Varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM], 331)

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 Acknowledgments 5 Contents 7 List of contributors 11 The Greek Alphabet 15 List of abbreviations 17 1 Varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek: Novel questions and approaches 19 Part I: VARIETIES OF POST-CLASSICAL AND BYZANTINE GREEK 35 2 Tracking down lects in Roman Egypt 35 3 Idiolect in focus: Two brothers in the Memphis Sarapieion (II BCE) 57 4 Imposing psychological pressure in papyrus request letters: A case study of six Byzantine letters written in an ecclesiastical context (VI–VII CE) 93 5 Greek in Egypt or Egyptian Greek? Syntactic regionalisms (IV CE) 133 6 In search of an Egyptian Greek lexicon in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt 159 7 Byzantine literature in “classicised” genres: Some grammatical realities (V–XIV CE) 181 8 From highly classicizing to common prose (XIII–XIV CE): The Metaphrasis of Niketas Choniates’ History 197 9 Back to the future: Akritic light on diachronic variation in Cappadocian (East Asia Minor Greek) 219 Part II: DIMENSIONS OF VARIATION IN POST-CLASSICAL AND BYZANTINE GREEK 261 10 Tense variation in Ptolemaic papyri: Towards a grammar of epistolary dialogue 261 11 The Classical norm and varieties of Post-classical Greek: Expressions of anteriority and posteriority in a corpus of official documents (I–II CE) 283 12 Orthographic variation and register in the corpus of Greek documentary papyri (300 BCE–800 CE) 317 13 The Greek phonology of a tax collector in Egypt in the first century CE 345 14 Metrical variation in Byzantine colophons (XI–XV CE): The example of ἡ μὲν χεὶρ ἡ γράψασα 371 15 Arguing and narrating: Text type and linguistic variation in tenth-century Greek 387 16 The distinctiveness of syntax for varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek: Linguistic upgrading from the third century BCE to the tenth century CE 399 Index locorum 433 Index nominum 441 Index rerum 443