The Atticist lexica as metalinguistic resource for morphosyntactic change in Post-Classical Greek

Abstract

Abstract While ancient metalinguistic resources such as lexica and scholia are increasingly studied in the field of ancient scholarship (Montanari 2020), they are investigated less within the historical sociolinguistics of Ancient Greek. Analysing the Atticist lexica by Phrynichus, Moeris and Aelius Dionysius, this article illustrates the historically persistent connection between social perception of and diachronic change within Ancient Greek. Although the historical relevance of Atticist prescriptivism has been observed, the evidence that these social evaluations provide for Post-Classical Greek language change is rarely assessed systematically (except for objectionable ideological reasons). I demonstrate that the Atticist lexica display metalinguistic awareness of the major morphosyntactic changes characterizing Post-Classical Greek (pace Lee 2013:286): paradigmatic (e.g. analogical levelling in verbal system of endings, voice and augment), category changes, category renewal (e.g. dual, pronouns, periphrasis), syntactic change (category expansion of ἔμελλον and τυγχάνω) and case changes (e.g. from case to prepositions).