Greek Documentary Papyri Research Articles

Support‐Verb Constructions with Objects:Greek‐CopticInterference in the Documentary Papyri?1

AbstractSupport‐verb constructions are combinations of a verb and a noun that fill the predicate slot, for example,to make a suggestioninI made the suggestion yesterday. The article examines direct‐object structures with support‐verb constructions in Greek documentary papyri from fourth‐ to mid‐seventh‐century Egypt. By the fourth century, Greek and Egyptian (at this stage called Coptic) had co‐existed in Egypt for about a millennium and the latter was gaining ground. The article focusses on the support‐verb‐construction families surrounding ἐξουσίανexousian‘power’ and ἐγγύηνegguēn‘surety’ as well as on a selection of structures with ποιέομαιpoieomai‘to do’. The article finds that direct‐object structures in the data sample have differing explanations. Direct‐object patterns are a marginal pattern in classical Greek already, such that some patterns can be explained by inheritance or the extension of a pattern to new contexts. However, some writers either idiolectally or sociolectally applied object patterns more widely based on the Coptic parallel. The syntax of support‐verb constructions in Greek does not run counter to the verbal syntax otherwise, which may aid the fact that they do not introduce systemic changes.

Vowel hiatus resolution in Koine Greek

Abstract The spellings -ις, -ιν instead of -ιος, -ιον are a characteristic feature of Koine Greek. The circumstances in which they arose have constituted a vexed question. Their presence in Egyptian Greek documentary papyri from III BC to VIII AD stands out. Nowadays it is possible, thanks to new digital tools, to access all the regularized spellings in modern editions. Analysis and typological comparison allow us to rethink the hypotheses put forward in previous studies. In particular, it is useful not to study these spellings independently of the spellings -oῦ, -ῶ(ι) instead of -ίου, -ίω(ι). The graphic omission of ⟨o⟩ in some forms and of ⟨ι⟩ in others reflects different results of a vowel hiatus resolution process in sequences of increasing sonority [i.V(C)]. This process is gradient and different allophones could be represented by the same spelling. Of the possible factors for the omission of ⟨o⟩ or ⟨ι⟩, the word accent distribution is the basic cause determining the final form. However, as usually happens in processes of vowel hiatus resolution in other languages, other internal or external factors may also have influenced the results. Due to this gradience in the process and the distinction of glides of different types, the effect of V1 (converted into a glide) on the previous consonant could be different from what has been documented in [Cj] groups in other stages of Greek.

Language contact in historical documents: the identification and co-occurrence of Egyptian transfer features in Greek documentary papyri

AbstractThe Egyptian-Greek contact situation has lasted almost a thousand years and many documents have been preserved to us from this period. In this paper, we apply a new quantitative approach to this rich corpus of documentary papyri to map the relationships between the linguistic variables (the variant spellings) and several non-linguistic variables. A multidimensional scaling of the co-occurrences of the linguistic variables shows that there is a strong association between most of the Greek variant spellings that can be explained by Egyptian phonological transfer, while others do not typically co-occur with them. Several new linguistic variables not yet connected to Egyptian phonological transfer also show a strong relation with the first group of features, some of them representing the same phonological transfer processes. A comparison of the contexts in which these variables are used allows us to further substantiate this observation: several of the previously and newly Egyptian-associated variables turn out to have a strong correlation with bilingual Egyptian-Greek documents or occur in Egyptian dominated environments. The spelling variants are chronologically dependent and different features are typically associated with different historical periods illustrating changes taking place in the Egyptian Greek contact variety over time. A multiple correspondence analysis shows that the variables strongly interact, illustrating the importance of a multifactorial approach combining various linguistic and non-linguistic factors.

The μὴ ἵνα + subjunctive construction in Greek documentary papyri

The μὴ ἵνα + subjunctive construction in Greek documentary papyri

A cognitive approach to spelling production in historical sources: explaining the variation between <ɛ, αι> and <ο, ω> in Greek documentary papyri

AbstractThe Greek documentary papyri (300 bce – 700 ce) provide an interesting corpus for linguistic study due to the large amount of linguistic variation. Variation in spelling is traditionally used as evidence for phonological changes in the post‐Classical Greek language. The interchange of graphemes, however, does not only depend on the pronunciation of the corresponding phoneme. In this paper I examine the cognitive processes behind the production of non‐standard Greek orthography in more detail by applying an interactive dual‐route model for spelling. If two graphemes are pronounced identically in the spoken language, the final choice between one grapheme or the other is likely to be based on cognitive and social aspects, such as the general frequency and probability of spelling patterns in the language, previous exposure of the writer to other lexemes and morphemes in the language and local scribal conventions, to name just a few factors. On the basis of examples of the frequent interchanges of <e, ai> and <o, ō>, I show how these other factors can contribute to a better interpretation of spelling production in documentary papyri.

Historical Sociolinguistics: How and Why? Some Observations from Greek Documentary Papyri

Abstract Whereas initially texts from the past were given relatively little attention in sociolinguistic studies, nowadays historical sociolinguistics as a discipline has come to maturity, too. A central notion in (historical) sociolinguistics is that of context: regrettably, however, there is still no generally accepted theory of how context can be captured and related to language. One of the few frameworks that has attempted to provide a coherent and unifying account is the so-called Functional Sociolinguistic framework. In this article, I illustrate the potential of this model for the study of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek complementation.

An early second century BCE account of payments: The earliest known use of alphabetization in Greek documentary papyri

An early second century BCE account of payments: The earliest known use of alphabetization in Greek documentary papyri

Preprocessing Greek Papyri for Linguistic Annotation

Greek documentary papyri form an important direct source for Ancient Greek. It has been exploited surprisingly little in Greek linguistics due to a lack of good tools for searching linguistic structures. This article presents a new tool and digital platform, “Sematia”, which enables transforming the digital texts available in TEI EpiDoc XML format to a format which can be morphologically and syntactically annotated (treebanked), and where the user can add new metadata concerning the text type, writer and handwriting of each act of writing. An important aspect in this process is to take into account the original surviving writing vs. the standardization of language and supplements made by the editors. This is performed by creating two different layers of the same text. The platform is in its early development phase. Ongoing and future developments, such as tagging linguistic variation phenomena as well as queries performed within Sematia, are discussed at the end of the article.

Dative and genitive case interchange in Greek papyri from Roman-Byzantine Egypt

Abstract Examples of case interchange in Greek papyri are often used to illustrate the start of dative case syncretism in Greek (Humbert 1930; Browning 1983; Horrocks 2010). On the other hand, case interchange can be caused by Egyptian scribes having difficulties with the Greek case system (Clarysse 1993; Vierros 2012). In this article, I combine quantitative analysis of the dative and genitive case interchanges in Greek documentary papyri with a qualitative examination of the social and linguistic contexts of the interchanges. This shows that whereas the usage of the dative instead of the genitive pronoun as adnominal possessor may be explained by indirect bilingual interference and scribal confusion, the replacement of the dative by the genitive as a third argument of a verb may have been caused by interference from the Greek spoken language in the writing of less educated scribes.

The Bivalence of Coptic Eta and Related Problems in the Vocalization of Egyptian

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Bivalence of Coptic Eta and Related Problems in the Vocalization of EgyptianThomas O. LambdinThomas O. Lambdin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 17, Number 3Jul., 1958 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/371466 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Sonja Dahlgren, Alek Keersmaekers, Joanne Stolk Language contact in historical documents: the identification and co-occurrence of Egyptian transfer features in Greek documentary papyri, Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 8, no.22 (Nov 2022): 325–356.https://doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2021-0004