Vivien Law Prize for an Essay on the History of Linguistic Ideas
Lovely news. The Henry Sweet Society has decided to award me the 2010 Vivien Law Prize. My paper is entitled “The Origins of the Notion of Anaphora”. It’ll appear in the November 2011 issue of Language & History. Here’s the abstract (slightly uninformative, though, I’m afraid):
Anaphora is a central topic in the study of natural language and as such the object of research in a wide range of disciplines. Yet virtually no work has been done on the early history of the notion. This paper will situate the ancient discussions of anaphora in their proper context, and expound and briefly assess certain key concepts that have been overlooked so far.
I’d love to receive more feedback before submitting the final version in June, so requests for a pre-pub PDF would be warmly welcomed…
16 January 2011 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Ancient Philosophy} :: No Comments »
Whiggishisms
HL has just published my review of Oliver Jungen and Horst Lohnstein’s Geschichte der Grammatiktheorie. Sadly, I cannot recommend the book. Read why.
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.)
Update 2010-10-06: After inspection of the published version, I must unfortunately say that I cannot recommend using it for more than citation purposes. Indeed, I’d almost forgotten the proofs. Some clever mind at Blackwell’s had made a great number of completely unnecessary changes to the submitted text—the aim being to help the reader, I presume. I duly pointed out all the mistakes and infelicities introduced, of course. What I now just discovered is that in many cases my remarks have not been taken into account. A few examples: on p. 504, l. 1, the reference to chapter 7 is obviously out of place; in the sections on Chrysippus and Apollonius, my definitions were mostly (though not on p. 509) incorporated into the body of the text; the grounds on which single and double quotation marks are distinguished are a mystery to me; my groupings of paragraphs were in general ignored (again, a pleasant exception on p. 510); sometimes two paragraphs were flown into one; and so on. So dear prospective reader, please use and peruse what I’d like to call the original version.
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} :: 7 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 syntaxeosist 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.
Update 2010-08-04: I’ve switched to an Apple, so the above is no longer maintained. I hope I’ll find some time to post all the new wonderful Mac things I discovered…
4 November 2007 by AUS :: {Tools} :: 3 Comments »
Bekker 1817
Bekker’s Apollonii Alexandrini de constructione orationis libri quatuor is now available for download.
1 November 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Grammar, Apollonian Bibliography} :: No Comments »
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.
Update 2008-01-26: The bibliography has now appeared in print—
Ἐργογραφία Michael Frede, Deucalion 25 (2007), pp. 193–200
Update 2011-02-06: The latest version of the bibliography includes a few pieces published after 2007.
18 August 2007 by AUS :: {Ancient Philosophy, Apollonian Scholars} :: No Comments »
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-AUS.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 added a number of new items to The Complete Bibliography—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 »