As regular readers of the Journal of Greek Linguistics know, in this prefatory editorial, we like to draw attention to any milestones in, and/or novel aspects of, the issue at hand, and to preview the contents. As it happens, there is something about this issue that may serve as a harbinger of things to come, the early stages of a trend, as it were.

In particular, the article by Michele Bianconi and Elisabetta Magni (“The survival of the optative in New Testament Greek”) was published first in December 2022 under Brill’s Advance Article Publication program, which, as it is described on the Brill website (https://brill.edhh.ma/page/PublishinginaBrillJournal/publishing-in-a-brill-journal#advance), “is a service which ensures that accepted journal articles are available online … in advance of the journal issue in which they are [to be] published”. That is, besides appearing on-line soon after being accepted, such articles also appear in the print version of a future issue, as is the case here with the Bianconi and Magni piece. For these authors, this program has meant that the fruits of their research were available to other scholars some six months ahead of the print publication. Even though it might seem that this publication option would have real appeal, authors have chosen to use this service only occasionally since the program became available for the journal, in fact only three times since 2016.¹ Still, given the prevalence of on-line publication these days, and the allure of having one’s article made available sooner rather than later, we expect that authors will increasingly be interested in publishing their work in this way. We see this option as a positive development, to be sure, as it gives our readership access to the fine scholarship in our (virtual or paper) pages in a more timely manner.

As for the content of this issue, it is in some ways typical, in some ways atypical. In terms of stages of the Greek language focused on, and dividing up the time span as Classical, Koine – which in principle can be grouped together as “Ancient” – Medieval, and Modern (a huge simplification to be sure but useful for purposes of classifying and categorizing our contents), there is a preponderance of articles, three out of four, that focus on Ancient Greek (Bianconi & Magni, Berenguer-Sánchez, Murphy & Dubinsky). Modern Greek is the focus in the Gakis et al. article, and we can note further that both the Bianconi and Magni and the Berenguer-Sánchez articles deal with the Greek of the Koine era. There is thus a suitable chronological spread of attention in these articles, and with perhaps greater attention to the Koine than is typical for an issue of JGL. We would love for there to be a more even representation but as we say many times in this column, we can only publish what we receive, so readers who want to see more Medieval and Modern Greek articles should consider submitting work of their own on that period.

In terms of topics, the coverage is evenly spread, with, typically, papers on syntax, pragmatics, and phonology, this last with consequences for the historical development of the language. Somewhat atypically, there is a computational linguistics paper, by Gakis et al., which reports on an experiment in the development of computational methodologies in which the inflectional complexity of Greek, as a “demanding” language, figures prominently.

As always, we thank our readers and our authors for their attention to, and interest in, the journal.

Dag T.T. Haug, Brian D. Joseph and Anna Roussou

5 May 2023