Ad un anno dalla tesi scoprire una possibile base teorica nel De Lingua Latina di Varrone non ha prezzo…
Taylor Daniel J. Latin declensions and conjugations: from Varro to Priscian. In: Histoire Épistémologie Langage. Tome 13,
fascicule 2, 1991. pp. 85-109.
doi : 10.3406/hel.1991.2334
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/hel_0750-8069_1991_num_13_2_2334
The earliest extant text to arrange nouns and verbs into what we nowadays call declensions and conjugations is Varro’s (116-27 B.C.) De Lingua Latina, but his scheme is not quite the same as ours or even his successors’. In Priscian’s (late 5th-early 6th c. A.D.) Institutiones Grammaticae, however, the declensions and conjugations appear much the same as they do in a modern textbook or grammar. In other words, declensions and conjugations in Latin do have a history, and we ought to be able to determine that history by studying how the grammarians subsequent to Varro and prior to Priscian describe Latin declensions and conjugations.
