Ancient Greek and Latin in the linguistic context of the Ancient Mediterranean


Book Description

Latein und Griechisch werden in diesem Sammelband unter dem Aspekt des Sprachkontakts untersucht, ein Thema, das in unserer globalen und multiethnischen Gesellschaft besonders aktuell ist. Spezialist:innen verschiedener Universitäten und Länder nehmen in Ihren Beiträgen unter anderem die linguistische Variation der griechischen Dialekte, den griechisch-lateinischen Bilinguismus, den Sprachkontakt im alten Italien, Mittleren Osten und Mittelmeer sowie Übersetzungen und Glossen in den Blick. Landkarten und Bilder alter Inschriften und Manuskripte bereichern die Diskussion. Aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive wird außerdem die Linguistik des Lateinischen und des Griechischen in ihrem Zusammenhang mit Epigraphik, Philologie, Textkritik und grammatischer Theorie untersucht. Neben Latein und Griechisch werden Daten zahlreicher alter und moderner Sprachen mit einbezogen.




Ancient Greek and Latin in the linguistic context of the Ancient Mediterranean


Book Description

Latein und Griechisch werden in diesem Sammelband unter dem Aspekt des Sprachkontakts untersucht, ein Thema, das in unserer globalen und multiethnischen Gesellschaft besonders aktuell ist. Spezialist:innen verschiedener Universitäten und Länder nehmen in Ihren Beiträgen unter anderem die linguistische Variation der griechischen Dialekte, den griechisch-lateinischen Bilinguismus, den Sprachkontakt im alten Italien, Mittleren Osten und Mittelmeer sowie Übersetzungen und Glossen in den Blick. Landkarten und Bilder alter Inschriften und Manuskripte bereichern die Diskussion. Aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive wird außerdem die Linguistik des Lateinischen und des Griechischen in ihrem Zusammenhang mit Epigraphik, Philologie, Textkritik und grammatischer Theorie untersucht. Neben Latein und Griechisch werden Daten zahlreicher alter und moderner Sprachen mit einbezogen.




Bilingualism in Ancient Society


Book Description

Bilingualism has seen an explosion of work in recent years. This volume introduces classicists, ancient historians and other scholars interested in sociolinguistic research into evidence of bilingualism in the ancient Mediterranean.




Language and Society in the Greek and Roman Worlds


Book Description

Texts written in Latin, Greek and other languages provide ancient historians with their primary evidence, but the role of language as a source for understanding the ancient world is often overlooked. Language played a key role in state-formation and the spread of Christianity, the construction of ethnicity, and negotiating positions of social status and group membership. Language could reinforce social norms and shed light on taboos. This book presents an accessible account of ways in which linguistic evidence can illuminate topics such as imperialism, ethnicity, social mobility, religion, gender and sexuality in the ancient world, without assuming the reader has any knowledge of Greek or Latin, or of linguistic jargon. It describes the rise of Greek and Latin at the expense of other languages spoken around the Mediterranean and details the social meanings of different styles, and the attitudes of ancient speakers towards linguistic differences.




Postclassical Greek


Book Description

The present volume collects contributions given at the First Postclassical Greek Conference Cologne (March 24–26, 2021), dealing with different topics related to the Greek language of the Postclassical period. In particular, it addresses the following issues: diachrony of the Greek language (e.g. as regards word order, negation, semantic shifts, counterfactuals); standardization processes; dialect convergence and linguistic change; linguistic innovation vs. reuse in literary Greek; layout of ancient texts in manuscripts. The papers include further elaborations with respect to their discussion within the activities of the DFG scientific network on Postclassical Greek (March 2022 – Feb. 2024) organized by the editors. The thirteen contributions aim at giving the readers new insights into this extremely complex and internally diverse stage of Greek, taking into consideration literary and documentary sources, New Testament Greek and inscriptions. Moreover, they show the productivity of the combination of philological and linguistic approaches when analyzing ancient languages.




Recent Trends and Findings in Latin Linguistics


Book Description

These volumes contain a selection of contributions first presented at the 21st International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics, held in Santiago de Compostela (2022). They cover essential topics in Latin linguistics from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. The first volume includes papers on Latin Syntax and Semantics, Latin Syntax and Pragmatics, Greek-Latin language, and Digital Linguistics. The contributions report on the latest research into very relevant issues in specific areas such as definiteness, casual syntax, sentence structure, word order, etc.; in addition, the most recent methodological advances using a variety of databases, a key tool in contemporary research, are presented. The second volume includes papers on Semantics and Lexicography, Etymology, Discourse strategies, and a special section devoted to the analysis of Conversation and Dialogue. The contributions report on the latest research into highly relevant issues in specific areas such as nominal and adjectival lexicology from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspectives, the use of Greek words as a vehicle for the expression of philosophical concepts, the choice and rendering of various linguistic strategies in direct and indirect discourse, etc. A particularly innovative section deals with various aspects of conversational language in a number of text types, as well as the use of different devices that contribute to the expression of (im)politeness by participants in the speech act. A knowledge of the work collected in these volumes is essential for all those involved in research in the field of Latin linguistics.




Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean


Book Description

Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas. This volume presents a group of papers by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. They focus on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.




Fragments of Languages


Book Description

The book deals with the concept of fragmentation as applied to languages and their documentation. It focuses in particular on the theoretical and methodological consequences of such a fragmentation for the linguistic analysis and interpretation of texts and, hence, for the reconstruction of languages. Furthermore, by adopting an innovative perspective, the book aims to test the application of the concept of fragmentation to languages which are not commonly included in the categories of ‘Corpussprache’, ‘Trümmersprache’, and ‘Restsprache’. This is the case with diachronic or diatopic varieties — of even well-known languages — which are only attested through a limited corpus of texts as well as with endangered languages. In this latter case, not only is the documentation fragmented, but the very linguistic competence of the speakers, due to the reduction of contexts of language use, interference phenomena with majority languages, and consequent presence of semi-speakers.




Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts


Book Description

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.




Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts


Book Description

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.