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
Acrostics constitute an interesting technique usually employed in verse language but also in prose, whereby the first letters (sometimes the initial syllable or even an entire word) in each line or word form a word or phrase, a name or even a message that the composer wishes to hide or reveal skillfully. Acrostics form part of language play but also a mechanism in the artistic usages of the language. Normally, they are employed in gnomes, riddles, and other such didactic compositions, in hymnal poetry, both biblical and post-biblical (particularly frequent in the Middle Ages), but also in secular praise poetry, love songs, inscriptions, or are exploited as rhetorical figures. In addition to their artistic effect, acrostics may also aim at entertaining through the skillful manipulation of expressive material in ways that amuse the readers or listeners by creating aural or visual images of rare esthetic beauty. In this sense, acrostics may also serve as techniques of cryptography and steganography, having an anagrammatic and symbolic function by encrypting messages, names, and other such things.
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.