Whiggishisms
HL has just published my review of Oliver Jungen and Horst Lohnstein’s Geschichte der Grammatiktheorie. Sadly, I cannot recommend the book. Have a read.
11 June 2010 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar} :: No Comments »
Grammar’s Birth
Or: An Overview of the Beginnings of Linguistic Science in Greece.—The volume is part of the series Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Here’s the publisher’s page. And here my preprint. (I haven’t yet received any soft- or hardcopy.)
1 April 2010 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Ancient Philosophy, Apollonian Bibliography} :: No Comments »
U.S. Dissertation Express
Handy, handy—more than 2 million Ph.D. dissertations can now be purchased online as PDF files from ProQuest. I ordered myself D Kaplan’s Foundations of Intensional Logic (UCLA, 1964) and S Weems’s Greek Grammatical Papyri (U of Missouri, 1981)…
24 March 2010 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar} :: No Comments »
Priscian’s Pronoun
Just received offprints of my paper on Priscian’s de pronomine, so I think I can now put up their electronic counterpart. Here’s the abstract:
Priscian’s Ars is generally considered the apogee of Latin grammar. Yet he himself claims to have followed in every respect the authority of Apollonius Dyscolus (Ars 13.24.7; al.). For a proper assessment of Priscian’s place in the history of linguistic thought, it is thus indispensable to clarify the relation between his and Apollonius’ œuvre. Focusing on books 12 and 13, I first present a list of all Apollonian passages translated or paraphrased by Priscian, and discuss one of these in more detail (Ars 13.15.9–28). I then analyze the order of Priscian’s exposition, and compare it with the structure of his Greek model. Finally I give two examples—the notions of figure and of reflexivity—to illustrate how, and why, their theories differ from one another. Thence I conclude that the currently fashionable view of Priscian as a foundational thinker, almost entirely detached from the Greek tradition, is mistaken, and that, on the contrary, he can only be understood against the backdrop of Apollonian grammar.
26 February 2010 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar} :: No Comments »
Apollonius in Unicode
The Greek text of the current standard editions of Apollonius’ works is now available for download. I’ve also updated the Bibliography.
4 September 2008 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Apollonian Bibliography} :: 1 Comment »
A Bibliography on Paris. Gr. 2548
Parisinus graecus 2548, a parchment of the early tenth or ninth century, is one of the most eminent manuscripts in ancient grammar—it is our best witness for Apollonius’ Syntax, and our sole witness for his treatises on pronouns, adverbs, and connectives. Somewhat surprisingly, in the last hundred years Apollonian scholars have done virtually no work on this manuscript. Worse, many have failed to take notice of the recent results of palaeography and codicology: Catherine Dalimier, for instance, on p. 12 of her new edition of the Connectives, dates it still to the eleventh or twelfth century. A separate bibliography on the Parisinus 2548 might thus be of use to some.
6 August 2008 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Apollonian Manuscripts} :: No Comments »
Greek Ligatures
Vernon E Kooy has created a unique typeface with hundreds of ligatures that allows anyone to write Greek like a Renaissance scholar. It’s available exclusively here. Have a look.
11 July 2008 by AUS :: {Tools} :: 6 Comments »
Kóμανoc
CQ has just published my paper on Κόμανοс. Here’s the abstract:
Scholars spell and accentuate Comanus’ name in a variety of ways. I show, first, that direct witnesses leave no doubt that the correct spelling is K O M A N O C; and, secondly, that according to Herodian—the ancient authority on orthoepy—the word should be pronounced as proparoxytone. The latter argument is based on a new reading of the palimpsest Vindob. Hist. gr. 10.
You may download the paper from Publications.
7 June 2008 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar} :: No Comments »
Bekker’s Dissertation
In the bibliography of V Bécares Botas’ Diccionario de terminología gramatical griega, one can read:
Bekker, I., De Apollonii Alexandrini libris syntaxeos, diss. Halle, 1806
and for some time now I thought I should verify the reference since I wasn’t able to find the book in any library.
August Emanuel Bekker, as he called himself at that time, was indeed made doctor in 1806, a few days before he turned 21. His son Ernst Immanuel Bekker writes in ‘Erinnerungen an meinen Vater’ (Preussische Jahrbücher 29 (1872), p. 559; cf. the entry in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie):
Im Frühling 06 wurde das Doktorexamen cum laude bestanden, die Dissertation “de Apollonii Alexandrini libris syntaxeos” ist nicht gedruckt. Der Promotion am 10. Mai folgte im Juli die Anstellung als Inspektor des filologischen Seminars, mit hundert Talern Gehalt.
The Universitätsarchiv contains only the Dissertationsurkunde, but not the dissertation itself. This isn’t surprising, of course, given that the work had not been printed. Unfortunately, however, the dissertation could not to be found either at the Abteilung Sondersammlungen of the ULB Sachsen-Anhalt. This might well have to do with Napoleon’s closure of the university from October 1806 until May 1808. In all likelihood, then, Bekker’s primitiae are lost.
(Many thanks to Claudia Frank and Dr Marita von Cieminski from the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt for their friendly assistance.)
12 December 2007 by AUS :: {Apollonian Bibliography, Apollonian Scholars} :: No Comments »
Keyboards
I’d been asked how one best types Greek, and when detailing my favourite procedure, I thought this might be of use to others, too… The Greek keyboard has a few nifty features you won’t find elsewhere: for instance, mine is the only keyboard, I believe, where you can type lunate sigmas directly. I also provide a modified version of the US International keyboard which works hand in hand with the Greek one—I called it ‘Latine’ only because ‘International’ seemed rather too vague, or eurocentric… Just have a look.
4 November 2007 by AUS :: {Tools} :: 3 Comments »
Bekker 1817
Bekker’s epochal Apollonii Alexandrini de constructione orationis libri quatuor is now available for download.
1 November 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Apollonian Bibliography} :: No Comments »
Record
Philosophy Talk wants their listeners to pay $5 per episode. There’s no need for excitement, however, since they continue to provide the streams for free—and if there’s a stream there’s always a way to record it. At present, by far the easiest way to do so is to use the new RealPlayer 11 Beta. Total Recorder is nice, too, though not free. Check out J. Cooper on the Stoics…
UPDATE: As the commentator below correctly noted, Philosophy Talk has embraced DRM, which means that RealPlayer refuses to record the file. Total Recorder still works fine, of course.
UPDATE (2008-03-03): An even better, yet also pricier tool is WM Recorder 12. For YouTube and such, however, I now mostly use the free Orbit.
27 September 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Philosophy, Tools} :: 1 Comment »
MF
Michael Frede, one of the greatest in Ancient Philosophy, tragically died a few days ago (see, e.g., Leiter’s In memoriam). Since there exists no complete bibliography of his writings in print, I thought this list might serve some in the interim.
18 August 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Philosophy, Apollonian Scholars} :: 1 Comment »
Style
Just back from luminous Helsinki… I’m revising my paper on Priscian and Apollonius, and since Brepols’s normes rédactionnelles are rather different from what I ordinarily follow, I translated them into a style today. So for those among you preparing a paper for the same volume and working with EndNote, voici FR-Brepols.ens. It’s light and minimal — anything that didn’t seem indispensable had to go. (To install the style, first download the file to your desktop, unzip it, and then place it in the folder EndNote > Styles.)
24 July 2007 by AUS :: {Tools} :: No Comments »
Soutenance
Samedi prochain le 19 mai à 14h je soutiendrai ma thèse de doctorat intitulée ‘Apollonius Dyscolus: De pronomine pars generalis’. La soutenance aura lieu en salle A206 (Bastions, Aile Jura, 2e étage). Tous bienvenus!
- Directeur de thèse: M. Jonathan Barnes (Paris IV Sorbonne)
- Président du jury: M. Alain de Libera (Université de Genève)
- Jury: MM. David Blank (UCLA), Michael Frede (University of Oxford) et Jean Lallot (ENS, Paris)
14 May 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Vita} :: No Comments »
N° 1
I’ve just added a number of new items to The Complete Bibliography I — Bernhardy 1829, Egger 1854, Gräfenhan 1843-50, Hertz 1855-59, Lange 1852, Lehrs 1833, Lehrs 1848, Lersch 1838-1841, Lobeck 1837, Lobeck 1843, Schmidt 1832, Schoemann 1856-1858, Schoemann 1862, Séguier 1838, and Steinthal 1863.
13 May 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Apollonian Bibliography} :: No Comments »
