Greek (2^nd Ed.)
A History of the Language and its Speakers

Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers, Second Edition reveals the trajectory of the Greek language from the Mycenaean period of the second millennium BC to the current day.

• Offers a complete linguistic treatment of the history of the Greek language
• Updated second edition features increased coverage of the ancient evidence, as well as the roots and development of diglossia
• Includes maps that clearly illustrate the distribution of ancient dialects and the geographical spread of Greek in the early Middle Ages

Preface to the First Edition xii

Preface to the Second Edition xv

IPA Chart xvii

The Greek Alphabet xviii

Introduction: The Scope and Purpose of This Book 1

Part I Ancient Greek: From Mycenae to the Roman Empire 7

1 The Ancient Greek Dialects 9

1.1 The Coming of the ‘Greeks’ to Greece 9

1.2 The Earliest Records: Mycenaean Greek 10

1.3 Greek Dialect Relations and the Place of Mycenaean 13

1.4 Some Examples 24

1.4.1 Some basic dialect characteristics 24

1.4.2 West Greek 28

(a) Laconian 28

(b) Cretan 29

(c) Elean 30

(d) Phocian 31

1.4.3 Aeolic 32

(a) Boeotian 32

(b) Thessalian 33

(c) Lesbian 34

1.4.4 East Greek 36

(a) Arcadian 36

(b) Ionic 37

(c) Attic 40

2 Classical Greek: Official and Literary ‘Standards’ 43

2.1 Introduction 43

2.2 The Language of Homer and its Influence 44

2.2.1 Ionian epic 44

2.2.2 Ionian elegy and iambus 49

2.2.3 Personal lyric 50

2.2.4 Choral lyric 53

2.2.5 Athenian drama 56

2.3 Official and Literary Ionic 60

3 The Rise of Attic 67

3.1 Attic as a Literary Standard 67

3.2 ‘Great Attic’ as an Administrative Language 73

4 Greek in the Hellenistic World 79

4.1 Introduction 79

4.2 The Koine as an Extension of Great Attic 80

4.3 The Impact and Status of the Koine 83

4.4 The Fate of the Ancient Greek Dialects 84

4.4.1 Introduction 84

4.4.2 Koineization: the case of Boeotian 84

4.4.3 Doric koines: Tsakonian 87

4.5 The Koine in the Hellenistic Kingdoms 88

4.6 The Koine as an Official Language 89

4.6.1 Introduction 89

4.6.2 Macedonian Koine: the development of infinitival constructions 90

4.6.3 The articular infinitive 94

4.7 Language and Literature in the Hellenistic World: The Koine as a Literary Dialect 96

4.7.1 Introduction 96

4.7.2 Historiography: Polybius 97

4.7.3 The Koine as the language of technical prose 98

4.7.4 Reaction against the Koine: Hellenistic poetry 98

4.7.5 Reaction against the Koine: Asianism and Atticism 99

4.7.6 Popular literature: romances 100

4.7.7 Drama: the ‘new’ Attic comedy and the mime 101

4.7.8 Jewish literature: the Septuagint 106

4.8 Clitic Pronouns and the Shift Towards VS Word Order 108

4.9 Analogical Pressure on the Strong Aorist Paradigm 109

4.10 The Spoken Koine: Regional Diversity 110

4.10.1 Introduction 110

4.10.2 Egypt 111

4.10.3 Asia Minor 113

4.11 Private Inscriptions and Papyri: Some Major Trends 114

4.11.1 Introduction: datives, future periphrases, the nom-acc plural of consonant-stems 114

4.11.2 Phonological developments 117

4.11.3 Other morphological developments: partial merger of the 1st and 3rd declensions 120

4.12 Conclusion 122

5 Greek in the Roman Empire 124

5.1 Roman Domination 124

5.2 The Fate of Greek 125

5.3 The Impact of Bilingualism: Greek and Latin in Contact 126

5.4 Roman Attitudes to Greek Culture 132

5.5 Atticism and the Second Sophistic 133

5.6 Atticist Grammars and Lexica: Aelius Aristides 137

5.7 The Official Koine in the Roman Republican Period 141

5.8 Past-Tense Morphology 143

5.9 Official Writing of the Roman Imperial Period 144

5.10 ‘Colloquial’ Literature 146

5.10.1 Epictetus 146

5.10.2 The New Testament 147

5.11 Later Christian Literature: Stylistic Levels 152

5.11.1 The Apostolic Fathers 152

5.11.2 The impact of Atticism 155

5.11.3 Callinicus and Theodoret 156

6 Spoken Koine in the Roman Period 160

6.1 Introduction 160

6.2 Summary of the Principal Developments in the Vowel System 160

6.3 Some Illustrative Examples 163

6.3.1 Athenian Attic 163

6.3.2 Egyptian Koine 165

6.4 The Development of the Consonant System 170

6.5 Some Egyptian Texts 172

6.5.1 Letter 1: clitic pronouns and word order, control verbs with i{na ['ina]-complements 172

6.5.2 Letter 2: ‘short’ 2nd-declension forms, the merger of aorist and perfect 174

6.5.3 Letter 3: the decline of 3rd-declension participles 178

6.5.4 Letter 4: the decline of the dative 183

6.6 Conclusion 187

Part II Byzantium: From Constantine I to Mehmet the Conqueror 189

7 Historical Prelude 191

7.1 The Later Roman Empire 191

7.2 The Age of Transition: Ioustinianós and the Arab Conquests 194

7.3 The Middle Byzantine Period: Iconoclasm, Renaissance and Decline 197

7.4 The Late Byzantine Period: Stabilization, Defeat and Fall 200

8 Greek in the Byzantine Empire: The Major Issues 207

8.1 Introduction 207

8.2 Greek and Other Languages in the Early Byzantine Period 207

8.3 The Prestige of Greek 210

8.4 Greek in the Later Empire 212

8.4.1 Introduction 212

8.4.2 Byzantine Atticism 213

8.4.3 The first experiments with the vernacular 214

8.4.4 The vernacular literature of the 14th and 15th centuries 216

8.4.5 The romances 217

8.4.6 Other vernacular material 219

8.5 ‘The Koine’ in Byzantium 220

8.5.1 The inheritance from antiquity 220

8.5.2 Academic and ecclesiastical Greek 220

8.5.3 Official and administrative Greek 221

8.5.4 Practical writing in the middle period 222

8.5.5 Chronicles 222

8.5.6 Christian exegetical literature and hagiography 225

8.5.7 A new written standard in the later empire 226

8.6 The Balkan Sprachbund: Future Formations 227

8.7 Conclusion 229

9 Byzantine Belles Lettres 231

9.1 Introduction 231

9.2 The Early Period: Prokópios (First Half of the 6th Century) 231

9.3 The Middle Period: Michaél Psellós (1018–1078 or 1096) 233

9.4 The Modal Imperfect 237

9.5 The Late Period: Anna Komnené (1083–c.1153) 238

9.6 After the Fall: Michaél Kritóboulos (15th Century) 240

9.7 Conclusion 242

10 The Written Koine in Byzantium 244

10.1 Introduction 244

10.2 Chronicles in the Early and Middle Periods 245

10.2.1 Malálas (c.491–c.578): generics 245

10.2.2 Theophánes the Confessor (c.760–818) 251

10.3 Hagiography and Exegetical Works 253

10.3.1 Ioánnes Móschos (c.550–619) 253

10.3.2 St Germanós (c.640–733) 256

10.4 Paraenetic Literature of the Middle Period 258

10.4.1 Konstantínos VII Porphyrogénnetos (905–59) 258

10.4.2 Kekauménos (11th century) 262

10.5 The Metaphrases of the Palaiologan Period 264

10.6 Academic Greek in the Late Period: Máximos Planoúdes (c.1255–c.1305) 268

10.7 Official Greek of the Later Empire 270

10.8 Conclusion 271

11 Spoken Greek in the Byzantine Empire: The Principal Developments 273

11.1 Introduction 273

11.2 The Completion of Sound Changes Beginning in Antiquity 274

11.3 Grammatical Consequences of Aphaeresis 277

11.4 Old and New Patterns of Subordination: Clitic Pronouns and VSO Order 277

11.5 Dialect Diversity in Medieval Greek 281

11.6 Later Phonetic and Phonological Developments 281

11.7 Nominal Morphology and Syntax 284

11.7.1 The dative case, prepositional phrases 284

11.7.2 Feminine nouns of the 1st declension: paradigm standardization 285

11.7.3 Masculine nouns of the 1st declension: paradigm standardization 286

11.7.4 Interplay between the 1st and 3rd declensions: imparisyllabic paradigms 286

11.7.5 Neuters 288

11.7.6 The definite article 289

11.7.7 Adjectives 289

11.7.8 Pronouns 292

(a) Indefinite pronouns 292

(b) Interrogative pronouns 293

(c) Relative pronouns 293

(d) Demonstrative pronouns 295

(e) Personal pronouns 296

11.8 Verb Morphology and Syntax 296

11.8.1 The infinitive 296

11.8.2 Participles 297

11.8.3 Futures and conditionals, pluperfects and perfects 298

11.8.4 The spread of k-aorists: the aorist passive 302

11.8.5 Imperfective stem formation 303

(a) The fate of the -mi [-mi] verbs 303

(b) Nasal suffixes 305

(c) The suffixes -avzw [-'azo]/-ivzw [-'izo] 307

(d) The suffix -euvw [-'evo] and its influence: verbs in -ptw [-pto] 312

(e) The contract verbs 313

11.8.6 Personal endings 316

(a) Indicative and subjunctive 317

(b) Past-tense morphology: active and aorist middle/ passive; the augment 318

(c) The active paradigm: present tense 319

(d) The middle/passive paradigm: present tense 320

(e) The middle/passive paradigm: the imperfect 320

11.9 Conclusion 323

12 Texts in the ‘Vernacular’ 325

12.1 The Early and Middle Periods 325

12.1.1 Introduction 325

12.1.2 The Protobulgarian inscriptions 325

12.1.3 Acclamations: origins of the ‘political’ verse form 327

12.2 Vernacular Literature of the 12th Century 333

12.2.1 The epic of Digenés Akrítes 333

12.2.2 Ptochopródromos 337

12.3 The 14th and 15th Centuries: The Palaiologan Court and Frankish Rule 342

12.3.1 The original romances of the Palaiologan period 342

12.3.2 Greek–Romance contact: perfects/pluperfects, negative polarity, clitics 345

12.3.3 The Chronicle of the Morea 349

12.3.4 The translated romances 357

12.4 The First Dialect Literature: Cyprus and Crete 360

12.4.1 Introduction 360

12.4.2 Early dialect literature in Cyprus: Machairás’ chronicle 362

12.4.3 Early vernacular literature in Crete 366

12.5 Conclusion 368

Part III Modern Greek: From the Ottoman Empire to the European Union 371

13 Ottoman Rule and the War of Independence 373

13.1 The Early Years 373

13.2 Ottoman Decline 374

13.3 Revolution and Independence 377

14 Spoken Greek in the Ottoman Period 379

14.1 The Impact of Turkish 379

14.2 The Spoken Dialects of Modern Greek 381

14.2.1 Introduction: diversification, and the basis for a modern spoken standard 381

14.2.2 Local vernaculars in the central region; Sofianós’ grammar and the educated standard 384

14.2.3 Greek in the west: the South Italian dialects 388

14.2.4 Greek in the south and south-east: the Dodecanese, Cyprus and Crete 391

14.2.5 Greek in the east: Pontus and Cappadocia 398

14.2.6 The northern dialects 404

14.3 Popular Culture in the Turkish Period: The Folk Songs 406

15 Written Greek in the Turkish Period 413

15.1 Continuity 413

15.2 The Impact of the Enlightenment 419

15.3 Contemporary ‘Demotic’ 423

15.4 The Roots of the ‘Language Question’ 426

16 The History of the Modern Greek State 428

16.1 Irredentism: Triumph and Disaster 428

16.2 Dictatorship and War 431

16.3 Recovery, the Colonels and the Restoration of Democracy 433

17 The ‘Language Question’ and its Resolution 438

17.1 Koraís 438

17.2 The Roots of Demoticism: Solomós and the Ionian Islands 442

17.3 The Rise of Katharévousa 445

17.4 Reaction: Psycháris and the Demoticist Programme 446

17.5 The Progress of Demoticism 454

17.6 The 20th Century: Crisis and Resolution 456

17.7 Standard Modern Greek 462

17.8 A Range of Styles 466

Bibliography 471

Index 493

Geoffrey Horrocks is Professor of Comparative Philology at the University of Cambridge, UK, and Fellow of St John's College. His previous books include Space and Time in Homer (1981), Generative Grammar (1987), Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers (1997), and The Blackwell History of the Latin Language (with James Clackson, 2007).