical system with definite boundaries, rather than an apparently unending series of lists to be memorized.
*copyright DSF 1980