Oscan in Southern Italy and Sicily: Evaluating Language Contact in a Fragmentary Corpus (Cambridge Classical Studies)

"In pre-Roman Italy and Sicily, dozens of languages and writing systems competed and interacted, and bilingualism was the norm. Using frameworks from epigraphy, archaeology and the sociolinguistics of language contact, this book explores the relationship between Greek and Oscan, two of the most widely spoken languages in the south of the peninsula. Dr McDonald undertakes a new analysis of the entire corpus of South Oscan texts written in Lucania, Bruttium and Messana, including dedications, curse tablets, laws, funerary texts and graffiti. She demonstrates that genre and domain are critical to understanding where and when Greek was used within Oscan-speaking communities, and how ancient bilinguals exploited the social meaning of their languages in their writing. This book also offers a cutting-edge example of how to build the fullest possible picture of bilingualism in fragmentary languages across the ancient world."-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half title 3 Series 4 Title 5 Copyright 6 Contents 7 Acknowledgements 8 Conventions 11 List of abbreviations 13 List of illustrations 16 List of maps 19 List of tables 20 1 Introduction 23 2 Bilingualism and language contact in written texts 58 3 Alphabets, epigraphy and orthography 85 4 Dedicatory inscriptions 116 5 Curse tablets 155 6 Legal texts 189 7 Official inscriptions, coins, funerary inscriptions, stamps and graffiti 216 8 Conclusions 246 Appendix 1 Catalogue of sites 266 Appendix 2 Dating of inscriptions and concordances 280 Bibliography 298 General index 317 Index locorum 324 In pre-Roman Italy and Sicily, dozens of languages and writing systems competed and interacted. Using new archaeological evidence and modern theories of bilingualism, this book explores the relationship between Greek and Oscan, two of the most widely spoken languages in the south of the peninsula. Groundbreaking New Interpretation Of The Relationship Between Greek And Oscan, Two Of The Most Widely Spoken Languages Of Pre-roman Italy.