'Evidence for the Influence of Atticist Lexica on Non-literary Papyri of the Koine Period', A Koine Greek Colloquium, Macquarie University, Sydney, 19 May 2017 (original) (raw)
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Tetradio, 2020
The normative tradition in Greek lexicography is remarkably long-lived. As early as the Second Sophistic (I–III CE), Atticist grammarians and lexicographers sought to recapture the quality of classical Attic Greek by composing usage manuals that prescribed correct usages and proscribed incorrect ones (i.e. Koiné and vernacularisms). This prescriptive tradition ushered in the long-lived diglossic situation that subsequently contributed to the enregisterment of (high) puristic variants, which survived in various forms until the twentieth century. Following the official end in 1976 of the last of these, katharevousa, Greek lexicography has continued to struggle with the residual influence of prescriptive thinking, which is but one symptom of Modern Greek’s continuing struggle to completely free itself of its classical shackles. However, despite the fact that negative usage labelling, such as esfalménos (incorrect), and even references to Atticists like Phrynichus, can be found in some of today’s widely-used dictionaries of Modern Greek, there is evidence that the art of lexicography has taken a decisively descriptive turn in the last few decades.
The Atticist lexica as Metalinguistic Resource for Morphosyntactic change in Post-Classical Greek
Journal of Greek linguistics 22.2, 2022
While ancient metalinguistic resources such as lexica and scholia are increasingly studied in the field of ancient scholarship (Montanari 2020), they are investigated less within the historical sociolinguistics of Ancient Greek. Analysing the Atticist lexica by Phrynichus, Moeris and Aelius Dionysius, this article illustrates the historically persistent connection between social perception of and diachronic change within Ancient Greek. Although the historical relevance of Atticist prescriptivism has been observed, the evidence that these social evaluations provide for Post-Classical Greek language change is rarely assessed systematically (except for objectionable ideological reasons). I demonstrate that the Atticist lexica display metalinguistic awareness of the major morphosyntactic changes characterizing Post-Classical Greek (pace Lee 2013:286): paradigmatic (e.g. analogical levelling in verbal system of endings, voice and augment), category changes, category renewal (e.g. dual, pronouns, periphrasis), syntactic change (category expansion of ἔμελλον and τυγχάνω) and case changes (e.g. from case to prepositions).
International Journal of Lexicography, 2020
Liddell and Scott has long been regarded as one of the most valuable pieces of Ancient Greek lexicography. Following its creation in the mid-19th century, this renowned lexicon by two young Oxford postgraduates has undergone a myriad of revisions and incorporated multiple addenda along the way. As recently as 2019, Christopher Stray, Michael Clarke, and Joshua T. Katz edited the compilation of twenty-one articles which I have been commissioned to review here. These articles are, in turn, grouped around the following parts or overarching themes: (1) History and Constitution of the Lexicon; (2) Periods and Genres of Evidence; (3) Methodology and Problems; and (4) Comparisons in Time and Space. Throughout the compilation, contributors pay their particular homage to Liddell and Scott by primarily focusing on the path travelled up to its ninth edition (henceforth referred to as LSJ). Heterogenous, yet inclusive insights are adopted which highlight Liddell and Scott’s strengths and shortcomings alike, with the latter having mostly to do with updates perceived as necessary in the twenty-first century. It might well be this willingness of the Lexicon to embrace change that underlies its long-lived success. Lexica of ancient languages have oftentimes been wrongfully regarded as static quasi-archaeological remnants, based on their tendency to depict a fossilized, no-longer-in-use model of language. However, since the baseline goal of a dictionary is that of making the language that pertains to a particular historical context accessible to a reader, both types of ancient- or modern-language lexica demonstrate a legitimate need for ongoing revisions and constant updates. Even though the corpus of entries in Liddell and Scott has remained largely unaltered through the years, a refinement in the teaching methodologies and a deeper understanding of Ancient Greece have both come a long way since the conception of the Lexicon. This shift in focus correlates with a strong willingness to explore the Greek Antiquity through language and the usage thereof in a variety of literary works, which certainly requires taking on a multidimensional approach. Until recently, the study of Greek would adopt a merely stative stance. Students and scholars alike were expected to acquire the ‘fossilised’ fundamentals of language history and grammatical structure. It is within this context that the lexica became essential tools in verifying (even ‘deciphering’) the meaning of units largely unknown to the community of students and researchers. This process was basically conducted in a mechanical manner, from a lack of criticism or further interest therein. Among the multiple shifts undergone by society since the mid-1800s, gradual emphasis has arisen on complexity, diversity, and (relatedly) critical thinking. As I will review in the following section, this 2019 volume by Stray et al. (eds) vividly demonstrates the fate of this shift in mentality. Its articles, as a whole, embrace a broad spectrum of scholarly concerns, both methodological and societal.
2021
A most notable feature of Standard Modern Greek (SMG) lexicon is the abundance of pairs of lexemes of similar meaning which belong to different registers. Thus, while one lexeme pertains to the colloquial language and is widely used both in oral and written speech, a semantically akin or even synonymous word of Ancient (i.e., Classical) Greek (AG) origin is also attested in specific contexts. The latter ones are usually described as part of the “archaic” or “learned” component of the Modern Greek (MG) lexicon. In the light of three case studies, our paper aims at investigating this variation by conducting research through diachronic corpora. We intend to disperse certain misconceptions concerning lexical change (which is erroneously interpreted as a straightforward replacement of an “older” word with a new one) and to introduce the concepts of adstratal and superstratal lexicon as well as the theory of prototypicality and exaptation in the relevant research. Along with dealing with the diachrony of the Greek lexicon, our account sketches a first theoretical framework for investigating the lexicon of languages with a long-recorded history and diglossic contradictions. Accordingly, it emphasizes the vital role of corpora research in diachronic semantics and onomasiology.
Spelling deviations are often considered to be the result of random variation or plain mistakes by the scribes. Based on the examples in this paper, I argue that some of the apparent deviations may actually be in accordance with contemporary norms. Close study of the spelling of five lexemes in the corpus of documentary papyri shows that the orthographic conventions at the time may have been different than suggested by contemporary grammarians and modern editors. Keywords post-classical Greekorthographydocumentary papyrivariation and changescribesgrammarians Greek progressively failed to reflect a radically changing pronunciation, so that by 1 See e.g. Horrocks 2010, 88-188. 2 See Horrocks 2010, 82. following four criteria for determining the correct spelling, originally used for textual criticism: analogy (ἀναλογία), namely the formulation of general propositions based on comparison of words, dialect (διάλεκτος) by comparison of special forms in different language varieties, etymology (ἐτυμολογία) based on the origin of words and history (ἱστορίαπαράδοσις), which informs us about how the word is used in the literary textual tradition. 6 3
Gnomon 94, 2022
The history of what is today generally referred to simply as LSJ-the ninth edition of Oxford University Press' 'Greek-English Lexicon', «compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott. Revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones, with the assistance of Roderick McKenzie and with the cooperation of many scholars», with a pair of supplements dating to 1968 and 1996-begins in the mid-1830s, when two recent Oxford graduates, the eponymous Liddell and Scott, were commissioned by the Press to produce what was originally in large part a translation of Franz Passow's slightly earlier Greek-German 'Handwörterbuch der griechischen Sprache' (4 th ed. 1830). The idea was not a new one; the Press had previously extended similar invitations to other young Oxford men, although with no substantial results. Liddell (who eventually became Dean of Christ Church and served for a period as Vice-Chancellor of the University) and Scott (whose interests tended more to theology, and who ultimately served as Dean of Rochester Cathedral), by contrast, combined their energies to rapidly produce, beginning in 1843, a long series of editions of what remains, almost two centuries later, an essential tool for serious work on the ancient Greek language. In the meantime, Liddell fathered ten children, one of them the Alice who gave her name to the central character in Charles Dodgson's (= Lewis Carroll's) 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' (1865) and 'Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There' (1871).