"Apuntes sobre el Curso gradual de gramática castellana (ca. 1930) de José Hidalgo Martínez y su lugar en la tradición escolar argentina" ["Notes on José Hidalgo Martínez’s Curso gradual de gramática castellana (c. 1930) and its Place in Argentine School Grammar Traditions"]

School grammar is branch of linguistic studies that needs further descriptive and interpretative study to reveal its contributions to the development of modern grammar, even within the limits imposed by its educational purpose. With the aim of contributing to this task, this paper briefly analyzes José Hidalgo Martínez’s Curso gradual de gramática castellana (Buenos Aires), a widely used book in Argentine schools, as shown by its at least nineteen successive editions since the first one in 1884. The analysis reveals a model of grammar heavily dependent on Spanish theoretical sources, especially the Royal Academy of Language, and the strong presence of Andrés Bello,although gradually overshadowed by the former. To this we should add traces of French philosophical grammar, which becomes more visible in the chapter on syntax and the exercises of syntactic analysis. The resulting handbook is a sort of “patchwork” lacking in coherence but still useful to several generations of Argentine schoolchildren in their training in grammar and, even more so, to the history of school grammar in the Spanish-speaking world.