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
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.
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.
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.
The excavations at the sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona have unearthed a unique corpus of lead plates containing oracular lamellae from the mid-6th to the 2nd c. BCE. Some 4,500 of these have been published thus far. The inquiries, which are not always easy to read, interpret or date, are important for Greek linguistics in two main regards: first, they exhibit a wide array of alphabets and dialects that provide valuable data for the study of Ancient Greek; second, they are extempore texts written in an informal register that is rarely documented.
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.
This article traces the origins and spread of minuscule script. As a style that allowed writing materials to require less space, this graphic form served a practical function, but in understanding the range of variant styles that arose and that were in use, aesthetics must also be taken into consideration. The effect of the invention of the printing press is discussed as well.
Inscriptions were produced at various places in the Byzantine Empire, most of all in urban centers during the early period, and also in the far east of the Empire, Caesarea Maritima being one good example. In the major cities of Constantinople and Thessaloniki, inscriptions were produced continuously throughout the entire Byzantine millennium, and the extant inscriptional evidence is only a small remnant of the mass of the original material. However, Byzantine Greek inscriptions were not only produced within the receding Imperial boundaries, but also in territories that had lost: Jordan and Syria after the sixth century, the Balkans after the dispersion of the Bulgarian and Serbian kingdoms, and the Northern coast of the Black Sea. Additionally, in Southern Italy and in Sicily after the Norman Conquest, Greek inscriptions emerged via a deliberate imitation of the Byzantine culture.
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.