Medieval Greek
This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(June 2020) |
Medieval Greek | |
---|---|
Byzantine Greek, Romaic | |
Ῥωμαϊκή Rhōmaïkḗ Romaïkí | |
Region | Eastern Mediterranean (Byzantine Empire) |
Era | c. 600–1500 AD; developed into Modern Greek[1] |
Indo-European
| |
Greek alphabet | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Byzantine Empire |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | grc |
ISO 639-3 | grc (i.e. with Ancient Greek[2]) |
qgk | |
Glottolog | medi1251 |
Medieval Greek (also known as Middle Greek, Byzantine Greek, or Romaic) is the stage of the Greek language between the end of classical antiquity in the 5th–6th centuries and the end of the Middle Ages, conventionally dated to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire. This stage of language is thus described as Byzantine Greek. The study of the Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine studies, the study of the history and culture of the Byzantine Empire.
The beginning of Medieval Greek is occasionally dated back to as early as the 4th century, either to 330 AD, when the political centre of the Roman Empire was moved to Constantinople, or to 395 AD, the division of the empire. However, this approach is rather arbitrary as it is more an assumption of political, as opposed to cultural and linguistic, developments. Indeed, by this time the spoken language, particularly pronunciation, had already shifted towards modern forms.[1]
The conquests of Alexander the Great, and the ensuing Hellenistic period, had caused Greek to spread to peoples throughout Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, altering the spoken language's pronunciation and structure.
Medieval Greek is the link between this vernacular, known as Koine Greek, and Modern Greek. Though Byzantine Greek literature was still strongly influenced by Attic Greek, it was also influenced by vernacular Koine Greek, which is the language of the New Testament and the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church.
History and development
Despite the absence of reliable demographic figures, it has been estimated that less than one third of the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire, around eight million people, were native speakers of Greek. in the east, had become extinct and replaced by Greek by the 5th century.
In any case, all cities of the Eastern Roman Empire were strongly influenced by the Greek language.[7]
In the period between 603 and 619, the southern and eastern parts of the empire (
From the late 11th century onwards, the interior of Anatolia was invaded by
Diglossia
As early as in the Hellenistic period, there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia between the Attic literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koine. By late antiquity, the gap had become impossible to ignore. In the Byzantine era, written Greek manifested itself in a whole spectrum of divergent registers, all of which were consciously archaic in comparison with the contemporary spoken vernacular, but in different degrees.[8]
They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on the written Koine of the Bible and early Christian literature, to a highly artificial learned style, employed by authors with higher literary ambitions and closely imitating the model of classical Attic, in continuation of the movement of Atticism in late antiquity. At the same time, the spoken vernacular language developed on the basis of earlier spoken Koine, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek in terms of grammar and phonology by the turn of the first millennium AD. Written literature reflecting this Demotic Greek begins to appear around 1100.
Among the preserved literature in the Attic literary language, various forms of historiography take a prominent place. They comprise chronicles as well as classicist, contemporary works of historiography, theological documents, and saints' lives. Poetry can be found in the form of hymns and ecclesiastical poetry. Many of the Byzantine emperors were active writers themselves and wrote chronicles or works on the running of the Byzantine state and strategic or philological works.
Furthermore, letters, legal texts, and numerous registers and lists in Medieval Greek exist. Concessions to spoken Greek can be found, for example, in John Malalas's Chronography from the 6th century, the Chronicle of
The spoken form of Greek was called γλῶσσα δημώδης (glōssa dēmōdēs 'vernacular language'), ἁπλοελληνική (haploellēnikē 'basic Greek'), καθωμιλημένη (kathōmilēmenē 'spoken') or Ῥωμαιϊκή (Rhōmaiïkē 'Roman language'). Before the 13th century, examples of texts written in vernacular Greek are very rare. They are restricted to isolated passages of popular acclamations, sayings, and particularly common or untranslatable formulations which occasionally made their way into Greek literature. Since the end of the 11th century, vernacular Greek poems from the literary realm of Constantinople are documented.
The
The earliest evidence of prose vernacular Greek exists in some documents from southern Italy written in the tenth century. Later prose literature consists of statute books, chronicles and fragments of religious, historical and medical works. The dualism of literary language and vernacular was to persist until well into the 20th century, when the Greek language question was decided in favor of the vernacular in 1976.
Dialects
The persistence until the Middle Ages of a single Greek speaking state, the Byzantine Empire, meant that, unlike
Phonetics and phonology
It is assumed that most of the developments leading to the
Vowels
Type | Front | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
unrounded
|
rounded
|
rounded
| |
Close | /i/ ι, ει, η | (/y/) υ, οι, υι | /u/ ου |
Mid | /e̞/ ε, αι | /o̞/ ο, ω | |
Open | /a/ α |
The
In the original closing diphthongs αυ, ευ and ηυ, the offglide [u] had developed into a consonantal [v] or [f] early on (possibly through an intermediate stage of [β] and [ɸ]). Before [n], υ turned to [m] (εὔνοστος ['evnostos] → ἔμνοστος ['emnostos], χαύνος ['xavnos] → χάμνος ['xamnos], ἐλαύνω [e'lavno] → λάμνω ['lamno]), and before [m] it was dropped (θαῦμα ['θavma] → θάμα ['θama]). Before [s], it occasionally turned to [p] (ἀνάπαυση [a'napafsi] → ἀνάπαψη [a'napapsi]).[14]
Words with initial vowels were often affected by apheresis: ἡ ἡμέρα [i i'mera] → ἡ μέρα [i 'mera] ('the day'), ἐρωτῶ [ero'to] → ρωτῶ [ro'to] ('(I) ask').[15]
A regular phenomenon in most dialects is synizesis ("merging" of vowels). In many words with the combinations [ˈea], [ˈeo], [ˈia] and [ˈio], the stress shifted to the second vowel, and the first became a glide [j]. Thus: Ῥωμαῖος [ro'meos] → Ῥωμιός [ro'mɲos] ('Roman'), ἐννέα [e'nea] → ἐννιά [e'ɲa] ('nine'), ποῖος ['pios] → ποιός ['pços] ('which'), τα παιδία [ta pe'ðia] → τα παιδιά [ta pe'ðʝa] ('the children'). This accentual shift is already reflected in the metre of the 6th century hymns of Romanos the Melodist.[16] In many cases, the vowel o disappeared in the endings -ιον [-ion] and -ιος [-ios] (σακκίον [sa'cion] → σακκίν [sa'cin], χαρτίον [xar'tion] → χαρτίν [xar'tin], κύριος ['cyrios] → κύρις ['cyris]). This phenomenon is attested to have begun earlier, in the Hellenistic Koine Greek papyri.[17]
Consonants
The shift in the
Changes in the phonological system mainly affect
The resulting clusters were:
For plosives:
For fricatives where the second was not /s/:
- [sθ] → [st] (Μυζ(η)θράς [myz(i)'θras] → Μυστράς [mi'stras])
- [sf] → [sp] (only occurred in Pontic Greek)[21]
- [sx] → [sk] (σχολείο [sxo'lio] → σκολειό [sko'ʎo])
- [fθ] → [ft] (φθόνος ['fθonos] → φτόνος ['ftonos])
- [fx] → [fk]
- [xθ] → [xt] (χθές ['xθes] → χτές ['xtes])
For fricatives where the second was /s/:
The disappearance of /n/ in word-final position, which had begun sporadically in Late Antiquity, became more widespread, excluding certain dialects such as South Italian and Cypriot. The nasals /m/ and /n/ also disappeared before voiceless fricatives, for example νύμφη ['nyɱfi] → νύφη ['nifi], ἄνθος ['an̪θos] → ἄθος ['aθos].[22]
A new set of voiced plosives [(m)b], [(n)d] and [(ŋ)ɡ] developed through
Grammar
Many decisive changes between Ancient and Modern Greek were completed by c. 1100 AD. There is a striking reduction of inflectional categories inherited from Indo-European, especially in the verbal system, and a complementary tendency of developing new analytical formations and periphrastic constructions.
In
The Ancient Greek formation of the comparative of adjectives ending in -ων, -ιον, [-oːn, -ion] which was partly irregular, was gradually replaced by the formation using the more regular suffix -τερος, -τέρα (-τερη), -τερο(ν), [-teros, -tera (-teri), -tero(n)]: µείζων [méːzdoːn] → µειζότερος [mi'zoteros] ('the bigger').
The
Irregularities in verb inflection were also reduced through analogy. Thus, the contracted verbs ending in -άω [-aoː], -έω [-eoː] etc., which earlier showed a complex set of vowel alternations, readopted the endings of the regular forms: ἀγαπᾷ [aɡapâːi] → ἀγαπάει [aɣaˈpai] ('he loves'). The use of the past tense prefix, known as augment, was gradually limited to regular forms in which the augment was required to carry word stress. Reduplication in the verb stem, which was a feature of the old perfect forms, was gradually abandoned and only retained in antiquated forms. The small ancient Greek class of irregular verbs in -μι [-mi] disappeared in favour of regular forms ending in -ω [-oː]; χώννυμι [kʰóːnnymi] → χώνω ['xono] ('push'). The auxiliary εἰμί [eːmí] ('be'), originally part of the same class, adopted a new set of endings modelled on the passive of regular verbs, as in the following examples:
Classical | Medieval | Regular passive ending | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Present | ||||||
1st person sing. | εἰμί | [eːmí] | εἶμαι | ['ime] | -μαι | [-me] |
2nd person sing. | εἶ | [êː] | εἶσαι | ['ise] | -σαι | [-se] |
3rd person sing. | ἐστίν | [estín] | ἔνι → ἔναι, εἶναι | ['eni → ˈene, ˈine] | -ται | [-te] |
Imperfect | ||||||
1st person sing. | ἦν | [ɛ̂ːn] | ἤμην | ['imin] | -μην | [-min] |
2nd person sing. | ἦσθα | [ɛ̂ːstʰa] | ἦσοι | ['isy] | -σοι | [-sy] |
3rd person sing. | ἦν | [ɛ̂ːn] | ἦτο | [ˈito] | -το | [-to] |
In most cases, the numerous stem variants that appeared in the Ancient Greek system of aspect inflection were reduced to only two basic stem forms, sometimes only one. Thus, in Ancient Greek the stem of the verb λαμβάνειν [lambáneːn] ('to take') appears in the variants λαμβ- [lamb-], λαβ- [lab-], ληψ- [lɛːps-], ληφ- [lɛːpʰ-] and λημ- [lɛːm-]. In Medieval Greek, it is reduced to the forms λαμβ- [lamb-] (imperfective or present system) and λαβ- [lav-] (perfective or aorist system).
One of the numerous forms that disappeared was the
The most noticeable grammatical change in comparison to ancient Greek is the almost complete loss of the
Besides the
Vocabulary, script, influence on other languages
Intralinguistic innovations
Lexicographic changes in Medieval Greek influenced by Christianity can be found for instance in words like ἄγγελος [ˈaɲɟelos] ('messenger') → heavenly messenger → angel) or ἀγάπη [aˈɣapi] 'love' → 'altruistic love', which is strictly differentiated from ἔρως [ˈeros], ('physical love'). In everyday usage, some old Greek stems were replaced, for example, the expression for "wine" where the word κρασίον [kraˈsion] ('mixture') replaced the old Greek οἶνος [oînos]. The word ὄψον [ˈopson] (meaning 'something you eat with bread') combined with the suffix -αριον [-arion], which was borrowed from the Latin -arium, became 'fish' (ὀψάριον [oˈpsarion]), which after apheresis, synizesis and the loss of final ν [n] became the new Greek ψάρι [ˈpsari] and eliminated the Old Greek ἰχθύς [ikʰtʰýs], which became an acrostic for Jesus Christ and a symbol for Christianity.
Loanwords from other languages
Especially at the beginning of the
Other influences on Medieval Greek arose from contact with neighboring languages and the languages of Venetian, Frankish and Arab conquerors. Some of the loanwords from these languages have been permanently retained in Greek or in its dialects:
- κάλτσα [ˈkaltsa] from Italian: calza 'stocking'
- ντάμα [ˈdama] from French: dame 'dame'
- παζάρι [paˈzari] from Turkish: pazar (itself derived from Persian), 'market, bazaar'
- χατζι- [xadzi-] from Arabic: hajji "Mecca pilgrim", used as a name affix for a Christian after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Script
Middle Greek used the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet which, until the end of antiquity, were predominantly used as lapidary and majuscule letters and without a space between words and with diacritics.
Uncial and cursive script
The first Greek script, a cursive script, developed from quick carving into wax tablets with a slate pencil. This cursive script already showed descenders and ascenders, as well as combinations of letters.
In the third century, the Greek uncial developed under the influence of the Latin script because of the need to write on papyrus with a reed pen. In the Middle Ages, uncial became the main script for the Greek language.
A common feature of the medieval majuscule script like the uncial is an abundance of abbreviations (e.g. ΧϹ for "Christos") and ligatures. Several letters of the uncial (ϵ for Ε, Ϲ for Σ, Ѡ for Ω) were also used as majuscules especially in a sacral context. The
The Greek uncial used the interpunct in order to separate sentences for the first time, but there were still no spaces between words.
Minuscule script
The Greek minuscule script, which probably emerged from the cursive writing in Syria, appears more and more frequently from the 9th century onwards. It is the first script that regularly uses accents and spiritus, which had already been developed in the 3rd century BC. This very fluent script, with ascenders and descenders and many possible combinations of letters, is the first to use gaps between words. The last forms which developed in the 12th century were Iota subscript and word-final sigma (ς). The type for Greek majuscules and minuscules that was developed in the 17th century by a printer from the Antwerp printing dynasty, Wetstein, eventually became the norm in modern Greek printing.
Influence on other languages
As the language of the
Some words in Germanic languages, mainly from the religious context, have also been borrowed from Medieval Greek and have found their way into languages like German through the Gothic language. This includes the word the German word for Pentecost, Pfingsten (from πεντηκοστή‚ 'the fiftieth [day after Easter]').[citation needed]
Byzantine research played an important role in the Greek State, which was refounded in 1832, as the young nation tried to restore its cultural identity through antique and orthodox-medieval traditions. Spyridon Lambros (1851–1919), later Prime Minister of Greece, founded Greek Byzantinology, which was continued by his and Krumbacher's students.
Sample Medieval Greek texts
The following texts clearly illustrate the case of diglossia in Byzantine Greek, as they date from roughly the same time but show marked differences in terms of grammar and lexicon, and likely in phonology as well. The first selection is an example of high literary classicizing historiography, while the second is a vernacular poem which is more compromising to ordinary speech.
Sample 1 – Anna Komnena
The first excerpt is from the Alexiad of
Ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς, ἔτι εἰς τὴν βασιλεύουσαν ἐνδιατρίβων, μεμαθηκὼς διὰ γραφῶν τοῦ δουκὸς Δυρραχίου τὴν τοῦ Βαϊμούντου διαπεραίωσιν ἐπετάχυνε τὴν ἐξέλευσιν. ἀνύστακτος γὰρ ὤν ὁ δοὺξ Δυρραχίου, μὴ διδοὺς τὸ παράπαν ὕπνον τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς, ὁπηνίκα διέγνω διαπλωσάμενον τὸν Βαϊμούντον παρὰ τὴν τοῦ Ἰλλυρικοῦ πεδιάδα καὶ τῆς νηὸς ἀποβεβηκότα καὶ αὐτόθι που πηξάμενον χάρακα, Σκύθην μεταπεψάμενος ὑπόπτερον δή, τὸ τοῦ λόγου, πρὸς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα τὴν τούτου διαπεραίωσιν ἐδήλου.
'When the emperor, who was still in the imperial city, learned of Bohemond's crossing from the letters of the duke (military commander) of Dyrráchion, he hastened his departure. For the duke had been vigilant, having altogether denied sleep to his eyes, and at the moment when he learned that Bohemond had sailed over beside the plain of Illyricum, disembarked, and set up camp thereabouts, he sent for a Scythian with "wings", as the saying goes, and informed the emperor of the man's crossing.'
Sample 2 – Digenes Akritas
The second excerpt is from the epic of Digenes Akritas (manuscript E), possibly dating originally to the 12th century. This text is one of the earliest examples of Byzantine folk literature, and includes many features in line with developments in the demotic language. The poetic metre adheres to the fully developed Greek 15-syllable political verse. Features of popular speech like synezisis, elision and apheresis are regular, as is recognized in the transcription despite the conservative orthography. Also seen is the simplification of διὰ to modern γιὰ. In morphology, note the use of modern possessive pronouns, the concurrence of classical -ουσι(ν)/-ασι(ν) and modern -ουν/-αν 3rd person plural endings, the lack of reduplication in perfect passive participles and the addition of ν to the neuter adjective in γλυκύν. In other parts of the poem, the dative case has been almost completely replaced with the genitive and accusative for indirect objects.[26]
Καὶ ὡς εἴδασιν τὰ ἀδέλφια της τὴν κόρην μαραμένην,
ἀντάμα οἱ πέντε ἐστέναξαν, τοιοῦτον λόγον εἶπαν:
'Ἐγείρου, ἠ βεργόλικος, γλυκύν μας τὸ ἀδέλφιν˙
ἐμεῖς γὰρ ἐκρατοῦμαν σε ὡς γιὰ ἀποθαμένην
καὶ ἐσὲν ὁ Θεὸς ἐφύλαξεν διὰ τὰ ὡραῖα σου κάλλη.
Πολέμους οὐ φοβούμεθα διὰ τὴν σὴν ἀγάπην.'
'And when her brothers saw the girl withered, the five groaned together, and spoke as follows: "Arise, lissom one, our sweet sister; we had you for dead, but you were protected by God for your beautiful looks. Through our love for you, we fear no battles.'
Research
In the Byzantine Empire,
The Greek tradition was also taken to Western and Middle Europe in the 16th century by scholars who had studied at Italian universities. It included Byzantine works that mainly had classical Philology, History and Theology but not Medieval Greek language and literature as their objects of research. Hieronymus Wolf (1516–1580) is said to be the "father" of German Byzantism. In France, the first prominent Byzantist was Charles du Fresne (1610–1688). As the Enlightenment saw in Byzantium mainly the decadent, perishing culture of the last days of the empire, the interest in Byzantine research decreased considerably in the 18th century.[citation needed]
It was not until the 19th century that the publication of and research on Medieval Greek sources began to increase rapidly, which was particularly inspired by
Byzantinology also plays a large role in the other countries on the Balkan Peninsula, as Byzantine sources are often very important for the history of each individual people. There is, therefore, a long tradition of research, for example in countries like Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. Further centres of Byzantinology can be found in the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy. Today the two most important centres of Byzantinology in German speaking countries are the Institute for Byzantine Studies, Byzantine Art History and the Institute of Modern Greek Language and Literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and the Institute of Byzantine Studies and of Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Vienna. The International Byzantine Association is the umbrella organization for Byzantine Studies and has its head office in Paris.[citation needed]
See also
- Acritic songs
- Bridge of Arta
- Byzantine literature
- Chatalar Inscription
- Frankokratia
- Byzantine Greece
- Omurtag's Tarnovo Inscription
- Ptochoprodromus
- The Dead Brother's Song
- Timarion
Notes
References
- ^ a b Peter Mackridge, "A language in the image of the nation: Modern Greek and some parallel cases", 2009.
- ^ a proposal to grant separate code gkm was submitted in 2006, but rejected in 2023. "Change Request Documentation: 2006-084". SIL International. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ^ Dawkins, R.M. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor. A study of dialect of Silly, Cappadocia and Pharasa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Ostrogorsky 1969, "The Struggle for Existence (610-711)", p. 106.
- ^ «In that wretched city the reign of Romans lasted for 1143 years» (George Sphrantzes, Chronicle, ια΄, c.1460)
- ^ Mango 1980, p. 23.
- ^ a b Lombard 2003, p. 93: "Here too Coptic and Greek were progressively replaced by Arabic, although less swiftly. Some dates enable us to trace the history of this process. The conquest of Egypt took place from 639 to 641, and the first bilingual papyrus (Greek and Arabic) is dated 693 and the last 719, while the last papyrus written entirely in Greek is dated 780 and the first one entirely in Arabic 709."
- ^ Toufexis 2008, pp. 203–217.
- ^ Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert (1889). "ἀντίστοιχος". An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon. Oxford University Press. p. 81.
- ^ "Antistœchal". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
- ^ Browning, Robert (1983). Medieval and Modern Greek. London: Hutchinson University Library. pp. 56–57.
- ^ F. Lauritzen, Michael the Grammarian's irony about Hypsilon. A step towards reconstructing Byzantine pronunciation. Byzantinoslavica, 67 (2009)
- ^ Machardse, Neli A. (1980). "Zur Lautung der griechische Sprache in de byzantinischen Zeit". Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik (29): 144–150.
- ^ C.f. dissimilation of voiceless obstruents below.
- ^ Horrocks, Geoffrey C. (2010). Greek: A history of the language and its speakers (2nd ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 276–277.
- ^ See Appendix III in Maas and C.A. Trypanis, Paul (1963). Sancti Romani melodi cantica: Cantica dubia. Berlin: De Gruyter.
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 175-176)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: Ch. 6) for a summary of these previous developments in the Koine.
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 281-282)
- ^ See Horrocks (2010: 405.)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 281)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 274-275)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 111, 170)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 275-276)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 238-241)
- ^ Horrocks (2010: 333-337)
Sources
- Horrocks, Geoffrey (2010). Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Lombard, Maurice (2003). The Golden Age of Islam. Markus Wiener Publishers. ISBN 1-55876-322-8.
- Mango, Cyril A. (1980). Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0-684-16768-9.
- Ostrogorsky, George (1969). History of the Byzantine State. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-1198-4.
- Toufexis, Notis (2008). "Diglossia and register variation in Medieval Greek". Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. 32 (2): 203–217. S2CID 162128578. Archived from the originalon 2011-07-22.
Further reading
- Andriotis, Νicholas P. (1995). History of the Greek Language. Thessalonica, Greece: Institute of Neo-Hellenic Studies.
- Browning, Robert (1983). Medieval and Modern Greek. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29978-0.
- Horrocks, Geoffrey (2010). Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-3415-6.
- Tonnet, Henri (2003). Histoire du grec moderne: la formation d'une langue. L'Asiathèque Langues du monde. ISBN 2-911053-90-7.
- Holton, David; Horrocks, Geoffrey; Janssen, Marjolijne; Lendari, Tina; Manolessou, Io; Toufexis, Notis (2020). The Cambridge Grammar of Medieval and Early Modern Greek. Cambridge University Press. S2CID 222381614.