Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily

Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily

Author: Katherine McDonald

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-10

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1107103835

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A groundbreaking new interpretation of the relationship between Greek and Oscan, two of the most widely spoken languages of pre-Roman Italy.


Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily

Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily

Author: Katherine McDonald

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1316395537

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In pre-Roman Italy and Sicily, dozens of languages and writing systems competed and interacted, and bilingualism was the norm. Using frameworks from epigraphy, archaeology and the sociolinguistics of language contact, this book explores the relationship between Greek and Oscan, two of the most widely spoken languages in the south of the peninsula. Dr McDonald undertakes a new analysis of the entire corpus of South Oscan texts written in Lucania, Bruttium and Messana, including dedications, curse tablets, laws, funerary texts and graffiti. She demonstrates that genre and domain are critical to understanding where and when Greek was used within Oscan-speaking communities, and how ancient bilinguals exploited the social meaning of their languages in their writing. This book also offers a cutting-edge example of how to build the fullest possible picture of bilingualism in fragmentary languages across the ancient world.


Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area

Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area

Author: Vít Bubeník

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9027235511

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This study concentrates on the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the history of Greek language. It focuses on the gradual contamination of classical dialects by the Hellenistic Koine, their disappearance, the range of intraregional variation, and the process of Koinization from the angle of interregional adjustments. The author draws on recent sociolinguistic methods dealing with lexical and social diffusion of linguistic change, statistical analysis, and research into bilingualism and diglossia.


Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology

Ancient Indo-European Languages between Linguistics and Philology

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-04-04

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9004508821

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This volume contains a new and up-to date selection of case studies which offer new insights on various topics in Indo-European linguistics, with a focus on contact, variation, and reconstruction, and with methods that straddle the divide between Linguistics and Philology.


Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean

Writing Around the Ancient Mediterranean

Author: Philippa M. Steele

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2022-10-06

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 1789258510

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Writing in the ancient Mediterranean existed against a backdrop of very high levels of interaction and contact. In the societies around its shores, writing was a dynamic practice that could serve many purposes – from a tool used by elites to control resources and establish their power bases to a symbol of local identity and a means of conveying complex information and ideas. This volume presents a group of papers by members of the Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS) research team and visiting fellows, offering a range of different perspectives and approaches to problems of writing in the ancient Mediterranean. They focus on practices, viewing writing as something that people do within a wider social and cultural context, and on adaptations, considering the ways in which writing changed and was changed by the people using it.


Sicily and the Mediterranean

Sicily and the Mediterranean

Author: Claudia Karagoz

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-08-12

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1137486937

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The island of Sicily has for centuries been a meeting point where civilizations transformed one another and gave life to the cultural developments at the foundation of European modernity. The essays collected here explore Sicily as a place where these cultural interactions have produced conflict but also new material and intellectual exchange.


Fragments of Languages

Fragments of Languages

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-10-07

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 9004694633

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The book deals with the concept of fragmentation as applied to languages and their documentation. It focuses in particular on the theoretical and methodological consequences of such a fragmentation for the linguistic analysis and interpretation of texts and, hence, for the reconstruction of languages. Furthermore, by adopting an innovative perspective, the book aims to test the application of the concept of fragmentation to languages which are not commonly included in the categories of ‘Corpussprache’, ‘Trümmersprache’, and ‘Restsprache’. This is the case with diachronic or diatopic varieties — of even well-known languages — which are only attested through a limited corpus of texts as well as with endangered languages. In this latter case, not only is the documentation fragmented, but the very linguistic competence of the speakers, due to the reduction of contexts of language use, interference phenomena with majority languages, and consequent presence of semi-speakers.


Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects

Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects

Author: Georgios K. Giannakis

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-12-18

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 3110532131

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A new collective volume with over twenty important studies on less well-studied dialects of ancient Greek, particularly of the northern regions. The book covers geographically a broad area of the classical Greek world ranging from Central Greece to the overseas Greek colonies of Thrace and the Black Sea. Particular emphasis is placed on the epichoric varieties of areas on the northern fringe of the classical Greek world, including Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia. Recent advances in research are taken into consideration in providing state-of-the art accounts of these understudied dialects, but also of more well-known dialects like Lesbian. In addition, other papers address special intriguing topics in these, but also in other dialects, such as Thessalian, Lesbian and Ionic, or focus on important multi-dialectal corpora such as the oracular tablets from Dodona. Finally, a number of studies examine broader topics like the supraregional Doric koinai or the concept of dialect continuum, or even explore the possibility of an ancient Balkansprachbund, which included Greek too. This new reference work covers a gap in current research and will be indispensable for people interested in Greek dialectology and ancient Greek in general.