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.
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.
Along with the terms ‘Karamanli texts’ or ‘Karamanli literature’, Karamanlidika conventionally refers to Turkish texts written in Greek characters, produced by and for the Turkophone Christian communities in Asia Minor, primarily for religious purpose. During the centuries of its existence (1718–1920s) it evolved into an extensive literature including also many non-religious topics. The first printed book of this kind was published in 1718, however Karamanlidika texts occur also in manuscript form. The bulk of the Karamanlidika book pr0duction consists of religious texts, such as prayer books, lives of saints, or liturgical books, while in the 19th century the production of non-religious texts gains significance. The texts are interesting sources also in relation to linguistic studies (language contact, re-graphization, and Turkish dialectology).
The letter-signs of the Greek alphabet were also used as numerals throughout antiquity, and in fact well into Medieval times, when the advent of the so-called ‘Arabic’ numerals (ca. 13c. CE) gradually brought about their replacement, though not their complete demise in special fields and/or for certain (quasi-formulaic) usages.
Sealing was used in antiquity to convey legal authority and security to a document, package, or product. The sealing media par excellence during the Byzantine period were clay and, especially, lead, imprinted from the 4th c. CE onwards with an iron, pliers-shaped implement (βουλλωτήριον boullōtḗrion). Byzantine lead seals record the personal data of their owner (name, title, office) in monograms or linear inscriptions, rendered mainly in Latin initially, but after the early 7th c. CE, almost exclusively in Greek. Due to the nature of the recorded data, seals form an indispensable source of information for the fields of prosopography and administrative, institutional and political history, as well as that of the social history and art of Byzantium.