Language Change in the Wake of Empire: Syriac in its Greco-Roman Context by Aaron Michael Butts

Abstract

Butts is careful to avoid clumsy generalizations, however, pointing out that there was a continuum of knowledge of Greek among people whose native language was (37). [...]Butts discusses how the Greek loanwords in Syriac can give us an insight into the Greek of late antique Syria and Mesopotamia. The process of borrowing a Greek noun (five cases, three genders, and two numbers), into Syriac (two genders, two numbers, and three states), often results in a variety of forms even for the same noun, thus suggesting that borrowing occurred multiple times and in different ways.