It might be thought that he uses all these terms as synonyms, if it were not for the fact that ydioma, lingua, and loquela are used only when what he is talking about is a Saussurean langue, while it seems that locutio is used in a more generic sense and shows up whenever the context appears to be suggesting the activity of parole. Apropos of certain animal cries, for instance, he says that such an act cannot be called a locutio because it is not a true linguistic activity (DVE I, ii, 6–7). What’s more, Dante uses locutio every time Adam addresses God.
It would appear, then, that ydioma, lingua, and loquela are to be understood in the modern sense of “language,” while locutio seems instead to stand for discursive acts.
In DVE I, iv, 1, Dante wonders who was the first human being to be given the faculty of speech (locutio) and what was the first thing said (“quod primitus locutus fuerit”) and where, when, and to whom, and in what language (“sub quo ydiomate”) was the first linguistic act (“primiloquium”) emitted. I believe, incidentally, that we are entitled to translate “primiloquium” in this way, by analogy with “tristiloquium” and “turpiloquium” (DVE I, xi, 2; xiii, 4), used to describe the ugly manner of speaking of the Romans and the Florentines of his day.
Perhaps Dante wanted to stress the fact that Adam speaks to God before giving things their names, and that God had therefore given him the faculty of speech before he constructed a language.
But what language did Adam speak? Dante criticizes those who, like the Florentines, believe their own native language superior, whereas there exist many languages, and many of them are superior to the Italian vernacular. Next (DVE I, vi, 4), he concludes that, along with the first soul, God created at the same time a “certam formam locutionis” (“a certain form of language”). If we translate this expression as “a well-defined form of language” (as Mengaldo [1979: 55] does, how do we explain the fact that in DVE I, vi, 7 Dante states: “Fuit ergo hebraicum ydioma illud quod primi loquentis labia fabricarunt” [“So the Hebrew language was that which the lips of the first speaker moulded”]?
Dante explains that he speaks of forma “with reference both to the words used for things, and to the construction of words, and to the arrangement of the construction (“et quantum ad rerum vocabula et quantum ad vocabularum constructionem et quantum ad constructionis prolationem” [DVE, I, vi, 4]), allowing the inference that, by “forma locutionis” he is referring to a lexicon and a morphology, and hence to a language. But if we translate forma as “language,” the following passage would be hard to fathom:
And this form (forma) of language would have continued to be used by all speakers, had it not been shattered through the fault of human presumption, as will be shown below.
In this form of language (forma locutionis) Adam spoke; in this form of language spoke all his descendants until the building of the Tower of Babel (which is interpreted as “tower of confusion”); this is the form of language inherited by the sons of Heber, who are called Hebrews because of it. To these alone it remained after the confusion, so that our redeemer, who was to descend from them (in so far as He was human), should not speak the language of confusion but that of grace.
So the Hebrew language was that which the lips of the first speaker moulded. (DVE I, vi, 4–7)4
If we were to interpret “forma locutionis” as meaning a fully formed language, why then, in saying that Jesus Christ spoke Hebrew, does Dante use at one time lingua and at another ydioma (while, right afterward, in DVE I, vii, 7, recounting the episode of the confusion of tongues, loquela is the term chosen), whereas the expression “forma locutionis” is used only for the original divine gift? Furthermore, if we were to grant that “forma locutionis” signified only the faculty of speech, it is not clear why the sinners of Babel would have lost it (while the Hebrews kept it), seeing that the whole of the DVE recognizes the existence of a plurality of languages produced (on the basis of some natural faculty) after Babel.
Let us, then, attempt an alternative translation:
And it is precisely this form that all speakers would use in their language, if it had not been dismembered through the fault of human presumption, as we shall demonstrate below. This is the linguistic form in which Adam spoke: all of his descendants spoke thanks to this form until the building of the Tower of Babel—which is interpreted as the tower of confusion: this was the linguistic form that the sons of Eber, who were called Hebrews after their father, inherited. To them alone it remained after the confusion, so that our Redeemer, who was to be born of them through the human side of his nature, should enjoy, not a tongue of confusion, but a tongue of grace. It was, then, the Hebrew language that the lips of the first speaker framed.
What, however, is this linguistic form that is not the Hebrew language nor the general faculty of language and which was given to Adam as a divine gift but lost after Babel—and which Dante, as we shall see, is endeavoring to rediscover with his theory of the illustrious vernacular?
Corti (1981: 46 et seq.) has suggested a solution to the problem, based on the principle that Dante cannot be understood if he is seen simply as an orthodox follower of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Dante appeals, depending on the circumstances, to various philosophical and theological sources, and there can be no doubt that he was influenced by various strands of that so-called radical Aristotelianism whose major representative was Siger of Brabant (whom Dante places in the Heaven of the Sun). But Boethius of Dacia too, one of the major representatives of the Modistae grammarians (and also in the Heaven of the Sun), was associated with the circles of radical Aristotelianism (and like Siger incurred the condemnation of the bishop of Paris in 1277). Dante is alleged to have been influenced by his De modis significandi. Corti sees the Bologna of his time as the seedbed from which these influences were passed on to Dante, either as a result of a personal stay there or through contacts between Bolognese and Florentine intellectual circles.
If such were the case, it would become clearer what Dante meant by “forma locutionis.” It was the Modistae who argued for the existence of linguistic universals, that is, for a set of rules underlying the formation of any natural language. In the De modis, Boethius observes that it is possible to extract, from all existing languages, the rules of a universal grammar, distinct from either Latin or Greek grammar (Quaestio VI).