Homeric language fascinates because of its many oddities with respect to other forms of Ancient Greek. From which dialects did this poetic language take shape and develop? In which ways did individual poets alter the language? In this volume you will find twelve cutting-edge studies on linguistic change in oral traditions, with a focus on Early Greek epic but also including Near-Eastern traditions (Biblical Hebrew, Quranic Arabic). Several studies focus on an innovative idea of phonological change occurring within an oral tradition. You will also find studies on the adaptation of linguistic form to meter; formulae and epithets; and contact between different traditions or registers.
Lucien van Beek (Ph.D. Leiden University, 2013) is Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics. He has authored The Reflexes of Syllabic Liquids in Ancient Greek (Brill, 2022) and published extensively on Greek and Indo-European linguistics, etymology and lexicography.
List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations
Introduction Lucien van Beek
1 Prosody, Metre and Reflexes of *r̥ in Epic Greek: The Case of ῥέζω versus ἔρδω Lucien van Beek
2 Changement linguistique et réaction de la langue épique: sur hom. εὐηγεν(ής), εὐρυπυλές et χαλκοβατές Alain Blanc
3 Homeric Constructions, Their Productivity, and the Development of Epic Greek Chiara Bozzone
4 Metrical Constraint and Dialect Borrowings: ἔσεται, ἐσσεῖται and the Homeric Futures of the Verb ‘To Be’ Albio C. Cassio
5 A Night Reconnaissance: On Νύξ and Her Aeolic (?) Epithets in Homer Stefan Höfler
6 The Changing Use of Tmesis in Early Greek Hexameter Poetry Thomas McConnell
7 The Morphology and Syntax of the Imperative in Homeric Prayers Simon Pulleyn
8 Ṯamūd: Reading Traditions; the Arabic Grammatical Tradition; and the Quranic Text Marijn van Putten
9 Archaism, Innovation and Modernization in Homeric Language Jeremy Rau
10 Alleged Anatolian Phraseological Borrowings in Homer’s Language: A Reconsideration Zsolt Simon
11 Sound Change in the Hebrew Reading Tradition Benjamin Suchard
12 Dialectology and the Origin of Iliad and Odyssey Rudolf Wachter
Index Verborum Subject index
The book is relevant for academic libraries and specialists/researchers in Homeric studies, Classics more generally, Ancient Greek dialectology, Indo-European linguistics, and the Historical linguistics of Semitic languages.