Studies on the Hellenistic Koine in Egypt and the Near East

The project deals with the interaction of the Hellenistic Koine, a variety of Greek generally believed to have developed from the Classical Attic, with other languages of the Graeco- Roman world, primarily with those used in Egypt and Syria-Palestine. It has been convincingly argued that the Hellenistic-Roman period has been a crucial formative stage for later Greek, and ultimately for Modern Greek. Local differences of Hellenistic Greek as a lingua franca arose as a consequence of the fact that the population was composed of immigrants from different language areas (Egyptian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic and various Anatolian languages); this state of affairs was followed by a phase of intensive contact between Greek and Latin in Late Antiquity. The language interaction in these areas was mutual, in the sense that Greek also had an influence in adstratal and substratal languages. The study of the mechanisms of language change in the Hellenistic and the Roman periods in terms of historical linguistics and sociolinguistics goes back to older, pioneering studies, i.a. by Dieterich (1898), Thumb (1901), and later by Gignac (1976) and Teodorsson (1977) on the Ptolemaic Koine. Although the variation in Ancient Greek has been investigated for more than a century, the studies specialized on Koine are not so numerous, partly because of the limited availability of the data and also due to the interdisciplinary nature of studies on multilingual societies which involve dialects from different language families. For the last three decades scholars from a wide range of humanities, such as classical philologists, Egyptologists/Coptologists, Orientalists as well as historians, papyrologists, archaeologists and theologists have contributed to an immense pool of valuable information concerning the Graeco-Roman periods in Egypt, Syria-Palestine and Asia Minor. The project intends to update, supplement and unify previous linguistic research by drawing upon recent publications on Koine and modern tools of digital humanities, and aims at covering some of the desiderata in the field. The research will be based on selected, where possible recently published, material stemming from all the phases of the Hellenistic Koine in Egypt and the Near East. The applicant will pursue a number of case studies mainly on characteristic syntactic and morphological features, but also on linguistic borrowing, contact induced changes, and the sociolinguistics of bi-/multilingualism covering not only Greek, but also Greco-Coptic, Hebrew and Aramaic evidence. The end goal of the project is to present a holistic tool for studying and understanding the linguistic varieties of this period, useful also to other disciplines of humanities beyond the fields of historical and general linguistics

The overall scientific concept of the project is to promote the research on the interaction between the Hellenistic tradition with other languages cultures in the Graeco-Roman worlds in Late Antiquity and the (Early) Middle Ages in Egypt, and Syria-Palestine, as it is attested in several representative linguistic phenomena of syntax and morphology. The study of language contact in this area is relevant not only for specialists in this field, but also for general linguists, since we can observe us, which phenomena occur, when languages from different types and families interact, and if and how they are able to trigger or enhance language change. There exist very few regions in the world, where these phenomena can be diachronically observed on the basis of such a (relatively) large amount of data. Thus, the goals of the research is the contribution to linguistic theory on language change and language contact, as well as to linguistic typology, and further to the study of the diachrony of Greek, Coptic and Aramaic. As far as Greek is concerned, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods significant phonological, morphological, semantic and syntactic changes can be observed at all levels of the linguistic system of the Greek language; it has been convincingly argued that this period has been a crucial formative stage for later Greek, and ultimately for Modern Greek. The material under examination stems from the Hellenistic literature, the papyri, and the secondary evince from Coptic and Hebrew/Aramaic and Classical Syriac, and is dated roughly from 3rd century 2nd century BC until approx. the 6th century 7th century AD. Among the different types of Hellenistic Greek, we concentrated here on the variety which Bubenik (2009, 317) describes as koiné in the traditional meaning of the word i.e. the colloquial substandard and the regional varieties of Hellenistic koiné, known under labels of Ptolemaic, Syro-Palestinian and Asia Minor koine. The most important hypotheses and research questions developed during the projects duration were investigated according to already established methods and theories of diachronic linguistics, but also within the theoretical frame of Construction Grammar or/and historical sociolinguistics. Further, standard models and contemporary theories of linguistic borrowing (contact induced changes) and code mixing were exploited, which in many cases involved implications for the sociolinguistics of multilingualism. The project mainly involved corpus-based research, by making use of annotated corpora and methods of corpus linguistics. The findings of the project will be relevant not only for linguists, but also for historians and theologians interested in the linguistic and cultural contact during Late Antiquity.