Their influence was felt much less in the southern part of Europe, where the somewhat opposing tradition of the so-called "pedagogical grammar" never lost its preponderance.
William of Conches, Peter Helias, and Ralph of Beauvais, also referred to as speculative grammarians predate the Modist movement proper.
Widely reproduced and commented upon in the Middle Ages, it remains the most complete textbook of Modist speculative grammar.
For the Modistae, grammatical forms, the modi significandi of verbs, nouns, and adjectives, comprise the deep ontological structure of language, which objectively reflects reality.
Roger Bacon may have given the movement inspiration with his observation that all languages are built upon a common grammar, a shared foundation of ontologically anchored linguistic structures.