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
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.
Digraphia refers to two or more scripts or writing systems being used for a language or language variety, either simultaneously or in successive historical periods. The term has also been used for the description of individual authors or documents using two scripts. The terminology describing this phenomenon is rich and perplexing, with many alternative terms of identical or similar meaning proposed or adopted by different scholars. It has been identified as a phenomenon falling under sociolinguistics (sociolinguistics of writing, in particular). The concept of diglossia has been used to attempt to analyze digraphia sociolinguistically, though not without objections to its applicability and usefulness. The long history of the Greek language and alphabet offers many instances of digraphic situations, stemming from (language and) script contact, colonization and foreign rule, trade, and even technological developments.
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.
Palindromes belong to the playful and/or purposeful manipulations of linguistic means, i.e. individual letters (or sounds), words, phrases and sentence arrangement (in a mirror-image style) in such a way that the reading has a double direction, from left to right and vice versa. Greek palindromes are attested since Late Antiquity but their number rose during the medieval times serving various functions, mainly ‘para-poetic’ as appendices to other compositions, carrying special meanings or alluding to people, states or objects.