Languages and Linguistics
Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online
The most comprehensive reference work on Slavic languages ever published. It provides authoritative treatment of all important aspects of the Slavic language family from its Indo-European origins to the present day, as well as consideration of the interaction of Slavic with other languages.
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Sign upInterview with Marc L. Greenberg on the Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics
In June 2020, Brill released the online Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics (ESLL). Read an interview with Editor-in-Chief, Marc L. Greenberg (University of Kansas).
New at Brill: Heritage Language Journal
The Heritage Language Journal (HLJ) was established in 2002 by the National Heritage Language Resource Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Its aim is to provide a forum for scholars to disseminate research and knowledge about heritage and community languages.
Major Open Access Collaboration between Brill and ERC Project ‘Open Philology: The Composition of Buddhist Scriptures’
Brill is delighted to announce a new Open Access collaboration with ‘Open Philology: The Composition of Buddhist Scriptures’ (OpenPhilology), funded by the European Research Council. The resulting book series Buddhist Open Philology Project will publish translations of scriptures, text editions, and studies on the select corpus of Mahāyāna Buddhist scriptures (sūtra), the Mahāratnakūṭa collection of 49 sūtras. All volumes in the series will be published in Open Access with Brill.
Acquisitions Editors
Brill
Seçil Ümitvar
Uri Tadmor
Böhlau
Pascale Mannert
Sarah Stoffaneller
V&R unipress
Marie-Carolin Vondracek
Languages and Linguistics
The tern ‘Aljamiado’ denotes vernacular Spanish and other Romance varieties of the Iberic peninsula written in Arabic alphabet and has been extended to all the transcription texts written in Arabic script adopted to languages which do not use Arabic as their “habitual or standard” alphabet. ‘Aljamiado Greek’ is thus a graphic variety inscribed into the framework of ‘syncretistic writing’, where religion (here: Islam) is the cultural criterion for (re)graphization. The oldest known Greek texts in Arabic script were produced in Asia Minor in the 13th century, a few texts are known for the 15th and 16th centuries, while 18th and 19th-century sources have their provenance mainly in Epirus and Crete. The interest of these texts includes the cultural re-graphization process of Greek in Arabic script in an Islamic context, and their value as sources for Greek historic dialectology, first of all for Inner Anatolian, Epirot and Cretan varieties.
Derived from the Greek word βάρβαρος bárbaros, the term ‘barbarism’ designates the incorrect use of forms and expressions in a given language. In sociolinguistic terms applied to Ancient Greek, it mainly refers to the change of the linguistic code through the introduction of non-Greek expressions and to the use of broken Greek by non-native speakers. Most of the ancient examples come from Aristophanic comedies where non-Greeks (Scythians, Persians and Thracians) were linguistically characterized as foreigners and appear differentiated from native speakers of standard Attic. In order to provoke mirth, these comic texts attempted to imitate foreigner talk, thus constituting a valuable source for the study of linguistic variation in Classical Athens.
This entry offers a descriptive account of elements of Constantinopolitan/Istanbul Greek grammar, covering phonetics, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, with observations regarding the effects of language contact with Turkish and French and other languages spoken in the city, and comparisons with simlar features in other Greek dialects. There is also a discussion of the complicated question of how to classify this variety with respect to other modern dialects.
Folk etymology is the morphophonological reshaping of a word, normally one with opaque morphology, through its subconscious erroneous association with some other word(s) for the sake of semantic clarity and enhanced morphological transparency. Folk etymology proper is different from conscious re-etymologized coinages (ludative, normative) but also from other phenomena, such as reanalysis, back-formation, etc. Folk etymology has been a common phenomenon throughout the history of Greek.
Our understanding of Gothic, an ancient East Germanic language, comes mainly through the translations into Gothic of the Greek gospels made by church leader Wulfila in the 4th century CE. Deviations from Greek usage in the original text reveal aspects of true Gothic grammar and usage. An overview is offered here of several ways in which Greek can illuminate and enrich our knowledge of Gothic.
In this entry, Modern Greek dialects surviving in some localities in the region of Otranto and the province of Reggio are examined. The Greek linguistic minority in Italy, as recognized by the Italian state, consists of these two linguistic islands, which in fact constitute the totality of the Greek-speaking areas in Italy. This linguistic minority speaks two dialects defined as Italiot-Greek dialects: Griko, in the Apulian part, and Grecanico, in the Calabrian part. With regard to phonetics, morphology, syntax, and lexis, the dialects of these two linguistic islands correspond for the most part to the neoclassical dialects of Greece, but they also exhibit some interesting archaic characteristics. This has led to much discussion as to the origins of the Greek-speaking community in Southern Italy. Once a rough picture of the present situation of this community has been sketched, the heated debate regarding its origins is summarized, and a new explanatory hypothesis is offered.
Besides the well-known Greek influence on Latin there was also influence of Greek on other Italic languages. The term ‘Italic’ but also the makeup of this group of languages normally require some clarifications, while one must also take into account the common problems of ancient fragmentary corpora. The study focus is on issues of scripts, loans, and bilingualism. Oscan was often written in Greek script, yet it is not only the alphabet, but also spelling conventions that show significant Greek influence. Greek loanwords are more common in Oscan than in Umbrian or Faliscan, which has partly to do with corpus size and partly with a higher degree of bilingualism among speakers of Oscan.
Greek and Slavic constitute two separate branches of the IE language family. Direct contact between Greeks and South Slavs is established in the sixth century CE, and it is from the interaction of speakers of these (and other) languages that the Balkan Sprachbund emerges, with shared features on all levels of language. A further consequence of such contact and the ensuing Christianization of the Balkan Slavs is the creation of a common Slavic literary language, Old Church Slavonic, under Greek influence. Although probably doomed to disappear, some contact areas of Greek and Slavic still remain today, especially in Thrace and the Black Sea region.
The Black Sea and the Propontis were among the areas colonized by the Greeks in the first millennium BCE. Most of the colonies were founded by Miletus and Megara. Therefore, the two main dialectal varieties spoken in the region were Milesian Ionic and Megarian Doric. The complex historical and political situation in the Black Sea and the Propontis during the first millennium BCE led to the establishment of linguistic contacts between Greek settlers of different origin in these areas. Traces of non-Greek languages spoken by local populations are only found in place names and personal names. Due to its greater prestige, Greek seems to have been the language of communication between Greeks and native peoples, as occurred in other colonial areas of the Greek world.
Greek has always been in direct or indirect contact with other languages, mostly European, but at times also Asian and African ones. Greek background of modern scientific terminology is just an episode in the long history of such contacts. Older Greek borrowings in other languages are not always recognizable to non-linguists. However, the total or partial Greek origin of internationalisms, which make a large part of modern scientific terminology, is a fact known even among non-linguists. Such vocabulary is mostly obtained by neology, neosemy and/or borrowing. Classical Greek, besides Classical Latin, is a traditional and well-established source of neoclassical lexemes, combining forms and affixes that are used to produce scientific terms. Modern Greek is itself a recipient language as far as Greek-based terminology is concerned, although the average Modern Greek-speaker is usually unaware of this fact due to similarities between inherited and borrowed items.