A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language

A comprehensive account of the language of Ancient Greek civilization in a single volume, with contributions from leading international scholars covering the historical, geographical, sociolinguistic, and literary perspectives of the language.

• A collection of 36 original essays by a team of international scholars
• Treats the survival and transmission of Ancient Greek
• Includes discussions on phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

List of Tables ix

Notes on Contributors xii

Symbols Used xviii

Abbreviations of Ancient Authors and Works xix

Abbreviations of Modern Sources xxviii

Linguistic and Other Abbreviations xxxv

1 Introduction 1
Egbert J. Bakker

PART I The Sources 9

2 Mycenaean Texts: The Linear B Tablets 11
Silvia Ferrara

3 Phoinikeia Grammata: An Alphabet for the Greek Language 25
Roger D. Woodard

4 Inscriptions 47
Rudolf Wachter

5 Papyri 62
Arthur Verhoogt

6 The Manuscript Tradition 69
Niels Gaul

PART II The Language 83

7 Phonology 85
Philomen Probert

8 Morphology and Word Formation 104
Michael Weiss

9 Semantics and Vocabulary 120
Michael Clarke

10 Syntax 134
Evert van Emde Boas and Luuk Huitink

11 Pragmatics: Speech and Text 151
Egbert J. Bakker

PART III Greek in Time and Space: Historical and Geographical Connections 169

12 Greek and Proto-Indo-European 171
Jeremy Rau

13 Mycenaean Greek 189
Rupert Thompson

14 Greek Dialects in the Archaic and Classical Ages 200
Stephen Colvin

15 Greek and the Languages of Asia Minor to the Classical Period 213
Shane Hawkins

16 Linguistic Diversity in Asia Minor during the Empire: Koine and Non-Greek Languages 228
Claude Brixhe

17 Greek in Egypt 253
Sofía Torallas Tovar

18 Jewish and Christian Greek 267
Coulter H. George

19 Greek and Latin Bilingualism 281
Bruno Rochette

PART IV Greek in Context 295

20 Register Variation 297
Andreas Willi

21 Female Speech 311
Thorsten Fögen

22 Forms of Address and Markers of Status 327
Eleanor Dickey

23 Technical Languages: Science and Medicine 338
Francesca Schironi

PART V Greek as Literature 355

24 Inherited Poetics 357
Joshua T. Katz

25 Language and Meter 370
Gregory Nagy

26 Literary Dialects 388
Olga Tribulato

27 The Greek of Epic 401
Olav Hackstein

28 The Language of Greek Lyric Poetry 424
Michael Silk

29 The Greek of Athenian Tragedy 441
Richard Rutherford

30 Kunstprosa: Philosophy, History, Oratory 455
Victor Bers

31 The Literary Heritage as Language: Atticism and the Second Sophistic 468
Lawrence Kim

PART VI The Study of Greek 483

32 Greek Philosophers on Language 485
Casper C. de Jonge and Johannes M. van Ophuijsen

33 The Birth of Grammar in Greece 499
Andreas U. Schmidhauser

34 Language as a System in Ancient Rhetoric and Grammar 512
James I. Porter

PART VII Beyond Antiquity 525

35 Byzantine Literature and the Classical Past 527
Staffan Wahlgren

36 Medieval and Early Modern Greek 539
David Holton and Io Manolessou

37 Modern Greek 564
Peter Mackridge

Bibliography 588

Index 639

Egbert J. Bakker is Professor of Classics at Yale University. He is the author of Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (1997) and Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics (2005) and the co-editor with A. Kahane of Written Voices, Spoken Signs: Tradition, Performance, and Epic Text (1997). He has published widely on various aspects of the Greek language, in particular, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and speaking versus writing.

"The work is wonderfully clear, informative, and engaging. Students and scholars will enjoy consulting it. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty." (Choice, 1 May 2011)

"It has become customary for reviews of handbooks to express misgivings toward the genre and its ever-increasing presence. But whatever one might think of companion volumes, this is a useful book. It boasts a wide range of generally high-quality essays by a parade of eminent scholars. Perhaps its most praiseworthy feature is the clarity and accessibility of many of its contributions, which makes them ideal starting points for the non-specialist." (Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 7 May 2011)

"One doesn't have to be a student of Greek to enjoy this informative compendium." (Book News, Inc., November 2010)

In this Companion, an eminent team of international scholars present a comprehensive account of the Ancient Greek language from its Indo-European origins to its transition into Modern Greek. A series of original chapters come together as an authoritative overview of the language from a variety of historical, geographical, sociolinguistic, and literary perspectives.

The volume includes discussions on the survival and transmission of Ancient Greek and the materials on which original texts from antiquity have been preserved. In addition, a set of chapters is devoted to discussions of typology, including aspects such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. This wide-ranging collection will be valued by classicists and linguists alike.