Daniel Kölligan - Böcker

The present volume collects contributions given at the First Postclassical Greek Conference Cologne (March 24–26, 2021), dealing with different topics related to the Greek language of the Postclassical period. In particular, it addresses the following issues: diachrony of the Greek language (e.g. as regards word order, negation, semantic shifts, counterfactuals); standardization processes; dialect convergence and linguistic change; linguistic innovation vs. reuse in literary Greek; layout of ancient texts in manuscripts. The papers include further elaborations with respect to their discussion within the activities of the DFG scientific network on Postclassical Greek (March 2022 – Feb. 2024) organized by the editors. The thirteen contributions aim at giving the readers new insights into this extremely complex and internally diverse stage of Greek, taking into consideration literary and documentary sources, New Testament Greek and inscriptions. Moreover, they show the productivity of the combination of philological and linguistic approaches when analyzing ancient languages.

The volume is a collection of most of the contributions presented at the Trends in Classics - Greekand Latin Linguistics I Conference combined with the 2nd Postclassical Greek Conference held inThessaloniki (October 12–14, 2023) which is part of the activities of the Postclassical Greek Network.It delves into different aspects of Postclassical Greek both from a synchronic and a diachronicperspective, covering all major linguistic levels of analysis from phonology to morphology, syntaxand pragmatics. The scholarly investigations of the volume are a combination of general and finegrainedanalyses that aim to contribute to a better understanding of both the Greek language itselfand various general linguistic issues. In particular, the volume comprises studies on phonologicaldevelopments, verbal and nominal morphosyntax, negation, word order, strategies for performinggreetings, religious discourse, semantic analyses across Byzantine lexicography, and languagecontact. Finally, it includes five short contributions, presenting ideas about and aims of the projectof the “New Historical Grammar of Greek”.