linguistics

Hellenic Studies Series

TA-U-RO-QO-RO: Studies in Mycenaean Texts, Language and Culture in Honor of José Luis Melena Jiménez

José Luis Melena Jiménez is a peerless scholar of editing the texts written in the Mycenaean writing system of the late second millennium BCE and explicating their linguistic and “historical” contents. This volume takes up problems of script and language representation and textual interpretation, ranging from the use of punctuation markers and numbers in the Linear B tablets and the values of specific signs, to personal names and place names… Read more

Curated Books, Interdisciplinary Uses of Homer

Interdisciplinary Uses of Homer: In Dialogue with Douglas Frame

Nostos, Nestor: a theme, a character. What connects them? The concept of return, underlying the etymology of the oldest Homeric hero’s name, which will be further explored throughout this volume. In the trajectory of Douglas Frame as a researcher, νόστος, νόος, and Nestor summarize more than thirty years of walking with Homer… — From the Introduction… Read more

Curated Articles

The Origins of Greek Poetic Language: Review (part II) of M. L. West’s Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford 2007)

[This online 2010 edition is a revised, expanded version of a review first published in Classical Review 60 (2010) 333–338. The original page-numbers of the printed version are embedded within brackets in this electronic version: for example, {333|334} marks where p. 333 stops and p. 334 begins.] West’s book is most useful for researchers in the Classics and in the newer academic discipline of Indo-European studies. I have produced two… Read more

Curated Articles

The Aeolic Component of Homeric Diction

Published 2011 in Proceedings of the 22nd Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference (ed. S. W. Jamison, H.C. Melchert, B. Vine) 133–179. Bremen: Ute Hempen Verlag. In this online version, the original page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{133|134}” indicates where p. 133 of the printed version ends and p. 134 begins. Introduction Milman Parry (1932), in line with an earlier formulation by Antoine… Read more

Classics@, Curated Articles

Classics@9: Gregory Nagy, Diachrony and the Case of Aesop

Diachrony and the Case of Aesop Gregory Nagy [Also published in print in Diachrony: Diachronic Studies of Ancient Greek Literature and Culture, 2015, ed. José M. González, pp. 233–290. Pagination is herein represented by “{…|…},” indicating where one page ends and another begins. This online version is longer than the printed version due to the fact that, in the printed version, a number of paragraphs have been excised. Such paragraphs are… Read more

Curated Books

Homeric Questions

The “Homeric Question” has vexed Classicists for generations. Was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey a single individual who created the poems at a particular moment in history? Or does the name “Homer” hide the shaping influence of the epic tradition during a long period of oral composition and transmission? In this innovative investigation, Gregory Nagy applies the insights of comparative linguistics and anthropology to offer a new historical model for understanding… Read more

Curated Articles

Dialectal Differences at Knossos

[This text, “Woodard 1986,” was originally published as an article in Kadmos 25 (1986), 49–74. In this online version, the original page-numbers of Woodard 1986 will be indicated within braces (“{“ and “}”). For example, “{51 | 52}” indicates where p. 51 of the original article ends and p. 52 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made in previous scholarship to the… Read more

Curated Articles

On Dialectal Anomalies in Pylian Texts

This text, “Nagy 1968,” was originally published as an article in the Atti e memorie del 1o congresso internazionale di micenologia, v. 2 (= Incunabula Graeca 25[2]; 1968), 663–679. In this online version, the original page-numbers of Nagy 1968 will be indicated within braces (“{“ and “}”). For example, “{667 | 668}” indicates where p. 667 of the original article ends and p. 668 begins. These indications will be useful… Read more

Curated Articles

The Subjectivity of Fear as Reflected in Ancient Greek Wording

This essay was originally published in Dialogues 5 (2010) 29–45. In this on-line version, the original page-numbers of Nagy 2010 will be indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{29 | 30}” indicates where p. 29 of the original printed version of the essay ends and p. 30 begins. [1] Introduction In the first part of this essay, I will speak about ancient Greek… Read more

Curated Books

The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad

Drawing on recent studies in ethnography and sociolinguistics, Richard Martin here sets forth a poetics of Homeric speeches, which he sees not merely as poetic creations but as the representation of an actual form of speaking in a traditional culture. Read more