By examining linguistic variation in Aristophanic comedy, Andreas Willi opens up a new perspective on intra-dialectal diversity in Classical Attic Greek. A representative range of registers, technical languages, sociolects, and (comic) idiolects is described and analyzed. Stylistic and statistical observations are combined and supplemented by typological comparisons with material drawn from sociolinguistic research on modern languages. The resulting portrayal of the Attic dialect deepens our understanding of various socio-cultural phenomena reflected in Aristophanes' work.

The contributions to this volume by a team of international experts illustrate how the linguistic study of Greek comedy can deepen our knowledge of the intricate connections between the dramatic texts and their literary and socio-cultural environment. While the main focus is on comedy, the diversity of the approaches adopted ensures that much of the work applies to different genres and is relevant also to linguists and literary scholars.

By examining linguistic variation in Aristophanic comedy, Andreas Willi opens up a new perspective on intra-dialectal diversity in Classical Attic Greek. A representative range of registers, technical languages, sociolects, and (comic) idiolects is described and analyzed. Stylistic and statistical observations are combined and supplemented by typological comparisons with material drawn from sociolinguistic research on modern languages. The resulting portrayal of the Attic dialect deepens our understanding of various socio-cultural phenomena reflected in Aristophanes' work.

This book traces the evolution of the Indo-European verbal system from the early proto-language to the period of the first Greek texts.