Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology – serie

This volume is a collection of papers revealing the largely unexplored boundary between linguistic and literary approaches to classical texts. Eleven contributions by various scholars discuss a wide range of linguistic and literary apects of classical texts: the narratee in the prologues of Sophocles’ Trachiniae and of Euripides, the chronology in Pindar’s Odes, the relation between tense-aspect and Discourse Modes in Thucydides, Xenophon, Vergil and Ovid, the use of aspect in the Law Code of Gortyn, expressions of futurity and the word order of adjectives in Herodotus, and, finally, ancient and modern views on word order. Following an interdisciplinary approach, all contributions aim at bridging the gap between linguistic and literary study of classical texts.

On the basis of a fresh collation of the four primary manuscripts, this book presents a revised text of Plato's Ion, with full apparatus criticus. The commentary has a strong linguistic orientation; it includes discussions of Platonic vocabulary. Linguistic considerations are also the leading principle in the choice of one MS reading rather than another. Drawing on Byzantine practices and theories, the book pays special attention to questions of punctuation, an area too often ignored in editions of classical texts. The extensive introduction deals with, inter alia, Plato's attack on poetry, the position of the Ion in the corpus Platonicum—rather late, this book argues—, the title(s) of the dialogue, the reasons why MS Venetus 189 should be considered a primary MS, and the text of the Homeric quotations in the Ion.

This volume includes fourteen original articles, written by a diverse group of distinguished scholars in honor of Philip Baldi (Penn State University). The contributions all focus on some aspect of classical linguistics, by which is meant Latin, Greek, Etruscan, and Indo-European. Some focus more on historical linguistic issues, while others deal with synchronic grammatical or semantic problems. The volume also offers a complete bibliography of the works of Philip Baldi, as well as a personal sketch.

In den letzten Jahren hat das Interesse an Partikeln, die eine wichtige Rolle in der Interaktion zwischen Sprecher und Adressaten spielen, sehr zugenommen. Dieses Buch konzentriert sich auf die lateinischen Partikeln nempe, quippe, scilicet, videlicet und nimirum, die alle anzeigen, wie sicher der Sprecher ist oder sich zeigen will. Der Hauptteil beschäftigt sich mit den Unterschieden zwischen diesen Partikeln. Mit diesem Buch wird das wenig untersuchte Gebiet der lateinischen Modalpartikeln oder ‘Commitment Markers’ erschlossen mit Hilfe moderner linguistischer Theorien und Analysen vergleichbarer Partikeln in modernen Sprachen und im Lateinischen.Recently there has been growing interest in particles which play an important role in the interaction between speaker and addressee. This book focuses on the Latin particles nempe, quippe, scilicet, videlicet and nimirum, all of which show how certain the speaker is or would like to be thought. In particular the study concentrates on the differences between these words. With this study the scarcely researched field of Latin modal particles or ‘commitment markers’ is made much clearer using modern linguistic theories and analyses of comparable particles in modern languages and in Latin.

In De cura pro mortuis gerenda Augustine interweaves an assessment of burial near the memorial of a martyr with a series of dream narratives. The seeming lack of coherence between argument and narrative in this treatise has puzzled many scholars. Combining an analysis of the overall structure of the argument and a detailed philological commentary, this study shows that Augustine’s text forms a well-composed unity. The study is based on discourse-linguistic and narratological concepts as well as an analysis of the global structure of the narratives. Relying on this combined approach Rose demonstrates how Augustine explores the full breadth of his narrative material in the service of his argument. In addition, this book situates Augustine’s text in its cultural-historical context.

The internal ordering of Latin noun phrases is very flexible in comparison with modern European languages. Whereas there are a number of studies devoted to the variable placement of modifiers, The Noun Phrase in Classical Latin Prose proposes an entirely new approach: a discussion of the semantic and syntactic properties of both nouns and modifiers. Using recent insights in general linguistics, it argues that not only pragmatic factors but also semantic factors (whether we are dealing with an inherent property, the author’s assessment, or a further specification of a referent) are responsible for the internal ordering of Latin noun phrases. Additionally, this book discusses prepositional phrases functioning as modifiers, and appositions, which have received little attention in the literature.

In this collected volume fourteen experts in the fields of Classics and Ancient History study the textual strategies used by Herodotus and Livy when recounting the disastrous battles at Thermopylae and Cannae. Literary, linguistic and historical approaches are used (often in combination) in order to enhance and enrich the interpretation of the accounts, which for obvious reasons confronted the authors with a special challenge. Chapters drawing a comparison with other battle narratives and with other genres help to establish genre-specific elements in ancient historiography, and draw attention to the particular techniques employed by Herodotus and Livy in their war narratives.