Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers
Abstract
Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers, Second Edition reveals the trajectory of the Greek language from the Mycenaean period of the second millennium BC to the current day. • Offers a complete linguistic treatment of the history of the Greek language • Updated second edition features increased coverage of the ancient evidence, as well as the roots and development of diglossia • Includes maps that clearly illustrate the distribution of ancient dialects and the geographical spread of Greek in the early Middle Ages
... (13) ἐγὼ τὸ κατέχω ἴντα θέλει (1612, Crete, Chaireti 1969. (14) εἶντα τὸν θέλομεν τὸν πλοῦτον, δὲν βλέποντας νὰ τὸν θωροῦμεν! (Diig. ...
... Ο τύπος ίντα είναι ερωτηματική αντωνυμία που χρησιμοποιείται παρόμοια με την ουδέτερη ερωτηματική τί, δηλαδή σε άμεσες (12) και σε έμμεσες (13) ερωτήσεις, καθώς και σε επιφωνηματικές προτάσεις (exclamatory clauses) (14), και στα κυπριακά και στα κρητικά . Χρησιμοποιείται δηλαδή τόσο στον ευθύ λόγο (15), όσο και στον πλάγιο (16) (Καραγιωργάκης, 2020). ...
... (344-345) (19)'Εμίσεψεν, ὑπάει νὰ ἰδεῖ τί ἔναι τὸ κλάημαν τοῦτον.(1724)(20) Κ' ἐσένα ἑρπάσουσιν γυμνὴν πάσης δικαιοσύνης, Ψυχή, μὲ τίντα πρόσωπον τὸν Κύριον νὰ ἀπαντήσεις,(14)(15).Στον Μαρίνο Φαλιέρο (περίπου 1395-1474), εντοπίζουμε και τη φράση , τί ἔν' τ' (21) και τον τύπο ἴντα (22), στο ίδιο έργο του, στην 'Ιστορία καὶ ὄνειρο (γύρω στο 1420). Στο έργο του ανώνυμου, Λόγοι παρακλητικοὶ εἰς τὰ τίμια καὶ ἅγια Πάθη τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν 'Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ Θρῆνος τῆς ὑπεραγίας Θεοτόκου (τέλη 15ου αιώνα), συναντάμε πρώτη φορά σε αυτό το σώμα κειμένων το γιάντα (23).(21)Ὦ ...
Στόχος αυτής της έρευνας είναι η μελέτη δύο διαλεκτικών λέξεων της κρητικής διαλέκτου, ίντα και δευτερευόντως γιάντα. Θα προσπαθήσουμε να υποστηρίξουμε μια ανάλυσή τους ως ερωτηματικά στοιχεία και θα μελετήσουμε τη συντακτική και σημασιολογική εξέλιξή τους στη διαχρονία, μέσω σωμάτων κειμένων. Πρόκειται για δύο λέξεις με ευρεία χρήση στη διάλεκτο, ακόμα και τη σημερινή εποχή. Μέσω του σώματος κειμένων του Κακλαμάνη (2020), θα προσπαθήσουμε να αναζητήσουμε τη χρονολογική πορεία των στοιχείων, καθώς και τη χρήση τους, ως στοιχείων που εισάγουν ερωτήσεις και έχουν ενίοτε μια επιφωνηματική χρήση, όπως συμβαίνει με πολλές ερωτηματικές αντωνυμίες. Τέλος, θα προσπαθήσουμε να αναδείξουμε πως αυτές οι χρήσεις τους επαληθεύονται ακόμα και τη σημερινή εποχή. Στη βιβλιογραφία δεν εντοπίζονται έρευνες που ασχολούνται με διαλεκτικά ζητήματα στη διεπαφή της σύνταξης με τη σημασιολογία, καθώς οι περισσότερες επικεντρώνονται σε φωνολογικά ή μορφολογικά ζητήματα. Γι’ αυτόν τον λόγο, κρίνουμε σκόπιμη την αναζήτηση περαιτέρω στοιχείων για τις λέξεις ίντα και γιάντα, δύο λέξεις που εκφέρονται πολύ συχνά από τον διαλεκτόφωνο ομιλητή.
... Contemporarily, the infinitive ending -ti in Serbian is lost and the future marker becomes an enclitic added to the root of the verb. The loss of the infinitive ending is a common passage, but it is due to inner factors of the two languages, as Greek lost the final -ν also in noun and pronoun declensions already in the Hellenistic period (Horrocks 1997), and Serbian lost it when the future clitic became a suffix (Grković-Major 2019), therefore it has nothing to do with language contact. ...
The aim of this paper is to describe and compare a common Balkan feature in Greek and Serbian, the periphrastic will future and the degree of grammaticalization in both languages, in order to reach conclusions about the similarities and the differences of the two processes and stages of grammaticalization from a diachronic point of view. First, Greek future tense and its development are analyzed from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, and then the development of future tense from Old Church Slavonic to Serbian is described. To conclude, grammaticalization stages and future marker development are compared diachronically.
... 16 Peust 1999, 127-32. 17 Girgis 1966Gignac 1976;Teodorsson 1977;Consani 1993;Torallas Tovar 2010;Horrocks 2010;Dahlgren 2017. Much of this variation, naturally, is a product of the internal development of Greek. ...
... A similar comparative analysis of the rest of the Gospels will reveal the degree of classicism or, conversely, innovation in the language of each author. It will also shed light on potential interference from Aramaic, Hebrew or Latin within the multilingual context in which the Gospels were written (Janse 2007, George 2010, Rochette 2010, Horrocks 2010. ...
In this article we analyse the data on the frequency of support-verb constructions (SVCs) in the Gospels, both in their original Greek version and in the Latin translation of the Vulgate. In the former case, we identify the most frequent support verbs and highlight the differences among the gospel writers. These differences also speak of their varying proficiency in Greek and are sometimes the result of linguistic influences. The parallel analysis of the Latin text of the Vulgate allows us to compare the use of SVCs in both languages and reflect on the translation criteria employed. The evidence, in addition to highlighting the reasonable tension between the literal translation of the source language (Greek) and the naturalness of the target language (Latin), demonstrates the existence of different translation criteria in each Gospel.
... However, Greek is nontransparent in writing due to historical factors. Greek also uses systematic patterns in spelling derivational and inflectional morphemes, which can include ambiguous digraphs and letters with overlapping phonetic values (Horrocks, 2010), such as "αι" and "ε", which are both pronounced /e/. For instance, in the spelling of bases, the correct spelling of a base like "καιρ /cer/" in "καιρός /cer-os/" (weather) depends on memorization specific to that word, constituting spelling of bases. ...
This research explores the written narratives of Greek-Turkish bilingual and Greek monolingual children, focusing on their retelling abilities. We analyze both the macrostructure and microstructure of their narratives, utilizing the story-grammar model for the macrostructure analysis and examining lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, spelling accuracy, connectives, and word stressing for the microstructure assessment. We also examine correlations with contextual factors, including home and schooling input. Thirty-six children, comprising an equal number of bilinguals and monolinguals, participate in a picture narrative task (retelling mode). Our findings indicate that while bilingual children exhibit proficiency in constructing the story-grammar comparable to their monolingual counterparts, notable differences emerge in the microstructure of their narratives. Specifically, bilingual children produce shorter narratives. They also demonstrate lower lexical and noun diversity, syntactic complexity, and spelling accuracy (in inflectional suffixes) compared to monolingual children. These observed differences in the microstructure imply a potential trade-off between establishing the core story schema and elaborating on narrative details in bilingual narratives. Additionally, our study identifies early literacy practices (i.e., print exposure in preschool years) and current literacy practices (literacy habits outside the school setting) as predicting differently aspects of the microstructure in each group, further enhancing our understanding of how bilingualism influences narrative development. This underscores the importance of examining both the macrostructure, microstructure, and contextual factors for a comprehensive understanding of narrative development in bilingual and monolingual children.
... 1 Other renown historical grammars of MG (Horrocks 1997;Adrados 1999;Tonnet 2003), actually, agree with Robert Browning as they start from AG. ...
Modern Greek identity is heavily based on the idea of the continuity of Greek culture and the Greek language. Most specialists in Modern Greek regard Ancient Greek and Modern Greek as different stages of the same language despite multiple differences and innovations at all levels. During the 19th century, a number of European classical philologists tried to find Ancient Greek features in Modern Greek dialects. As a result, they have singled out Tsakonian as the sole dialect which descends directly from Ancient Doric Laconian but not from Hellenistic Koiné as the rest of the modern dialects. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that Tsakonian is not the only Modern Greek variety with some unique peculiarities inherited from Ancient Greek. This contribution analyzes the phenomena of the Ancient Greek origin in vocabulary, phonetics, morphology and syntax in Modern Greek dialects. The research is focused on those archaisms which exist in the dialects but are absent from Standard Modern Greek. The data was mostly collected by the author of this paper and his colleagues between 2000 and 2023. The analysis demonstrates that the majority of unique peculiarities of the Ancient Greek origin are found in Pontic and Tsakonian, although most varieties of Modern Greek have some archaisms. However, the quantity of archaisms is not a consistent indicator of the antiquity of the dialect since the history of Modern Greek dialects is still terra incognita and there is no good explanation why some dialects keep their archaisms better than the others.
... Under the Empire, the situation is even more malleable. Favorinus' argument for his pure Greekness, albeit a Roman Gaul who can write in both Greek and Latin,15 Lucian's manipulative accounts of the Syrian-Hellenized self who has also mastered Greek, Plutarch's contrapuntal accounts of Greek and Roman culture,16 Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities about a 11 For a history of the Greek language, see Palmer (1980), Horrocks (1997). For socio-cultural context, see Clackson (2015). ...
... 630-631), who distinguishes between three levels of writing in the later Roman period-(i) basic/non-literary, (ii) official and scientific/technical, and (iii) literary-and outlines a number of linguistic features on the basis of which each level can be characterized. Horrocks (2007) does not specify exactly which sorts of texts he considers under the label 'official' , but he does so in his later monograph (Horrocks 2010): relevant text types include not only petitions, but also imperial edicts, public proclamations, official correspondence, contracts, and juridical proceedings.47 Horrocks (2007, pp. ...
... Messenian is spoken in the Southwest of the Peloponnese and, thus, it belongs to the Peloponnesian varieties. Historically, Peloponnesian has been considered as one of the basic dialects on which Standard Modern Greek was formed [24,19], mainly because of the pivotal role of the Peloponnese during the Greek Revolution of 1821 and the subsequent formation of the Greek state, as well as of the significant migratory movements from the Peloponnese to Athens. Recent studies of some documented linguistic material from the Peloponnesian varieties reveal substantial deviations from Standard Modern Greek [25], and differences from one variety to the other, particularly on the phonological level [26]. ...
... For Modern Greek, see, e.g.,Horrocks (1997) chapters 13-17; Ridgway (2009); for Armenian, seeNichanian (1989). ...
Written forms of Arabic composed during the era of the Ottoman Empire present an immensely fruitful linguistic topic. Extant texts display a proximity to the vernacular that cannot be encountered in any other surviving historical Arabic material, and thus provide unprecedented access to Arabic language history.
This rich material remains very little explored. Traditionally, scholarship on Arabic has focussed overwhelmingly on the literature of the various Golden Ages between the 8th and 13th centuries, whereas texts from the 15th century onwards have often been viewed as corrupted and not worthy of study. The lack of interest in Ottoman Arabic culture and literacy left these sources almost completely neglected in university courses.
This volume is the first linguistic work to focus exclusively on varieties of Christian, Jewish and Muslim Arabic in the Ottoman Empire of the 15th to the 20th centuries, and present Ottoman Arabic material in a didactic and easily accessible way. Split into a Handbook and a Reader section, the book provides a historical introduction to Ottoman literacy, translation studies, vernacularisation processes, language policy and linguistic pluralism. The second part contains excerpts from more than forty sources, edited and translated by a diverse network of scholars.
The material presented includes a large number of yet unedited texts, such as Christian Arabic letters from the Prize Paper collections, mercantile correspondence and notebooks found in the Library of Gotha, and Garshuni texts from archives of Syriac patriarchs.
... 159-160;Anagnostopoulou & Sevdali, 2020, стр. 992;Horrocks, 2010). ...
Prepositions are indeclinable words with limited lexical meaning that cannot stand alone but can govern one or more cases. In Modern Greek, which has four cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, and vocative), prepositions are commonly used to express a variety of relations (such as location, time, direction, etc.). Specifically, certain prepositions in this language can be followed simultaneously by the accusative and genitive cases. The aim of this paper is to investigate how a group of students of Modern Greek as L2 at the Department of Modern Greek Studies, Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade, perceive the use of prepositions that syntactically correspond to the accusative and the genitive and change their meaning depending on the case they are used with. A non-experimental quantitative survey with multiple-choice, closed-ended questions was conducted. Respondents were asked to form prepositional phrases with prepositions that can be followed by both genitive and accusative (epί, ypό, apό, pros, metά, and catά) by choosing nouns in one of the above cases. This paper aims to identify the semantic and syntactic components that may be problematic for learners of Modern Greek as L2 in the use of prepositions and prepositional phrases, as well as to suggest strategies for more efficient acquisition and use of this word class in Modern Greek.
... The perfective aorist therefore quickly disappeared, rst from apodoses and then from protases. There was, however, some risk of ambiguity in the absence of overt modality marking in such cases and this soon led to a system of marking hypothetical consequentiality involving a 'conditional' periphrasis μέ ω mélo, έχω éxo or (more sporadically) θέλω θélo + in nitive (Horrocks 2010:237-238, Markopoulos 2009:70-71, Psaltis 1918. Another important development was that in the later middle ages the modal imperfect was regularly strengthened, in a development modelled on the established use of να na to mark a present as future/subjunctive in force (Horrocks 2010:299) ...
... sulla diffusione dell'infinito sostantivato nel greco cancelleresco di età postclassica e nella koiné di livello alto, cf. rispettivamente Horrocks 1997Horrocks , 46-47 e sc�wyzer 1966 Planude sostituisce all'infinito complementare latino un infinito articolato in funzione di accusativo di-retto: sulla diffusione di tale costrutto in età postclassica e sull'impiego dell'articolo come una sorta di premorfema casuale, cf. Burguière 1960, 144. ...
Il presente contributo mira a fornire una visione d’insieme degli elementi morfosintattici che caratterizzano in maniera più evidente il linguaggio adottato da Planude nella metafrasi delle Heroides, con l'obiettivo di individuare alcuni tratti linguistici ricorrenti dell'usus vertendi planudeo che si dispiega in tale paradosis e, allo stesso tempo, di evidenziare le interferenze fra Hochsprache e Volkssprache, all’insegna della diglossia che permea di sé il panorama linguistico bizantino.
... 29 HĂLMAGI 2014. 30 GIGNAC 1976HORROCKS 2010, 170. 31 BIVILLE 1990 ...
In Late Antiquity, the word persona acquired its own theological identity from common speech. One step along this path was the application of prosopological exegesis to biblical texts, a form of interpretation developed by Hellenistic scholars aimed at identifying the “voices” of the “characters” in a poem. A comparison between Origen of Alexandria’s and Tertullian’s use of this kind of exegesis shows at what stage of specialization both the term and the concept of persona were in the third century.
The article cites passages from Τέχνη γραμματική which characterise the grammatical category of the noun number (ἀριθμοὶ ὀνομάτων) and define two classes of nouns, i.e. collective nouns (ὀνόματα περιληπτικά) and distributive (pro)nouns (ὀνόματα ἐπιμεριζόμενα), which are closely related to the category of the number. Subsequently, the passages are confronted with the comments of Byzantine scholiasts on them, quoted from A. Hilgard’s scholia edition. Familiarisation with and interpretation of the analysed scholia made it possible to demonstrate the way in which the model description of the grammatical noun number as well as the characteristics of collective nouns and distributive pronouns, contained in the textbook, were received in the circle of Byzantine grammarians. In particular, focus was put on the scholiasts’ choice in regard to which of the passages required further explanation or complement, and what explanations or complements thereof were formulated in the scholia, as well as which statements were met with objections or criticism from Byzantine commentators, what where the reasons behind those, and what were the suggested corrections. The analyses conducted, though limited to selected issues, allow for at least a partial understanding of the specificity of the grammatical education in the Byzantine Empire and the nature of the Byzantine discourse on the content of Τέχνη.
This article provides a short introduction to Balkan Romance, examining and exemplifying a number of its principal features. In particular, the discussion begins in §2 with a review of the main morphosyntactic features of the four principal sub-branches of Old Romanian spoken today within the Balkan Sprachbund (Daco-Romanian, Aromanian, Istro-Romanian, and Megleno-Aromanian), tracing the treatment of such Balkanisms both in the traditional philological literature (§3) and their more recent formalization and expansion in the theoretical literature dedicated to the Balkan Sprachbund (§4). This is followed in §5 by a discussion of some of the dialects spoken in southern Italy and their key morphosyntactic features. These varieties, although not situated in the Balkan Sprachbund proper, have nonetheless either developed under contact with Balkan languages, as in the case of the Romance dialects of the extreme south of Italy which have been in centuries-long contact with Greek (§5.1), or, in the case of Italo-Albanian, have evolved under contact with local Italo-Romance varieties (§5.2). The discussion concludes in §6 with an overview of the principal issues discussed in each of the contributions.
Though the Atticist lexica have often been seen as 'codifying' a prestige variety, there have been very few studies of the specific ways in which Atticist lexica linguistically establish and accord overt prestige, i.e. a higher perceived social status of language use as recognized explicitly within a community. Therefore, we demonstrate that impersonal deontic modal expressions (forms of δεῖ and χρή) are used by the Atticist lexicographers in three ways to record usage norms with overt prestige: (1) report norms with overt prestige (incl. via negative association with social groups), (2) construct norms with overt prestige, and (3) negotiate norms with overt prestige. Our findings attest to a significant diversity within Atticist lexicography with regard to overt prestige: Aelius Dionysius and Pausanias (based on the limited material) seem to almost exclusively report norms, whereas Phrynichus reports, constructs and negotiates norms, and the Antiatticist exclusively (re)negotiates norms.
Authenticity is an often-debated concept within and beyond sociolinguistics, particularly in multilingual contexts. Lacoste et al. (2014) have discussed different modes that speakers demonstrate and perceive authentic group membership, and Bucholtz & Hall (2005) have asserted that speakers often appeal to broader sociocultural details to legitimize group membership. The Istanbul Greek community then provides an interesting take on group identity as they embody Greek ethnicity with Turkish nationality. This duality for Istanbul Greeks has been a source for Mainland Greeks to historically qualify them as Τουρκόσποροι (Turkish seed) and “less” Greek (Hadodo, 2020).
Due to centuries of geopolitical and sociohistorical developments, Istanbul Greeks and their language have undergone changes absent from Mainland Greek and Cypriot counterparts. Reflecting extended contact with Turkish, French, Ladino, Armenian, and other languages, the Istanbul Greek dialect (IG) reinforces a cosmopolitan identity that opposes a mainstream sense of Greekness (Halstead, 2018, Örs, 2017). In this chapter, I apply stancetaking methodologies to IG speakers’ metapragmatic discourse in order to explore how they construct an “authentic” Greek identity by subverting and sometimes inverting dominant mainstream narratives. The IG community therefore showcases how a diverse minoritized indigenous community challenges hegemonic notions of authentic group membership in the stances they take that tie their language use to their own broader lived experiences.
This article examines the changes in the productivity of the derivational suffix -ισσα of feminives in the Greek language. In the Modern Greek, this suffix is the most productive and is represented in 887 lexemes. In Ancient Greek, on the contrary, the suffix -ισσα is quite rare, limited to 8 lexemes. During the diachronic analysis, we find that a sharp increase in the productivity of the suffix -ισσα occurs during the Hellenistic Koine period. In subsequent periods, its productivity continues to increase. In the Modern Greek, the suffix -ισσα in most cases is involved in the formation of katoikonyms, but the high productivity of the suffix contributes to its active participation in the formation of feminitives-neologisms of other semantic fields.
Jelen dolgozat célja, hogy bemutassa a samosatai Lukianos Mássalhangzók pereskedése című művét. A cselekmény szerint a megszemélyesített Sigma betű vádat emel Tau ellen javainak erőszakos elrablása miatt a magánhangzók bírósága előtt. A nyelvi jelenségek bemutatásán alapuló humoros mű valójában támadás az atticista stílusirányzat szélsőséges képviselői ellen.
In this paper, I trace the impact of insubordination and semi-insubordination on the history of Greek, focusing on its impact on the modal system used to express speech acts. Starting from the cross-linguistic connections of insubordinate and semi-insubordinate ἵνα and να constructions with those found in other languages, I show that ἵνα only had subordinate usages in Classical Greek (including in dyadic syntactic contexts), but developed insubordinate usages for directive and wish speech acts in Post-Classical Greek. In Medieval Greek, insubordinate να spreads pragmatically to other speech acts, e.g. to exclamatives, interrogatives and various assertives (e.g. coun-terfactual apodoses or double negative declaratives). In Modern Greek, insubordinate να has obtained novel usages in interrogative speech acts too and gained paradigmatic strength as it competes with the imperative and the future. Semi-insubordinate patterns are first developed in Medieval Greek (with ἴσως νὰ + main verb) but spread formally and functionally to other parts of the modal system, expressing epistemic possibility, probability, counterfactuality and avertives.
Although the evolution of negated indefinite constructions in the history of the Greek language has been extensively studied, the data from Medieval Greek remain largely untapped. During this period, there is extensive variation in the mechanisms expressing the negative meaning of the clause that leads to optional distributional and lexical asymmetries, the origin of which can be traced back to much earlier stages of the language. This chapter particularly focuses on the role of οὐδέ oudé / uðé ‘neither, not even’ as correlative negation and as a scalar adverb or prefix that leads to the continuous renewal of available negative concord items, parallel to the competing morpheme καν- kan- ‘even’, thereby complicating the characterization of Medieval Greek as a strict negative concord language.
Support-verb constructions are combinations of a verb and a noun that fill the predicate slot of a sentence, such as to make a suggestion in I made the suggestion that she join us. While qualifying as semantic-lexemic phrasemes (collocations and idioms) in Mel’čuk’s Sens-Texte framework, they sit at the lexicon-syntax interface. They qualify as verbal multi-word expressions lexically speaking and form complex predicates syntactically. In classical and post-classical Greek, support-verb constructions form an internally heterogenous group of constructions, yet one that has existed since the earliest records of the language and survives into the modern variety. The present chapter capitalises on the over 2000 years of continuous written history of Greek, and the internal heterogeneity of the group of support-verb constructions, in that it investigates the origins and pathways of three members of this group in the literary (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) and documentary (Duke Database of Documentary Papyri) corpora of Greek. The bulk of documentary texts dates from the 3rd c. BC onwards, whereas the earliest literary texts date from around the 8th c. BC. The variety of sources allows us to trace the three structures of interest through the centuries in varying environments and thus to trace traditions and independent developments. δίκην δίδωμι dikēn didōmi existed as a collocation ‘to give judgement(s)’ from archaic times and into the medieval period, in classical times, the idiom δίκην δίδωμι dikēn didōmi ‘to pay the price for one’s actions’ arose and became indexed for the technical and higher registers. In χάριν ἀπολαμβάνω kharin apolambanō ‘to receive a favour’, the prototypical compound ἀπολαμβάνω apolambanō seems to be diatopically and subsequently diastratically indexed but retreats into the higher registers after the classical period; the canonical simplex verb λαμβάνω lambanō predates it in early classical verse and postdates it. προσέχω τὸν νοῦν prosekhō ton noun exists as an idiom especially in medical discourse from at least classical times onwards but in parallel also as a pragmateme from archaic times onwards. Support-verb constructions are a pattern that is considered near universal in languages, such that especially the methodological tool of the support-verb-construction field developed and drawn upon in this chapter is transferable beyond Greek.
This paper analyzes the Linguistic Landscape of Bova Superiore, a small village in southern Calabria where Italo-Greek (Greko) is still spoken. Place-naming practices are considered communicative acts, and the linguistic signs inserted in the public space highlight the richness of the linguistic heritage of communities and contribute to the symbolic construction of collective identities. Through a mapping of the contact between the languages that characterize the Linguistic Landscape of Bova Superiore, the present study aims to fill a knowledge gap by stimulating a reflection on the degree of visibility and vitality of Greko.
This study addresses the phonological representation and phonetic realization of pitch patterns found on or near prosodically prominent syllables in Ancient Greek, namely, the distinction between the so-called "acute" and "circumflex" accents. Empirically, we investigate in detail the correlation between tones and tunes in the Delphic hymns (DAGM 20 and 21) on syllables capable of bearing a circumflex accent (i.e., syllables containing a long vowel or diphthong = VV-syllables). This data supports two major findings. First, VV-syllables with circumflex accent are significantly more likely to be set to a melism than VV-syllables that are acute, grave, or unaccented, and, moreover , the proportion of melismatic settings among acute, unaccented, and grave VV-syllables does not significantly differ. Second, circumflex melisms consistently (always or nearly so) fall in pitch (on average, by three semitones), whereas acute and unac-cented melisms may either rise or fall (on average, by 1.5-2.25 semitones in either direction). Taken together, this data conforms to the usual description of the circum-flex as a falling pitch, [H L], but speaks against claims that the acute constitutes a rising pitch ([L H], or High alone aligned with the latter portion of a VV-syllable, [∅ H]). We instead conclude that the acute represents a single High pitch target phonologically mapped to the entirety of a VV-syllable, and discuss the implications for the phonological analysis of the prosody of Ancient Greek in light of the typology of contour tones.
Resenha de Roderick Beaton, Οι Έλληνες: Μια παγκόσμια ιστορία (Atenas, 2022), tradução de The Greeks: A global history (Londres, 2021).
English language is in the spotlight of the Natural Language Processing (NLP) community with other languages, like Greek, lagging behind in terms of offered methods, tools and resources. Due to the increasing interest in NLP, in this paper we try to condense research efforts for the automatic processing of Greek language covering the last three decades. In particular, we list and briefly discuss related works, resources and tools, categorized according to various processing layers and contexts. We are not restricted to the modern form of Greek language but also cover Ancient Greek and various Greek dialects. This survey can be useful for researchers and students interested in NLP tasks, Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management for the Greek language.
In this article I summarize the state-of-the-art with regards to counterfactuals in Post-Classical Greek. First, I define counterfactuals, detail how they are commonly developed and distributed across syntactic and pragmatic environments. Subsequently, I discuss the historical developments of counterfactuals described in existing literature.
Attitudes to language are evaluative and stereotypical judgements about language varieties (Language Variation) and their speakers which are instrumental in establishing social hierarchies and in- vs. out-group distinctions which regulate social life and have far-reaching consequences, since they are implicated in discriminatory practices in inter-group relations and education as well as language loss. Their study originates in social psychology and, despite its strong interdisciplinary character today, this pedigree is cast in high relief in the relevant literature, which often quotes Allport’s (1935) definition of attitude as “a mental state or neural state of readiness, organized through experience, exerting a directive or dynamic influence upon the individual’s response to all objects and situations with which it is related” (as quoted in
Baker 1992:10). However, language attitudes from a sociolinguistic perspective pivot around their relation to the documented inequality in the status, value, and importance of linguistic varieties according to social actors who are linguistic beings.
The coexistence of Italian varieties (the so-called "regional Italians") with other Romance dialects (the so-called dialetti) makes the Italo-Romance setting particularly intriguing from a language and dialect contact perspective. As it is well known, contact between dialects may occur in different ways: koineization, dialect levelling, geographical diffusion and so on. In particular, the development of new dialects induced by the coexistence of migrants speaking mutually intelligible varieties has been observed in many situations, such as colonial settings or the so-called New Towns. The significant internal migration in Italy fosters the convergence of different dialects, giving rise to noteworthy sociolinguistic phenomena that seems relevant for an analysis in terms of koineization. In this chapter, I will consider how Italian linguistics has dealt with the koineization issues and which scenarios may arise by applying the dialect contact approaches to the Italian context. This will be done through a review of the numerous definitions attributed to the term 'koine' in the field of Italian linguistics. By comparing Italian findings with other routes explored by international sociolin-guistics, this article will contribute to proposing new perspectives for further investigation. Preliminary data from a new contact variety discovered in the Southern part of Italy will be considered in order to propose a model that allows an accurate observation of Italo-Romance dialect contact. This will allow us to discuss the thorny issue of the applicability of koineization and New Dialect Formation models, with the aim of outlining preparatory guidelines for future research. Indeed, although research on dialect contact has been conducted across various languages, there remains significant potential for the varieties and dialects spoken in Italy to contribute valuable insights to the study of dialect contact. Finally, four potential continua of dialect contact in Italy will be sketched.
T This paper presents the methodological principles underlying the Historical Dictionary of Modern Greek (ILNE) of the Academy of Athens with respect to the diachronic examination of the vocabulary, taking into consideration the latest advances in the domain of historical lexicography. The issues examined include: a) the historical lexicography of the Greek language and its representatives b) the delimitation of the historical period covered by the ILNE and the problems associated with it c) the dating and the etymological analysis of the material and d) the lemmatisation and presentation of the material on the basis of historical criteria.
Η γενική στην Αρχαία Ελληνική διέθετε τρεις σημασίες, καθώς εκτός από τις κτητικές και μεριστικές (διαιρετικές) λειτουργίες που κληρονόμησε από την Πρωτο-Ινδο-Ευρωπαϊκή γενική, μπορούσε να έχει και αφαιρετική σημασία, την οποία απέκτησε λόγω της απώλειας της αφαιρετικής πτώσης πριν από τον 8ο αι. π.Χ. Ωστόσο, η γενική της Νέας Ελληνικής έχει χάσει τόσο τη μεριστική όσο και την αφαιρετική χρήση της, με την κτήση να είναι η μόνη αρχαία σημασία που έχει διατηρηθεί. Αυτές οι αλλαγές εντάσσονται στην ευρύτερη αναδόμηση του αρχαίου πτωτικού συστήματος στο πλαίσιο της σταδιακής υποχώρησης των σημασιολογικών χρήσεων των πλάγιων πτώσεων εξαιτίας της εκτεταμένης χρήσης των προθετικών φράσεων και άλλων αναλυτικών δομών. Έτσι, το παρόν άρθρο επιχειρεί να ανιχνεύσει την πορεία της απώλειας των μεριστικών λειτουργιών της γενικής στην Ελληνική και να εντοπίσει τους παράγοντες που οδήγησαν σε αυτήν.
In today’s global society, an increasing number of people speak a few widely spoken languages enjoying high standardisation and official recognition. Meanwhile, minority and local languages are gaining interest from specialists and society. This volume explores the rich topic of bi(dia)lectal repertoires, focusing on their grammatical as well as attitudinal, social and political dimension. With contributions from the international conference ‘Language Attitudes and Bi(dia)lectal Competence (LABiC)’, held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in September 2022, the volume is suited for linguists, educators, policymakers, and language enthusiasts who strive to support minority languages in a globalised world.
In today’s global society, an increasing number of people speak a few widely spoken languages enjoying high standardisation and official recognition. Meanwhile, minority and local languages are gaining interest from specialists and society. This volume explores the rich topic of bi(dia)lectal repertoires, focusing on their grammatical as well as attitudinal, social and political dimension. With contributions from the international conference ‘Language Attitudes and Bi(dia)lectal Competence (LABiC)’, held at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in September 2022, the volume is suited for linguists, educators, policymakers, and language enthusiasts who strive to support minority languages in a globalised world.
La lengua griega ha experimentado muchos cambios a lo largo de su historia. Entre estos cambios destaca la tendencia a la sustitución de estructuras verbales sintéticas por construcciones perifrásticas. El estudio de dicho fenómeno resulta de especial interés en el griego bizantino de época tardía, pues en el s. XII comienzan a aparecer textos en lengua vernácula, que muestran de un modo más claro el cambio lingüístico al margen del aticismo literario. El griego bajomedieval y moderno temprano se caracterizan por la ausencia de una norma, lo que favorece tanto la coexistencia de formas muy diversas para la expresión de cada noción temporal como la extensión de estas construcciones a nuevas estructuras de un modo analógico. Son pocos los estudios que han abordado esta cuestión mediante un acercamiento científico y cuantificable, por lo que nuestra aplicación de técnicas propias de la lingüística de corpus al estudio de los textos griegos medievales puede aportar una nueva visión y completar con datos empíricos nuestro conocimiento sobre la situación lingüística en esta época.
Dynameron is a medical treatise from the 2nd century AD, written in Greek by an Alexandrian physician named Aelius Promotus. A copy made in Sicily during the 16th century is kept in the Marciana Library of Venice (Codex gr. Ζ. 295). In 130 chapters, Dynameron contains 870 recipes for the treatment of various diseases. Regarding the kidneys, Aelius describes 32 recipes with herbal (59), animal (6) and mineral (1) ingredients, with diuretic, spasmolytic, analgesic, or antiseptic properties, suitable for treating nephrolithiasis, strangury, dysuria and renal inflammations. Several diuretics of Aelius Promotus are similar to those found in De Materia Medica of Dioscorides (1st century AD). On the other hand, all of them are also included in the treatise Dynameron of Nikolaos Myrepsos, written in the 13th century AD. When the recipes are evaluated as a whole, it is evident that Aelius Promotus was a competent practising physician in a city with a glorious tradition in medicine and sciences.
This paper considers the Greek language as a member of the Standard Average European (SAE) linguistic area as defined by Haspelmath (1998, 2001). After a brief presentation of the model, there follows a detailed analysis from this perspective of four selected features in Greek: relative clauses with relative pronouns, the “have”-perfect with a passive par- ticiple, participial passives, and negation. The approach applied focuses on specifics that concern standard and non-standard varieties, not only in the language system itself but also in its diachronic development. The results are then measured using Seiler’s (2019) classification of SAE features, with an eye to enriching the classification both empirically and theoretically.
Romejščina je zadnje grško narečje, ki se še vedno govori v severnovzhodni Turčiji. O islamizaciji govorcev grščine na področju krajev Of, Sürmene, Rize in Matsouka se poroča v obdobju med petnajstim in osemnajstim stoletjem. Čeprav je leta 1923 prišlo do izmenjave prebivalstva med Grčijo in Turčijo, je bilo muslimanskim govorcem grščine dovoljeno ostati v maloazijski domovini, kar je razlog, da se je grščina v manjših enklavah ohranila vse do dandanes. Petnajst let po začetku terenskih raziskav pričujoča razprava prinaša temeljne ugotovitve o romejščini: obravnavamo njeno zunanjo zgodovino in genealogijo, opišemo predhodne poskuse dokumentacije jezikovnega gradiva in na kratko predstavimo slovnični sistem. Zadnji del razprave je posvečen trenutnemu sociolingvističnemu stanju ter poskusom oživljanja jezika, ki jih umestimo tudi v kontekst premnogih izzivov ideološke narave (oz. takšnih, ki so si ideološki predznak pridobili), s katerimi se soočajo.
Researchers of the historical grammar of Modern Greek agree in general terms that the particle ά derives from an older construction which included the verb έλω. In the past years, however, there has been some disagreement about the exact point of departure, and, consequently, the exact route (or routes) of the development of ά. In this article we present a straightforward account of ά, explicating several of the disputed aspects of its development, and comparing our account to other, recently published, views. In this way we try to set the record straight with respect to the history of this important element of the Greek verbal system.
Imperative Vs with distinctive morphology either have a distinctive syntax (Modern Greek, Spanish), or distribute like others Vs (Serbo-Croatian, Ancient Greek). The contrast follows from properties of the root C. The first type has a strong Imperative V-feature in C, and under Chomsky's Greed Principle, Imperative Vs raise overtly to check this feature. The second type is the Wackernagel language, whose C hosts no features, but V-features are in I. If no phrase fronts, Vs move to C to support second position items. V-to-C affects all Vs, is last resort, follows Lasnik's Enlightened Self-Interest, and escapes Greed.(Received August 22 1994)(Revised November 11 1994)
This book investigates the development of three future-referring constructions in Greek, namely "μ ε λ λ ω / oe Χ ω / θ ε λ ω + Infinitive / complement clause" in the classical (5th-4th c. BC), the Hellenistic-Roman (3rd c. BC-4th c. AD), the Early Medieval (5th-10th c. AD), and the Late Medieval period (11th-15th c. AD). Despite their co-occurrence in all these periods, it is shown for the first time that these constructions were increasingly differentiated in terms of their semantic, syntactic, and sociolinguistic properties. The analysis sheds new light on these developments, since large parts are based on hitherto unknown material, drawn especially from papyri and non-literary documents. The investigation is based on the functional-typological perspective of grammaticalization, and it pays particular attention to a variety of-often neglected-factors, such as language contact. The typological predictions concerning future-referring forms are found lacking in some respects, and various modifications are proposed accordingly.
M. L. West has recently presented a magisterial account of the history of Greek epic in which Aeolic phases and other entities are assumed. His account is the more impressive because it combines linguistic features skilfully handled with an account of the thematic development of epic, and also specifies at what stages the various linguistic features entered the tradition. West assumes an Aeolic phase, or phases, of heroic epic composition, and accounts for the presence of Aeolic forms (162): ‘It has usually been inferred that they are just a residue left after Ionian poets had adapted an Aeolic poetic language into their own dialect as far as it would go. This is, I have no doubt, the correct interpretation.’ I think it is not.
This paper supports a close connection between morphology and syntax. It examines the verbal functional categories of Modern Greek and shows that their choice, order and strength explain the differences among various constructions. The particle tha is analysed not as an exponent of mood but of the future within the indicative while the particle na marks the subjunctive. Mood is located at the left periphery of the verb group and only the imperative is expressed by an affix. We claim that only affixal categories (neither logical mood features in Comp nor the particles) motivate V-movement, where the V left-adjoins to the affix. This explains why the verb precedes the clitics only in the imperative while no further movement of the verb to Comp is necessary
It has become common in recent years for Greek Pontians, settled in Greece since 1922/3, and their families to go on coach-tours to visit their family homes in Pontus. They tend to return to Greece with stories of finding local people there with whom they have been able to converse in the Pontic dialect of Greek. Surprisingly, these travellers appear to take this for granted, and, as far as I am aware, no one has made a study of the Greek spoken in Pontus today, other than to include a few random phrases in travelogues. The purpose of this article is to make some preliminary observations on the Pontic Greek spoken by Moslems, particularly those of the Ophis (Of) region.
This article considers a range of evidence relevant to the determination of the configurational/non-configurational character of clause structure in Modern Greek (an issue that has led to some recent controversy, see Catsimali (1991) versus Tsimpli (1990, 1992)), and also re-examines the status of preverbal subjects in that language; some linguists (e.g. Tsimpli 1992; Philippaki-Warburton 1985, 1987, 1990) have argued that these are invariably topicalized, while others (e.g. Horrocks 1983, 1984) have maintained that they may, just like postverbal subjects, function simply as subjects. The overall conclusion supports that of Woolford (1991), who has queried the current fashion for universally configurational analyses, but at the same time new evidence is offered in favour of the view that preverbal subjects in Greek may indeed simply be subjects, lacking formal topic status.