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This chapter draws attention to the importance of studying not only linguistic variation in language, but also the patterned heterogeneity that can be related to it – in other words, linguistic varieties. Whereas the presence of varieties such as foreigner talk, female speech, colloquial language, etc. in the Classical period has received considerable attention, much less work has been done on the Post-classical and Byzantine periods, a situation which this edited volume hopes to remedy. Before outlining the contributions to the volume, we address a couple of central theoretical questions to research on linguistic varieties, such as the relationship between concepts like ‘variant’, ‘variety’ and ‘variation’, the modeling of varieties in terms of a ‘variational space’, the relationship between varieties, and the different methodologies that can be adopted to study linguistic varieties.

Linguistic varieties such as female speech, foreigner talk, and colloquial language have not gone unnoticed when it comes to Classical Greek, but little is known about later periods of the Greek language. In this collective volume leading experts in the field outline some of the most important varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, basing themselves on a broad range of literary and documentary sources, and advancing a number of innovative methodologies. Close attention is paid to the linguistic features that characterize these varieties, with in-depth discussions of lexical, morpho-syntactic, orthographic, and metrical variation, as well as the interrelationship between these different types of variation. The volume thus offers valuable insights into the nature of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, laying the foundation for future studies of linguistic variation in these later stages of the language, while at the same time providing a point of comparison for Classical Greek scholarship.

In this article, we consider whether the form Βλήμeνος ἦν in Il. 4.211 should be considered lexical or periphrastic. Based on a discussion of the context, an analysis of the usage of the verb βάλλω...

In this article, I offer a systematic description of the various uses of the preposition διά in the Early Byzantine archive of Qurrah ibn Sharik (VIII AD), an archive in which the preposition is attested remarkably frequently. Functionally, the use of διά is reminiscent of the Classical period, in that various older uses are attested that no longer occur in Modern Greek (such as PATH, INTERMEDIARY, and INSTRUMENT). However, there are also various innovative uses that are attested neither in the Classical nor in the Modern period (such as AGENT, SOURCE, and OPPONENT). The occurrence of these “dead ends” shows that the functional development of prepositions from Classical to Modern Greek should not be thought of as linear.

While Classical Greek has a particularly rich complementation system, in later times there is a tendency towards the use of finite complementation. In this context, Cristofaro (1996) has claimed that the Classical opposition whereby the accusative and infinitive is used for non-factive complements, and ὅτι with the indicative and the accusative and participle for factive ones, is disappearing, ὅτι being used as a ‘generic’ complementiser. In this article, I investigate to what extent Cristofaro’s (1996) claim of the pragmatic neutralisation of complementation patterns can be upheld, and whether it could be claimed that a new pragmatic opposition, in terms of ‘register’, is being established. For this purpose, I turn towards documentary papyri, a corpus which is particularly fruitful for socio-historical investigations.

In this article, I analyze how aspectual choice contributes to the presentation of Herodotus’ narrative. I argue that the choice for the imperfect versus the aorist tense for foregrounded events brings about a ‘perspectival effect’ (de Jong van den Berg 2000): while the aorist conveys an ‘external’ perspective, the imperfect suggests an ‘internal’ perspective of a character witnessing the events. I show that such an internal perspective is particularly often adopted at dramatic moments (e.g. battle-scenes, natural disasters, human suffering), thus supporting the thematics of the story. This ‘interpersonal’ dimension of aspectual choice is framed within a larger aspectual model, which furthermore recognizes an ‘ideational’ and a ‘textual’ dimension. I conclude the article by comparing my own approach to that of Bakker (1997), who under the heading of ‘narrative modes’ came to similar findings with regard to Thucydides.

Especially in the first half of the twentieth century, language was viewed as a vehicle for the transmission of facts and ideas. Later on, scholars working in linguistic frameworks such as Functional and Cognitive Linguistics, (Historical) Sociolinguistics and Functional Sociolinguistics, have emphasized the social relevance of language, focusing, for example, on linguistic concepts such as deixis, modality, or honorific language, or embedding larger linguistic patterns in their social contexts, through notions such as register, sociolect, genre, etc. The main aim of this article is to systematize these observations, through an investigation of how the central, though ill-understood notion of “social meaning” can be captured. The starting point for the discussion is the work that has been done in the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). This framework distinguishes “social” (“interpersonal”) meaning from two other types of meaning, and offers a typology of different types of contexts with which these different meanings resonate. In order to achieve a more satisfactory account of social meaning, however, I argue that we need to connect SFL to a theory of how signs convey meaning. The discussion is relevant for Ancient Greek in its entirety, but focuses specifically on Post-classical Greek: as a case study, I discuss five private letters from the so-called Theophanes archive (IV AD).

Mullins (1962) first suggested that the choice for a request verb in Greek petitions is socially conditioned: άξιόω, he argues, functions as the routine request verb, while ζέομαι is more formal. In this article, I investigate whether similar observations can be made with regard to the inferential expressions preceding the request verb, that is, ξιό ξιά τοΰτο όθeν τοίνυν, and οΰν. Focusing on the social status of the addressee, I argue that it may indeed be possible to situate these different conjunctions on a social scale. That being said, it should be stressed that we are not dealing with a mechanical 'rule', which is never the case in historical sociolinguistics. To conclude the article, I discuss a number of alternative inferential expressions, including asyndeton.

Recent studies of Ancient Greek have drawn attention to the social significance of linguistic choice. So far, however, surprisingly little attention has been paid to non-literary evidence: in the dry sands of Egypt, tens of thousands of ‘documentary’ texts have been preserved, ranging from scrap papers and shopping lists to marriage contracts and imperial edicts, which await further study. In this paper, I briefly introduce a research project aimed to analyze how such ‘everyday writing’ reflects aspects of social meaning. I argue that in relating language to its social context, the notion of ‘social identity’ is central. Social meaning is very complex, however, and not exclusively limited to social identity.

Onomastic studies typically state that lineage (the patronymic in particular) was expressed in Ancient Greek through the use of the genitive case. In this study, which is based on an extensive corpus of Roman and Late Antique petitions and contracts, I show that the actual situation was much more complex: up to eight different lineage expressions are attested. In line with recent variationist studies, I take it that variation in language is not random and try to connect the different types of lineage expressions to a number of parameters of variation, that is, diachronic, social, and text-internal factors.

Several reasons have been proposed for the decline of infinitival complementation in Ancient Greek: the fact that the infinitive became morphologically restricted, the inherent redundancy of the Classical complementation system, and language contact. In this article, I explore yet another reason for the decline of the infinitive: I argue that the system of infinitival complementation became fundamentally ambiguous in its expression in later Greek. As has been noted previously, the loss of the future and perfect tense had a serious impact on the use of infinitival complementation. However, rather than there being an ‘omission’ of temporal distinctions, as previous studies have claimed, I argue that the present and aorist infinitive became polyfunctional, being used for anterior, simultaneous, and posterior events. Next to temporal ambiguity, a second type of ambiguity occurred: ‘modal’ ambiguity or ambiguity with regard to the speech function of the complement clause. Already in Classical times, the present and aorist infinitive could be used after certain verb classes to encode both ‘propositions’ and ‘proposals’ (offers/commands), an ambiguity which continues to be found in later Greek. The study is based on a corpus of documentary texts from the Roman and Byzantine periods (I – VIII AD).

In this collective volume, some of the leading experts in the field explore aspects of linguistic variation and change in one of the core areas of Ancient Greek grammar: tense, aspect, and modality.

In many languages, a person can be addressed either in the second person singular or the second person plural: the former indicates familiarity and/or lack of respect, while the latter suggests distance and/or respect towards the addressee. While in Ancient Greek pronominal reference initially was not used as a ‘politeness strategy’, in the Post-classical period a T–V distinction did develop. In the Early Byzantine period, I argue, yet another pronominal usage developed: a person could also be addressed in the third person singular. This should be connected to the rise of abstract nominal forms of address, a process which can be dated to the fourth century AD.

Recent findings in sociolinguistics have greatly enhanced our understanding of the mechanisms of linguistic variation and change. In this paper, I discuss the possibility of applying a historical sociolinguistic approach to a corpus language such as Ancient Greek. In the first part of my paper, I address the question of exactly how to take into account the relationship between language and social context. I review a number of recently made proposals, and their applicability to Ancient Greek. In the second part of my paper, I argue for the benefits of one specific approach, the Systemic Functional framework, applying it to particle usage in letters and petitions from Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt (I – VIII ad).

In this article, I reconsider the diachrony of the Ancient Greek periphrastic construction of eimi‘I am’ with present participle by means of Bertinetto’s recently proposed model for the development of progressive grammatical morphemes (grams) (a process called ‘prog imperfective drift’). While Bertinetto’s proposal sheds new light on the diachronic development of the construction, at the same time the evidence from Ancient Greek brings to light the need for modification and further refinement of the model (most importantly with regard to the role of what I call the ‘stative’ aspectual function, next to the diachronic source(s) of the construction). I furthermore show that eimi‘I am’ with present participle never fully developed a (focalised) progressive function, which can be explained in terms of ‘constructional competition.’

In the present article, I apply Fauconnier’s mental spaces theory to the diachronic analysis of the Ancient Greek periphrastic perfect. I argue that the periphrastic construction started out as a ‘resultative’ perfect, with FOCUS and EVENT located in the same mental space. I show that, contrary to what is sometimes believed, the construction was not limited to a purely stative meaning, but underwent the cross-linguistically attested semantic shift from resultative to anterior, whereby an additional non-FOCUS EVENT-space was constructed. In fourth-century Classical Greek, we witness the further extension of the periphrastic construction with regard to semantics, morphology and discourse context. I close the article with some remarks on the possible aoristicisation of the periphrastic perfect.

I present here a detailed appraisal of Luisa Amenta‟s Perifrasi aspettuali in greco e in latino, Origini e grammaticalizzazioni (2003). Amenta‟s study on verbal periphrases is a revised version of her Ph.D. thesis (1999), completed at the Universita degli Studi di Roma Tre under the supervision of Prof. dr. Marco Mancini. It offers a diachronic and typological confrontation of periphrastic constructions in both Greek and Latin. I briefly describe the term „verbal periphrasis‟ (§1), sketch the main points of previous research (§2) and outline the different chapters of Amenta‟s book (§3). Then I give some critical remarks (§4) and suggestions for further research (§5), concentrating on periphrases in Greek. I conclude with a list of typos and errors (§6).

I analyse the use of the particles οὖν and γάρ in a corpus of documentary texts ranging from the first to the fourth century AD. I attempt to answer three main research questions: (i) with what frequency are οὖν and γάρ used; was one of these particles used more frequently than the other?; (ii) what are the functional/syntactic similarities and differences between the two particles; (iii) are there signs of functional development? My observations are framed within ‘discourse marker theory’, whereby οὖν and γάρ are viewed as ‘inferential’ and ‘elaborative’ discourse markers.

This article consists of three main parts. In the first part, I critically discuss two approaches to the diachronic study of Ancient Greek. I argue for the importance of not confining ourselves to spoken-like, ‘ authentic’ texts, but applying a comparative, register-based perspective. This perspective is illustrated in the second part, where I explore the relevance of Markopoulos’ (2009) ‘ sociolinguistic parameter of grammaticalization’ to the diachrony of periphrastic constructions with εἰμί “ I am” in Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek. I close the article by discussing some of the difficulties and prospects associated with this approach, in the light of further research., Bentein Klaas. Register and the diachrony of Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 91, fasc. 1, 2013. Antiquité - Ouheid. pp. 5-44.

In this article, I discuss the emergence of verbal periphrasis with eἰμί “I am” and ἔχω “I have” and a perfect, present or aorist participle in Archaic and Classical Greek. Adopting a so-called ‘ecological’ perspective, I argue for the importance of looking at the interrelationship between the periphrastic constructions in terms of their origins and development, drawing particular attention to the mechanism of ‘intraference’. I relate their semantic development to the notion of ‘transitivity’ (in a generalized, gradual sense) and show that ἔχω with aorist participle, eἰμί with perfect participle and eἰμί with present participle became used in increasingly more transitive contexts, a process which I propose to call ‘transitivization’. Somewhat tentatively, I suggest that this notion can also be used to describe the semantic development of periphrasis in general, first having occurred in the domain of perfect aspect, afterwards in that of imperfective aspect and only in a final stage in that of perfective aspect.

In this article, I discuss Ancient Greek constructions consisting of a form of the verb eimi ‘I am’ and a present, perfect or aorist participle. More in particular, I focus on those uses where the participle is said to have an “adjectival” function. My main goal is to give a unified semantic description of this phenomenon, adopting a Cognitive framework. I show that adjectival periphrasis typically involves the predication of properties, which can be characterized in terms of low transitivity (Hopper & Thompson 1980). I furthermore argue that a so-called “property reading” involves a particular kind of conceptual integration, whereby only one component state of the verb eimi is elaborated by the participle.

Abstract In this article, I discuss the use of the periphrastic progressive construction of εἰµί with present participle in the Septuagint and the New Testament. I argue that a broad distinction can be made between two main uses, called “durative progressive” and “focalized progressive.” In both cases, a number of syntactic frames can be specified in which the periphrastic construction occurs. I conclude the article by discussing the relationship between the Septuagintal and the New Testamental use of the periphrastic construction, arguing that while there are many similarities, this relationship should not be conceived of in terms of imitation, as some scholars have suggested.

The Digenis Akritis is preserved in two important manuscripts: Escorial and Grottaferrata. Whereas the language of the former is traditionally considered vernacular or even vulgar, the scribe of the Grottaferrata manuscript is said to employ an archaizing style. The frequent occurrence of clitic particles like delta epsilon, gamma alpha rho, mu epsilon nu and omicron upsilon nu is one of the more prominent archaizing features. In Ancient Greek, clitic particles and clitic pronouns tend to cluster together in second position in accordance with Wackernagel's Law. In this note, we examine the various distributional patterns of clitic particles co-occurring with clitic pronouns in the Grottaferrata manuscript. We argue that despite the occurrence of some apparently classical clusterings, the distribution of clitic pronouns and particles is clearly governed by contemporary rules.

I analyze the use and development of perfect periphrases with the verbs “be” (εἰμί) and “have” (ἔχω) in Post-classical and Early Byzantine Greek. While their importance has often been stressed in the context of the restructuring of the verbal system (more in particular the loss of the synthetic perfect), they have not received an in-depth, corpus-based treatment yet. The approach adopted in this article builds on insights from recently developed ecological-evolutionary models, which recognize the fact that language change is a two-step process, consisting of innovation and propagation, and that multiple ‘ecologogical’ factors influence the spread of a construction through the population (what I discuss in terms of ‘register’).

This paper discusses which constructions in Ancient Greek consisting of a finite verb and a participle belong to the category of „verbal periphrasis‟. By applying various criteria of periphrasticity to a corpus of examples, I show that only a limited number of constructions can be considered fully periphrastic. I consider these constructions to be the central members of a prototypically organized category.

Bentein Klaas, Bernard Floris. A Cycle of Book Epigrams in Honour of the Four Evangelists. In: Scriptorium, Tome 65 n°2, 2011. pp. 237-249.

The article offers an edition, translation and commentary of eight so-called book epigrams. They all stem from eleventh-century manuscripts containing the New Testament or commentaries on it, more specifically the Paris. Coisl. 199, the Vindobon. Theol. Gr. 302, the Paris. Coisl. 26, and the Vatic. Gr. 363. While most of them are unedited, the second one is a conflation of known epigrams, and the third an unknown version of a previously edited epigram. Although book epigrams are frequently encountered in Byzantine manuscripts, the genre has not received much attention. In the track of the recently increasing interest in manuscripts as cultural artifacts in their own right, our commentary focuses on the relationship between epigram and manuscript, and the process of copying. It also discusses textual problems, structure, content, function, vocabulary, and metrical features of the poems. The analysis is enriched by parallels from other, mostly contemporary, book epigrams, which were collected during an ongoing database project at Ghent University. The comparison shows, among other things, that the material belonging to this genre is 'recyclable': it is constantly re-used, sometimes with slight but meaningful modifications.

While Ancient Greek is commonly considered a “synthetic” language, I show that it diddevelop periphrastic constructions, to a much larger extent than is generally thought. Iconcentrate on the development of constructions with the verbs ‘HAVE' (εχω) and ‘BE'(ειμι) and a participle, and argue that they underwent a common semantic development,which I propose to call ‘transitivization’. I furthermore draw attention to the importanceof investigating the interrelationship of the different periphrastic constructions underanalysis with regard to their origins, development and decline.