Syntactic variation and stratification in Imperial-era Greek prose

Thesis

The thesis aims to provide an image of sociolinguistic strata of the language of Greek prose in the second century CE by analyzing variation in the modal domain, particularly in the use of optative constructions. It is divided into four chapters, an introduction and a conclusion, and has three main parts, which could be respectively labeled theoretical, sociohistorical, and empirical. Chapter 1 introduces the main aims of the thesis. The first part (chapter 2) outlines the notions necessary to build a framework to assess variation; those of register and legitimate language play a particularly important role. The second part (chapter 3) is a sociohistorical sketch of various approaches to linguistic problems in the technical literature of the Hellenistic and, primarily, Roman periods, as well as of the development of grammatical instruction as a social practice. Towards its end, ways in which legitimate registers were imparted are suggested; the role of what was labeled ‘Attic’ is discussed in particular. The third part consists of chapters 4 and 5. The former provides further theoretical notions necessary to investigate modal categories and presents the baseline subcorpus of classical prose of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE as the main comparandum. The latter analyzes the data from Imperial-era literary and technical prose and documentary papyri: the outcome is that patterns of variation differ both across contemporary authors and between Imperial-era and classical Greek in systematic ways. The conclusion (chapter 6) summarizes the results and highlights the ways in which they converge.

Authors: Dundua, D

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-5jpddzyow
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: modality; postclassical Greek; syntax; Atticism; register; Second Sophistic; sociolinguistics; variation
• Subjects: Greek