Greek Language and Linguistics
Ancient Greek, mostly Hellenistic
Updates to “A Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics”
Steve Runge has uploaded a copy of his 2014 Novum Testamentum article to Academia.edu. In this paper he challenges both Porter’s interpretation of his primary sources and his understanding of the linguists he cites as support for his method.
You can read the article online at Academia.edu, and I have added an entry for it in the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com.
I have added the following article to the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com.
Bubenic traces the parallel diffusion of the Hellenistic Koine and reduction of other ancient dialects. He cites documentation from Arcadia for the decline of the local dialect and the rise of three ‘high’ Koine varieties: general Hellenistic Koine, Achaean Doric Koine, and the North-West Doric Koine. He argues that writers and speakers moved on a continuum between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ varieties of the language in an increasingly diglossic society, and explains the ‘choice’ between the high and low varieties in terms of ‘domain’ of language use.
Studies in Greek Linguistics is an online journal hosted by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. You can read Bubonic’s article online there.
While constituent order was quite flexible in both Classical and Koine Greek, sound arguments can be made for considering certain orders as more basic than others. In “How Does a Basic Word Order Become Ungrammatical? SOV from Classical to Koine Greek,” N. Lavadas argues that the Hellenistic Koine was pivotal in the eventual disappearance of SOV as a grammatical order. (That order is ungrammatical in Modern Greek.)
You can read the article online at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. I have added it to the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com.
This paper by Cristina Guardiano describes the diachronic variability seen in the use of the definite article across the history of the Greek language. You can read the paper online in Studies in Greek Linguistics 33.
I have added Guardiano’s paper to the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com.
I have added Chiara Gianollo and Nikolaos Lavidas’ paper, “Cognate Adverbials and Case in the History of Greek” to the Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics. While the title implies coverage of a wide range of history, the argument is based on Biblical Greek.
The article is available online at the website of the Institute of Modern Greek Studies at Aristotle University at Thessaloniki.
Have any of you read the following article in the current issue of the Journal of Greek Linguistics? It sounds interesting, but it costs $30 to download. Is it worth the money?
Post a comment if you have read it.
I have added Mike Aubrey’s thesis, The Greek perfect and the categorization of tense and aspect, to the bibliography at Greek-Language.com. When I finish reading it I’ll add some comments, but I wanted to go ahead and get it listed since it clearly meets the criteria for inclusion.
In the latest volume of the Journal of Greek Linguistics (Volume 14), Stefanie Fauconnier has published an article on Ancient Greek relative clauses using data from Zenophon. She argues for a perspective that I have not encountered in work on the hellenistic period. Here is what her abstract says:
In this paper I argue that Ancient Greek has two distinct strategies for relative clause formation, corresponding to what is known in typology as externally and internally headed relative clauses. Furthermore, I explore two differences between these constructions. First, in comparison with their external counterparts, internal constructions are more restricted semantically. They can only be interpreted as restrictive relative clauses, while external constructions can also be interpreted as non-restrictive. Second, internal constructions are more restricted syntactically, given that they are not used when the domain nominal is subject in the relative clause. For external constructions there is no such syntactic restriction. Finally, I point out a number of convergences between internal relative clauses and noun phrases with an attributive participle. The findings presented in this paper are based on a study of Xenophon.
The journal requires a paid subscription to view online. If you do not have a subscription, but want to see an earlier version of Fauconnier’s research on this topic, you can take a look at the outline of a 2011 presentation she gave at the Pavia International Summer School for Indo-European Linguistics (University of Pavia, Italy). That outline shows some of the evidence she used and basic elements of her argument.
If you are aware of similar research on the hellenistic period, please let me know. I would like to have something in the bibliography here at Greek-Language.com on this topic. If nothing is available for the hellenistic period, I’ll add Fauconnier’s article.
I have just added Adrian Smith’s new book on Speech Events to the Comprehensive Bibliography of Hellenistic Greek Linguistics.
Two things about this book caught my attention. First, it is—as far as I know—the first book-length treatment of speech events in Hellenistic Greek. Second, it deals with two texts, one from the Greek New Testament, and the other from Hellenistic Greek outside the Christian canon. This is something I have longed to see for some time. We need to push our analyses of the language beyond the confines of the literature of our faith. If Smith’s proposals hold true for both early Christian texts and texts from the wider Hellenistic literature, he will have accomplished something of real note.
I have continued to update the bibliography today in a number of ways. There are now more that twice the number of works available for purchase through Amazon.com directly from the bibliography than before. There are also many more articles available either for purchase or for reading online without charge.
To distinguish between articles for a fee and those available without charge, I have devised a consistent convention for linking:
I have also added the following book:
I eventually hope to connect all dissertations in the bibliography to University Microfilms for easy purchase, but I have not made much progress on this yet.
I hope you enjoy the improvements.