Read across, the chart gives the forms ofalbusin the six cases of the
Latin language (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, and
ablative). The first row gives the masculine singular forms, the second
row the feminine singular forms, and so on. Read down, the chart pro-
vides a summary of adjectival forms to be drawn on in the syntactic
contexts communicated by Latin case: thus all of the nominative forms
are together, all of the genitive, and so on. The chart gives order to the
naturally occurring forms of language, as one would expect in a text
strongly influenced by Stoic theories of language.
61
One can also imagine
that such a chart was useful in pedagogical contexts, regularizing the
forms of the language for the native speaker, introducing and summariz-
ing them for the new learner. Learning the declension of a single form of
the adjective (e.g., the masculine plural) across its various cases invites an
analytical approach to the language, one that focuses on the possible
transformations of a given word. It’s a useful method for learning to
read or otherwise decode: figuring out where a form ‘‘fits’’ on the chart
will tell the reader its case and number, information he needs if he is to
parse its function in the sentence. In contrast, learning the declension of
the adjective in clusters of cases would seem to be more useful for the
speaker or writer (i.e., the producer of language): he or she already knows
the use or syntax he has in mind and instead must apply the correct gender
and number to match the gender and number of the governing substan-
tive. In a sense, the duality of the chart captures the duality of the user as
both subject and object of language.
But there is more, for Varro expressly tells us that the chart is arranged
according to the format of atabula lusoria: ‘‘as is customary on a tablet, on
which they play ‘little bandits’’’ (ut in tabula solet, in qua latrunculis
ludunt,Ling. Lat. 10.22). Varro thus links the graphic chart of adjectives
to other instances of the defamiliarization of perception via writing.
Reading, writing, and even speaking become a kind of self-aware game
requiring submission to rules and constraints that vary in large part
according to one’s position on the board. Although such self-awareness
applies to speaking, it comes into being through the encounter with
writing and through the interplay of different processes of visual percep-
tion (left to right versus top to bottom).
albus albi albo album albe albo
alba albae albae albam alba alba
album albi albo album album albo
albi alborum albis albos albi albis
albae albarum albis albas albae albis
alba alborum albis alba alba albis- For the Stoic background to Varro’s work (and his occasional misuse of it), see Blank
134 Situating Literacies