Universa Philosophia

You will say first that participles and passive gerunds are utterances declined through cases, although they are not names. For Nebrissensis assigns eight parts of speech, in which he distinguishes names, pronouns, and participles from the name; but (as is clear from the same Nebrissensis, book 3, chapter 4, in the commentaries) there was once a great dissension about the number of parts of speech; he himself asserts eight, which the authors of the Royal Art say must be admitted, for no other reason than that it is so said; but in book 3, annotation 1, they report various opinions, and the view of Varro, who admitted only two parts, which Peter of Spain confirms from the dialecticians, chapter 4; afterwards he added the view of Diogenes Laertius constituting five, which they confirm from Plato, as our Brocensis learnedly observed, who flourished in this most celebrated Academy, nurse of the good arts; wherefore name, pronoun, and participle are one part of speech, because a pronoun is nothing but a name used for a proper name, but a participle is called by grammarians an adjective derived from a verb. And indeed there will, not incongruously, be three parts of speech, name, verb, adverb, the rest look to these; under name are comprehended pronoun, participle, and passive gerund (which is a participle of the future in dus): under the adverb are contained preposition, conjunction, interjection, and the rest. But grammarians use another division for the sake of clarity, for the benefit of boys.