Early Syriac linguistic theories were modeled upon the Greek tradition, by means of translations and adaptation of rhetoric, logic and grammatical texts. In the domain of grammar, the main source of inspiration was the Téchne Grammatiké, translated into Syriac in the 6th cent. and assimilated and manipulated by later Syriac authors. By examining the progressive integration and adaptation of the Greek category of ἄρθρον within the Syriac grammatical theory, this paper aims at showing how metalinguistic terms describing Greek morphological features can provide the conceptual and terminological tools for the identification of syntactic features of Syriac.