This article proposes a re-examination of the text engraved on a lead lamella from Himera published in 1997 and often assumed to contain a law on land distribution. On the basis of a detailed ...linguistic and epigraphic analysis it makes two suggestions on alternative readings in the central part of the lamella (lines 8-11), which may open new interpretative paths on the meaning of the text and its relevance for the institutional context of late-archaic Himera.
This book provides a study of the diachronic development of compounds with a verbal first constituent in Ancient Greek. Based on an unprecedentedly comprehensive corpus of such compounds, it offers ...detailed treatments of their origins, structure and place within the Greek compound system, as well as in-depth and up-to-date introductions to Greek compounds and to linguistic research on compounding.
This article offers a new account of the funerary stele of the Phoenician Shem/Antipatros (IGII28388,CEG596). Following early symbolic readings of the monument, it adopts a comparative approach in ...order to explain the difficult symbolism of the relief, as well as the obscure expressions of the Greek epigram, by considering their likely Semitic (and more widely Near Eastern) background. In particular, the article offers the first full commentary on the epigram, the twohapax legomenaof which (ε{ἰ}χθρολέων and σποράσαι, line 3) may be better understood by assuming that they represent Greek adaptations of Semitic expressions.
Within the field of ancient bilingualism, Sicily represents a unique terrain for analysis as a result of its incredibly rich linguistic history, in which 'colonial' languages belonging to branches as ...diverse as Italic (Oscan and Latin), Greek and Semitic (Phoenician) interacted with the languages of the natives (the elusive Sicel, Sicanian and Elymian). The result of this ancient melting-pot was a culture characterised by 'postcolonial' features such as ethnic hybridity, multilingualism and artistic and literary experimentation. While Greek soon emerged as the leading language, dominating official communication and literature, epigraphic sources and indirect evidence show that the minority languages held their ground down to the fifth century BCE, and in some cases beyond. The first two parts of the volume discuss these languages and their interaction with Greek, while the third part focuses on the sociolinguistic revolution brought about by the arrival of the Romans.
Photius’ lexicon contains an entry on the rare adjective ἀναλφάβητος (‘illiterate, ignorant’) that cites Phrynichus Atticista. Based on this testimony, the whole passage has been edited as fr. 19 of ...Phrynichus’ Praeparatio sophistica. This article demonstrates that in this lemma Photius conflates material which comes from Phrynichus and one other source, hypothetically identified with the anonymous Antiatticist lexicon, which preserves an abridged entry on ἀναλφάβητος and which Photius employed in the compilation of his lexicon. The article also explores the possibility that the work in which Phrynichus dealt with ἀναλφάβητος was not the Praeparatio sophistica but the Eclogue. This hypothesis requires challenging some assumptions concerning the transmission of Atticist lexicography in the Byzantine era, chiefly the assumption that material from the Eclogue did not circulate at Byzantium before the fourteenth century.
This book provides a brand new treatment of Ancient Greek (AG) verb-first (V1) compounds. In AG, the very existence of this type is surprising: its left- oriented structure goes against the ...right-oriented structure of the compound system, in which there also exists a large class of verb-final (V2) compounds (many of which express the same agentive semantics). While past studies have privileged either the historical dimension or the assessment of semantic and stylistic issues over a systematic analysis of V1 compounds, this book provides a comprehensive corpus of appellative and onomastic forms, which are studied vis-à-vis V2 ones. The diachronic dimension (how these compounds developed from late PIE to AG and then within AG) is combined with the synchronic one (how they are used in specific contexts) in order to show that, far from being anomalous, V1 compounds fill lexical gaps that could not, for specified morphological and semantic reasons, be filled by more 'regular' V2 ones. Introductory chapters on compounding in morphological theory and in AG place the multi-faceted approach of this book in a modern perspective, highlighting the importance of AG for linguists debating the properties of the V1 type cross-linguistically.
PDF
