Greek Linguistics Research Articles

The Historical Pronunciation of Koinē Greek and Why It MattersThe Pronunciation of New Testament Greek: Judeo‐Palestinian Greek Phonology and Orthography From Alexander to Islam, BenjaminKantor, Eerdmans, 2023 (ISBN 978‐0‐8028‐7831‐1), liv + 842 pp., hb $99.99A Short Guide to the Pronunciation of New Testament Greek, BenjaminKantor, Eerdmans, 2023 (ISBN 978‐0‐8028‐7832‐8), xvi + 134 pp., pb $14.99

AbstractThis essay reviews two recent publications in historical Greek linguistics. While many in university and seminary education learn to read Greek texts, little attention is given to pronunciation and even less to how the language may have been pronounced historically. The volumes reviewed in this essay reconstruct changes in the pronunciation of Greek in Judeo‐Palestine by examining discrepancies in spelling and transliteration. The books also have implications for sociological studies in addition to pedagogical applications.

DİLÇİLİK NƏZƏRİYYƏSİNİN İNKİŞAF TARİXİ

History of the Development of the Theory of Linguistics Summary The origin and development history of linguistic theory is reflected in the article. Here is also brief information about the emergence of linguistics and schools of linguistics since ancient times. The history of linguistics has developed through historical stages such as Indian linguistics, Greek linguistics, Roman linguistics, and Arabic linguistics until modern times. Linguistics examines and studies all parts of language, including its units, nature, structure, and change over time. This term was first used in 1829. In general, linguistics studies language and means of communication between people. The theoretical part of this field includes very important and diverse concepts that answer questions such as the origin and purpose of language creation, language characteristics, the process of language learning, language changes, and the role of language in human personality. In the practical part, the analysis of sentence structure, the role of words, semantics, the formation of sounds, language disorders, etc. is being investigated. Key words: history of linguistics, science of linguistics, Indian linguistics, Greek linguistics, Roman linguistics, historical linguistics, applied linguistics

The Ancient Greek Datives in ‐essi: Contact or Independent Innovations?1

AbstractThe Ancient Greek datives in ‐essi have posed a longstanding challenge in Greek linguistics, with their traditional categorisation as ‘Aeolic’ but their widespread presence across Aeolic and non‐Aeolic regions. This article investigates the origin and diffusion of this trait, examining both the early Greek evidence (in particular the Lesbian poets, Homer, and Mycenaean Greek) and that from specific areas, namely Sicily and Pamphylia, which are often overlooked despite their history of language contact. We argue that it is not necessary to have a single explanation for the origin and spread of ‐essi and that independent innovations in Greek dialects better account for the material. Despite the lack of a unitary account, we suggest that something comparable to the concept of ‘drift’ could underlie such a development. By analysing the epigraphic evidence from Sicily and Pamphylia, we conclude that the presence of ‐essi cannot be solely attributed to contact in all the areas in which it is attested. This perspective challenges the notion of ‐essi as a strong dialectal isogloss useful for diachronic dialectal taxonomy. More generally, this case study confirms the importance of considering diachronic typology and language contact to gain a more comprehensive understanding of language change.

ÇAĞDAŞ TÜRK DİLLERİNDE TÜREMİŞ SÖZCÜKLERİN İNCELENMESİ

The history of word derivation by morphological method in Turkic languages begins with the research history of the word. The discussions on this subject in the ancient Greek linguistics schools were taken one step further and opinions were expressed about the structure of the language and discourses were developed around the purposes of the language. In fact, the debates developed to such a point that some Greek thinkers, especially Plato and Aristotle, expressed their views on the origin of language, the relationship between words and the concepts they represent, and started philosophical discussions on the subject. The word phenomenon, which is handled in a more philosophical context, has been evaluated with Ferdinand de Saussure on a different plane, around different linguistic attitudes. After that, linguistic and, in a narrower sense, lexicographic studies were initiated in the contemporary approach. In Turkish dictionaries, a word is defined as a "meaningful sound or combination of sounds. In the sources, a word is defined as "a single sound or group of sounds that has a meaning or grammatical function and is processed alone". In studies, words are defined as "concepts consisting of one or more syllables and having different meanings for each language" in terms of meaning and syllable. Linguists distinguish between lexical and grammatical word types and evaluate words with inflectional suffixes around the second definition. In the article, the history of researching word derivation by morphology method in Turkish languages, and approaches to word derivation in morphology were investigated. In the writing of the article, a comparative method was used by making use of different scientific sources. Key words: derived word, morphology, Turkish language, research, affix, root

GREEK AND ANATOLIAN CULTURE AND LINGUISTICS - (M.) Bianconi (ed.) Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and Anatolia. In Search of the Golden Fleece. (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 122.) Pp. xii + 259, ills. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021. Cased, €117, US$141. ISBN: 978-90-04-46158-1.

GREEK AND ANATOLIAN CULTURE AND LINGUISTICS - (M.) Bianconi (ed.) Linguistic and Cultural Interactions between Greece and Anatolia. In Search of the Golden Fleece. (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 122.) Pp. xii + 259, ills. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021. Cased, €117, US$141. ISBN: 978-90-04-46158-1.

Editorial

In May 2018, the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts hosted the first conference in the series A Glimpse into Greek Linguistics. Its purpose was to shed light on aspects of synchronic and diachronic research on Greek and to promote the study of this language in Slovenia. The second conference was included in the program of festival “On Mt. Olympus” — a nine-month series of cultural and research events dedicated to Ancient Greek ideas and technological achievements — and was one of the main events of the festival. A result of the efforts for the in-depth study of Greek in Slovenia is also the present international issue of the journal Keria: Studia Latina et Graeca, which contains contributions by six participants from the second conference.

Analogism vs. Anomalism in Jewish Linguistic Thought. The 18th-Century Controversy between Zalman Hanau and Jacob Emden

Abstract This article presents an analysis of the controversy between two 18th-century leading figures: Rabbi Zalman Hanau and Rabbi Jacob Emden. The stances expressed in this controversy, which was held over changes in the traditional prayer versions suggested by Hanau, reveal opposing fundamental attitudes of the two rivals towards basic questions concerning the origin of Hebrew and its linguistic essence. It is being suggested that this controversy resembles the ancient linguistic dispute between the analogist school and anomalist school in Greek and Latin linguistics, even though these two 18th-century figures were not familiar with it.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

The geometry of predication: a configurational derivation of the defining property of clause structure.

Predication is the fundamental grammatical relation defining clausal structures in all (and only) human languages. This notion is by definition compositional, since it consists of a link between a subject and a predicate. The central question addressed here is whether this traditional notion, which has never been dismissed ever since the canonical models of Ancient Greek linguistics, can be derived at a formal level from more abstract compositional algorithms. Capitalizing on predication in copular sentences, which allow factoring out non-essential aspects of this phenomenon, such as the morphological asymmetry between verbs and nouns, I propose a configurational approach to predication. This new approach is based on the notion of symmetry as derived by purely compositional mechanisms. Finally, I address some theoretical and empirical consequences of this generalization including those pertaining to neurolinguistics. This article is part of the theme issue 'Towards mechanistic models of meaning composition'.

Institutional developments in Greek linguistics

Abstract In this piece, three items are presented that discuss recent developments in Modern Greek studies in three different academic institutions that have a positive impact on Greek linguistics.

Achtergronden bij het gebruik van het augment in Homerus

Summary The function of the augment in Homer is a widely discussed issue in Greek linguistics. The traditional view that the Homeric augment is a temporal marker, just like in Classical Greek, has been questioned during the last decades. This article first summarizes the most relevant observations that have been made and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses. First of all, the high frequency of the augment on the aorist in gnomes and similes, but also when the current result of a past action is highlighted, suggests that the augment does not refer to a past event. The type of discourse, moreover, correlates with the frequency of the augment: it is used relatively often in similes and character speech, but not in narrative. This is why the function of the augment has in recent years been interpreted as deictic (Bakker) or pragmatic (Mumm). In our view, metrical considerations and morphological restrictions influence the use of the augment rather heavily, but if that is taken into consideration, a pragmatic function of the augment seems plausible. We illustrate these points and the remaining problems by discussing augment use in three passages from the Iliad.

El estudio de los marcadores del discurso en griego antiguo: problemas y perspectivas

El marcador discursivo es un concepto de gran vitalidad en la lingüística moderna y este artículo aboga por la inclusión del griego antiguo en el debate e investigación sobre estas unidades. Se trata, además, de un concepto más amplio que el tradicional de partícula, cuya aplicación a la lingüística griega puede arrojar luz sobre la naturaleza y funcionamiento de esta, así como de otros fenómenos discursivos. Con ese propósito, se abordan aquí algunos de los problemas categoriales de la clase de los marcadores (en cuanto a su forma, sintaxis, semántica, etc.) y se contextualizan en la casuística particular del griego antiguo. Por último, se ofrece un resumen de las principales líneas de investigación que están en marcha.

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.

Griechische Reise und byzantinische Hymnographie: Unbekannte Briefe Karl Krumbachers im Nachlass Wilhelm Meyers

AbstractFrom October 1884 to May 1885 Karl Krumbacher (1856-1909) undertook a journey to Greece and Turkey with the aim of studying the Modern Greek dialects. He describes his trip in the book Griechische Reise (Berlin 1886), which has been the only source about Krumbacher’s travel so far. The present article offers the edition and commentary of six hitherto unknown letters addressed by Karl Krumbacher to his friend and colleagueWilhelm Meyer between October 1884 and January 1885. These letters, preserved in the University Library of Göttingen, shed light on the importance of the Greek journey for Krumbacher’s research not only in the field of Greek linguistics, but also of Byzantine hymnography.

Embedded Polarization in the Fourth Gospel: Overt Pronominal Subjects as a Rhetorical Summons to Take Sides

Engaging with the latest in Johannine scholarship, this article zeroes in on a largely unexplored topic within Johannine language and style, namely, the very frequent and consistent use by the evangelist of overt pronominal subjects throughout his gospel. Against the background of a brief discussion of Johannine style in recent scholarship, Martin-Asensio reviews and evaluates the treatment of overt pronominal subjects in NT Greek and Modern Greek linguistics. Martin-Asensio then proposes an interpretation that, on one hand, coheres with the recent Modern Greek study by Pavlidou and, on the other, stresses the rhetorical and oral performance import of these forms in the Fourth Gospel. Overt pronominal subjects (OPS) in the Fourth Gospel are found to support the redefining of subjects by marking them as new. OPSs serve to constantly question and redefine the identity of the participants in relation to Jesus, to truth, to Moses and Abraham, to the law and the temple and to God. More than merely emphasizing one subject or another, these OPSs are encoding the interplay of identities in flux and conflict throughout the FG and call for a decision in the face of that conflict. Additionally, Martin-Asensio draws attention to the rhetorical usefulness of these OPS patterns in the context of oral performance. In Greek, as in many other languages, the marked or new element of the clause carries tonic prominence when spoken or read, that is, the marked element is prosodically prominent. Such prominence would have been exploited by oral performers and would have powerfully drawn in audiences to the Fourth Gospel’s call to take sides.

Book Review: The Greek Verb. Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting on Greek Linguistics. Agrigento, October 1–3, 2009, edited by Annamaria Bartolotta

Book Review: The Greek Verb. Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Proceedings of the 8th International Meeting on Greek Linguistics. Agrigento, October 1–3, 2009, edited by Annamaria Bartolotta

Aspects of Linguistic Theory and Greek Syntax

A detailed appraisal of selected papers from Halpert et al. 2009 (Proceedings of the 2007 Workshop in Greek Syntax and Semantics at MIT) is offered here. It must be recognized that the selections represent only a small section of the wide spectrum which is Greek Linguistics today. The five papers selected for attention here reflect the reviewer’s main interests but the volume as a whole contains a rich array of subjects, of theoretical orientations, and of language areas treated (beyond Greek). What is especially pleasing and encouraging about the entire volume is the number of non-Greek linguists who were chosen to offer commentary on papers and who were interested and familiar enough with Greek linguistic research to enter into scientific dialogue as commentators with the authors. Thus, Greek Linguistics is no longer isolated and its contribution is not restricted to Greek but it creates, extends and stimulates linguistic researchers everywhere.

On (Greek) Linguistics as a Science

This paper explores some of the pros and cons of the proposition that if Greek linguistics (included of course in linguistics generally) is to be taken seriously as a science, then it is not enough to simply ‘confirm/corroborate/verify’ a given theory from a given subset of data. Since corroboration can never ‘prove’ a given theory, we also submit the relevant data to the criteria of falsifiability (Popper 1963). For linguistics, this proceeds by appeal to two kinds of empirical evidence, viz.: a) intuitional (including native speaker assessment surveys as well as corpora analyses), and b) instrumental and other ‘external’ (e.g. acquisition, pathology) studies. All this despite the concession that falsifications can be circumvented (cf. Lakatos 1970); so indeed this paper deals with both the few successful (paradigm-replacing) and the many circumvented (paradigm-internal) falsifications. We begin (in section 2) with falsification-successes that culminated in paradigm-shifts in earlier sciences as well as in contemporary linguistics. We then (in sections 3-4) survey intuitive and experimental cases of falsification circumvention from contemporary linguistics. There we clarify that, although there is reasonable support for abstractions, modifications and unifications, experiments have so far offered only partial or suggestive results. Sections 5-6 sum up and conclude.

New Testament Greek Language and Linguistics in Recent Research

This article examines developments in research on the linguistic and grammatical analysis of the language and literature of the New Testament since the publication of James Barr's important work in 1961. While there have been a large number of important advances since this time, the present survey restricts its analysis to research that has been significantly informed by modern linguistics. It considers four areas, in particular: verb structure, case structure, syntax and discourse analysis. Verbal aspect theory has been treated in more detail than any other aspect of the Greek verb. Most investigation of case structure has been informed by case grammar, originating in Fillmore's work. Syntactic theories that have been applied to the language of the New Testament draw mostly from the generative tradition of linguistics, but the OpenText.org project has recently implemented a functional and relational dependency model. Discourse analysis has typically been divided into four schools, but in recent research we see a fifth, eclectic approach, emerging.

Review article:Morphology in Greek Linguistics: The State of the Art

AbstractIn recent years, morphology has received increasing attention within linguistic theory. It deals with word structure and attracts significant interest in languages that are morphologically rich, such as Modern Greek (hereafter Greek). In this paper, I present an overview of the main theoretical studies that focus on Greek morphology in the last four decades, with a particular emphasis on those following the framework of generative grammar. Reasons of space prevent me from giving an exhaustive presentation of all the topics that have been examined from a synchronic point of view. Moreover, I do not take into consideration studies on historical and dialectal morphology or lexical borrowing, or works that cover areas where morphological issues interact with research in domains such as computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics.