The volume is intended for classical philologists and a broad range of scholars working in the fields of theoretical, historical, and comparative linguistics with Ancient Greek, Latin, or Slavic languages as the primary evidence in their research. The contributions address topics ranging from issues of grammatography in a diachronic perspective to historical and comparative linguistics. They encompass both monothematic case studies and comprehensive analyses that capture a linguistic phenomenon in its entirety as well as within a broader context.
Like Carl Darling Buck's Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (1933), this book is an explanation of the similarities and differences between Greek and Latin morphology and lexicon through an account of their prehistory. It also aims to discuss the principal features of Indo-European linguistics. Greek and Latin are studied as a pair for cultural reasons only; as languages, they have little in common apart from their Indo-European heritage. Thus the only way to treat the historical bases for their development is to begin with Proto-Indo-European. The only way to make a reconstructed language like Proto-Indo-European intelligible and intellectually defensible is to present at least some of the basis for reconstructing its features and, in the process, to discuss reasoning and methodology of reconstruction (including a weighing of alternative reconstructions). The result is a compendious handbook of Indo-European phonology and morphology, and a vade mecum of Indo-European linguistics--the focus always remaining on Greek and Latin. The non-classical sources for historical discussion are mainly Vedic Sanskrit, Hittite, and Germanic, with occasional but crucial contributions from Old Irish, Avestan, Baltic, and Slavic.
Vulgar Latin refers to those features of Latin language that were not recommended by the classical grammarians but existed nonetheless. Although Vulgar Latin is not well documented, evidence can be deduced from details of the spelling, grammar, and vocabulary that occur in texts of the later Roman Empire, late antiquity, and the early Middle Ages. Every aspect of Vulgar Latin is exemplified in this book, proving that the language is not separate in itself, but an integral part of Latin.Originally published in French in 1967, Vulgar Latin was translated more recently into Spanish in an expanded and revised version. The English translation by Roger Wright accurately portrays Vulgar Latin as a complicated field of study, where little is known with absolute certainty, but a great deal can be worked out with considerable probability through careful critical analysis of the data. This text is an invaluable aid to research and understanding for all those interested in Latin, Romance languages, historical linguistics, early medieval texts, and early medieval history.József Herman is the former director of the Linguistic Research Institute at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and is currently Professor of Latin Linguistics at the University of Venice. He is a well-known authority on the history of later Latin and the prehistory of Romance languages
The Slavic Letters of St. Jerome is the first book-length study of the medieval legend that Church Father and biblical translator St. Jerome was a Slav who invented the Slavic (Glagolitic) alphabet and Roman Slavonic rite. Julia Verkholantsev locates the roots of this belief among the Latin clergy in Dalmatia in the 13th century and describes in fascinating detail how Slavic leaders subsequently appropriated it to further their own political agendas. The Slavic language, written in Jerome's alphabet and endorsed by his authority, gained the unique privilege in the Western Church of being the only language other than Latin, Greek, and Hebrew acceptable for use in the liturgy. Such privilege, confirmed repeatedly by the popes, resulted in the creation of narratives about the distinguished historical mission of the Slavs and became a possible means for bridging the divide between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in the Slavic-speaking lands. In the fourteenth century the legend spread from Dalmatia to Bohemia and Poland, where Glagolitic monasteries were established to honor the Apostle of the Slavs Jerome and the rite and letters he created. The myth of Jerome's apostolate among the Slavs gained many supporters among the learned and spread far and wide, reaching Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and England. Grounded in extensive archival research, Verkholantsev examines the sources and trajectory of the legend of Jerome's Slavic fellowship within a wider context of European historical and theological thought. This unique volume will appeal to medievalists, Slavicists, scholars of religion, those interested in saints' cults, and specialists of philology.
The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey. It is now a cliché that the world is a smaller place. We think nothing of jumping on a plane to travel to another country or continent. The most exotic locations are now destinations for mass tourism. Small business people are dealing across frontiers and language barriers like never before. The Internet brings different languages and cultures to our finger-tips. English, the hybrid language of an island at the western extremity of Europe seems to have an unrivalled position as an international medium of communication. But historically periods of cultural and economic domination have never lasted forever. Do we not lose something by relying on the wide spread use of English rather than discovering other languages and cultures? As citizens of this shrunken world, would we not be better off if we were able to speak a few languages other than our own? The answer is obviously yes. Certainly Steve Kaufmann thinks so, and in his busy life as a diplomat and businessman he managed to learn to speak nine languages fluently and observe first hand some of the dominant cultures of Europe and Asia. Why do not more people do the same? In his book The Way of The Linguist, A language learning odyssey, Steve offers some answers. Steve feels anyone can learn a language if they want to. He points out some of the obstacles that hold people back. Drawing on his adventures in Europe and Asia, as a student and businessman, he describes the rewards that come from knowing languages. He relates his evolution as a language learner, abroad and back in his native Canada and explains the kind of attitude that will enable others to achieve second language fluency. Many people have taken on the challenge of language learning but have been frustrated by their lack of success. This book offers detailed advice on the kind of study practices that will achieve language breakthroughs. Steve has developed a language learning system available online at: www.thelinguist.com.
This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries while challenging the temporal and geographic parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-byzantine and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Mountains. The specificities of each region, and in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the arts of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, expanding and theorizing cross-cultural contact, while also putting on the global map of art history the rich artistic production of Eastern Europe.
This book is a comprehensive study of the Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic. It includes an investigation of all Germanic words that were borrowed into Proto-Slavic until its disintegration in the early ninth century. Research into the phonology, morphology and semantics of the loanwords serves as the basis of an investigation into the Germanic donor languages of the individual loanwords. The loanwords can be shown to be mainly of Gothic, High German and Low German origin. One of the aims of the present study is to clarify the accentuation of Germanic loanwords in Proto-Slavic and to explain how they were adapted to the Proto-Slavic accentual system. This volume is of special interest to scholars and students of Slavic and Germanic historical linguistics, contact linguistics and Slavic accentology. Saskia Pronk-Tiethoff’s research focuses on Slavic historical linguistics and language contact between Slavic and Germanic. She studied Slavic languages and cultures and Comparative Indo-European linguistics at Leiden University, where she also obtained her doctoral degree. She currently lives in Zagreb, where she contributed to the Croatian-Dutch dictionary (Institute for Croatian Language and Linguistics), and now contributes to the Croatian Church Slavic dictionary (Old Church Slavonic Institute).
Roman Rule in Greek and Latin Writing explores the ways in which Greek and Latin writers from the late 1st to the 3rd century CE experienced and portrayed Roman cultural institutions and power. The central theme is the relationship between cultures as reflected in Greek and Latin authors’ responses to Roman power; in practice the collection revisits the orthodoxy of two separate intellectual groups, differentiated as much by cultural and political agenda as by language. The book features specialists in Greek and Roman literary and intellectual culture; it gathers papers on a variety of authors, across several literary genres, and through this spectrum, makes possible an informed and detailed comparison of Greek and Latin literary views of Roman power (in various manifestations, including military, religion, law and politics).
The present work is founded on an essay, which appeared in the Biblical Repository for April and July, 1834, then conducted by the undersigned. The essay was received with favour by the public ; and awakened an interest in many minds, as laying open a new field of information, hitherto almost inaccessible to the English reader. A few copies were printed separately for private distribution. Some of these were sent to literary men in Europe ; and several scholars of high name among those acquainted with Slavic literature, expressed their approval of the work. Since that time, and even of late, inquiries have repeatedly been made, by scholars and by public libraries in Europe, for copies of that little treatise ; which, of course, it was impossible to satisfy. These circumstances, together with the fact, that in these years public attention has been more prominently directed to the character and prospects of the Slavic nations, have induced the author to recast the work ; and to lay it anew before the public, corrected, enlarged, and continued to the present time ; as a brief contribution to our knowledge of the intellectual character and condition of those nations, in the middle of the nineteenth century. -- Preface.
