Rays of Language: Linguistic Perspectives on Non-Literary Papyri and Related Sources
About this ebook
Drawing on new corpora, digital tools, and theoretical frameworks, the contributors examine a wide range of linguistic phenomena from spelling practices and language contact to syntax, register, and discourse structure. Each chapter demonstrates how documentary texts, often considered peripheral, in fact provide crucial evidence for the dynamics of language in use and for the multilingual realities of Graeco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt.
The book is organised into four thematic parts. Part 1: Language Contact and Scribal Influence explores multilingualism, scribal norms, and the interplay between Greek and other languages used in Egypt, including Latin and Coptic, while also considering early Arabic documentary practices within a comparative framework. Part 2: Quantitative Studies applies corpus-based and computational methods to questions of usage and change, revealing new insights into frequency and distribution. Part 3: New Insights on Greek Syntax investigates syntactic developments in the papyri, shedding light on phenomena such as the optative, insubordination, and variation in formulaic complementation structures. And Part 4: Socio-Pragmatic Approaches situates linguistic choices within their social and communicative settings, analysing stylistic variation, occupational language, and discourse markers.
By situating Greek within its wider linguistic environment – engaging with Latin, Coptic, and Arabic sources – Rays of Language broadens the horizons of papyrological linguistics and historical sociolinguistics alike. It offers both a synthesis of ongoing developments and a stimulus for future research into the language of the ancient Mediterranean’s everyday written culture.
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About the author
Klaas Bentein is an Associate Research Professor of Classics and Linguistics at Ghent University. He received his MA in Classics (2007) and PhD in Linguistics (2012) from the same university. He has led the ERC Starting Grant project EVWRIT (2018–2024), on the social semiotics of everyday texts from Egypt, and currently directs the ANNOPHIS project (2024–2028), which develops a multilingual, multimodal, machine learning–based annotation infrastructure for historical formulaic texts. He has published widely on Ancient Greek linguistics and papyrology, including edited volumes with Brill, De Gruyter, Peeters, and Edizioni Ca’ Foscari, as well as a monograph with Oxford University Press (2016).
Marja Vierros is a Professor of Classical Philology in the Department of Languages at the University of Helsinki. She is a specialist of ancient Greek linguistics and Greek papyrology. She was the Principal Investigator of the project ‘Digital Grammar of Greek Documentary Papyri’ (2018–23; European Research Council Starting Grant no 758481). She worked as a postdoctoral scholar in two projects funded by the Academy of Finland in 2012–2018 and spent the academic year 2012–13 as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (New York University). She received her PhD in 2011 and published the book Bilingual Notaries in Hellenistic Egypt. A Study of Greek as a Second Language in 2012.
