Medieval Greek
Encyclopedia
Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, is the stage of the Greek language
between the beginning of the Middle Ages
around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople
in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe
. From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire
. This former stage of language is thus described as Byzantine Greek. The study of the Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine Studies, or Byzantinology, 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 monarchy
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. It is only after the Eastern Roman-Byzantine culture was subjected to such massive change in the 7th century that a turning point in language development can be assumed. Medieval Greek is the link between the ancient and modern forms of the language because on the one hand, its literature is still strongly influenced by Ancient Greek
, while on the other hand, many linguistic features of Modern Greek
were already taking shape in the spoken language.
was moved into an area where Greek was the dominant language. At first, Latin
remained the language of both the court and the army and it was used for official documents, but its influence soon waned. From the beginning of the 6th century, amendments to the law were mostly written in Greek.
Furthermore, parts of the Roman Corpus Iuris Civilis were gradually translated into Greek. Under the rule of Emperor Heraclius
(610-641 AD), who also assumed the Greek title Basileus
(βασιλεύς, "monarch") in 629, Greek became the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire. This was in spite of the fact that the inhabitants of the empire still considered themselves Romaioi ("Romans") long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire
.
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. Their presence was centered on the ancient Greek settlements, primarily on the southern Balkan Peninsula and in the western part of Asia Minor. The number of those who were able to communicate in Greek may have been far higher. In any case, all cities of the Eastern Roman Empire were strongly influenced by the Greek language.
In the period between 603 and 619, the southern and eastern parts of the empire were occupied by Persian Sassanids and, having been recaptured by Heraclius
in the years 622 to 628, they were conquered by the Arabs in the course of the Muslim conquests a few years later. Alexandria
, a center of Greek culture and language, fell to the Arabs in 642. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek was replaced by Arabic as an official language in conquered territories such as Egypt.
Thus, the use of Greek declined early on within this area. From the late 11th century onwards, the sparsely populated interior of Anatolia was invaded by Seljuq
Turks, who advanced westwards penetrating into the Greek-speaking areas. With the Ottoman
conquests of Constantinople in 1453, Athens in 1465, the Peloponnese in 1459/60 and the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, the Greek language lost its status as a national language until the emergence of modern Greece in the year 1832. Language varieties after 1453 are referred to as Modern Greek.
, there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia
between the Attic
literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koiné
. 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.
They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on the written Koiné 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 Koiné, 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 chronicle
s 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 in literature in the following examples: John Malalas’ Chronography from the 6th century, the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor
(9th century) and the works of Constantine VII
(mid-10th century). These are influenced by the vernacular language of their time in choice of words and idiom, but largely follow the models of written Koine in their morphology
and syntax
.
The spoken form of Greek was called glossa dēmodēs (γλῶσσα δημώδης, "vernacular Greek"), haploellinikē (ἁπλοελληνική, "basic Greek"), kathomilimenē (καθωμιλημένη, ‘spoken’) or Romaiikē (Ῥωμαϊική, "Roman language"). Before the 13th century, examples of texts written in vernacular Greek, are very rare. They are restricted to isolated passages of popular acclamatio
ns, 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 Digenes Akritas, a collection of heroic sagas from the 12th century that was later collated in a verse epic, was the first literary work completely written in the vernacular. The Greek vernacular verse epic appeared in the 12th century, around the time of the French romance novel, almost as a backlash to the Attic renaissance during the dynasty of the Komnenoi in works like Psellos
’s Choreography (in the middle of the 11th century) or the Alexiad, the biography of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos
written by his daughter Anna Komnena about a century later. In fifteen syllable blank verse (versus politicus), the Digenes Akritas deals with both ancient and medieval heroic sagas, but also with stories of animals and plants. The Chronicle of the Morea, a verse chronicle from the 14th century, is unique. It has also been preserved in French, Italian and Aragonese
versions, and covers the history of French feudalism on the Peloponnese
.
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.
did, but remained in a relatively unified area. The Greek spoken at the southern coast of the Black Sea
, called Pontic Greek, which did not undergo the many developments of vernacular Greek, is an exception to this. Dialects based on Koine Greek
emerged at around the turn of the first millennium.
In Griko, a language spoken in the southern Italian exclaves, and in Tsakonian, which is spoken on the Peloponnese, dialects of older origin continue to be used today. In the course of the resettlement of its speakers to present-day Greece that began in 1923, some of the younger dialects, such as Cappadocian
, vanished. Cypriot Greek
was already in a literary form in the late Middle Ages, being used in the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and Voustronios.
of Modern Greek
had either already taken place in Medieval Greek, or were continuing to develop during this period. Above all, these developments included the establishment of dynamic stress
, which had already replaced the tonal system of Ancient Greek during the Hellenistic period
. In addition, the vowel system was gradually reduced to five phonemes without any differentiation in vowel length. Furthermore, Ancient Greek diphthongs became monophthongs.
The Suda
, an encyclopedia from the late 10th century, gives some indication of the vowel inventory. Following the antistoichic system, it lists terms alphabetically but arranges similarly pronounced letters side by side. In this way, αι is grouped together with ε; ει and η together with ι; o with ω, and οι with υ, indicating that these were groups of homophones.
Until approximately the 10th/11th century, when they all merged into /i/, υ, οι and υι were pronounced as /y/. 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] (éunostos/εὔνοστος > émnostos/ἔμνοστος, cháunos/χαύνος > chamnos/χάμνος, eláuno/ἐλαύνω > lámno/λάμνω), or was dropped (tháuma/θαῦμα > tháma/θάμα). Before [s], it occasionally turned to [p] (anápausi/ἀνάπαυση > anápapsi/ἀνάπαψη).
Words with initial vowels were often affected by apheresis
: i iméra (ἡ ἡμέρα) > i méra (ἡ μέρα "the day"), erotó (ἐρωτῶ) > rotó (ρωτῶ "to ask").
A regular phenomenon is synizesis
("merging" of vowels). In many words with the combinations /éa/, /éo/, /ía/ and /ío/, the stress shifted to the second vowel, and the first became a glide [j]. Thus: Roméos (Ῥωμαῖος) > Romiós (Ῥωμιός "Roman"), ennéa (ἐννέα) > enniá (ἐννιά "nine"), píos (ποῖος > piós (ποιός) – "which"; ta pedía (τα παιδία) > ta pediá (τα παιδιά "the children"). In many cases, the vowel o disappeared in the endings -ion/-ιον and -ios/-ιος (sakkíon/σακκίον > sakkín/σακκίν, chartíon/χαρτίον > chartín/χαρτίν, kýrios/κύριος > kýris/κύρις).
system from voiced
plosives /b/ (β), /d/ (δ), /g/ (γ) and aspirated
voiceless
plosives /pʰ/ (φ), /tʰ/ (θ), /kʰ/ (χ) to corresponding fricatives (/v, ð, ɣ/ and /f, θ, x/, respectively) was already completed during Late Antiquity
. The velar sounds /k, x, ɣ/ (κ, χ, γ) were realised as palatal allophone
s ([c, ç, j]) before front vowels. The fricative /h/, which had been present in Classical Greek, had been lost early on, although it is still reflected in spelling through the rough breathing, a diacritic mark added to vowels.
Changes in the phonological system mainly affect consonant clusters that show sandhi
processes. In clusters of two plosives or two fricatives, there is a tendency for dissimilation
such that the first consonant becomes a fricative and/or the second becomes a plosive. Thus:
The nasals /m/ and /n/ occasionally disappear in front of voiceless fricatives, for example nýmfi/νύμφη > nýfi/νύφη, ánthos/ἄνθος > áthos/ἄθος.
Later, Greek developed a new set of voiced plosives /b/, /d/ and /g/ through voicing
of voiceless plosives after nasals. It is not known when exactly this development took place but apparently it began during the Byzantine period. The graphemes μπ, ντ and γκ for b, d and g can already be found in transcriptions from neighboring languages in Byzantine sources, like in ντερβίσης (dervísis), from Turkish
derviş ("dervish
").
al categories inherited from Indo-European
, especially in the verb system, and a complementary tendency of developing new analytical formations and periphrastic constructions.
In morphology
, the inflectional paradigms of declension
, conjugation and comparison were regularised through analogy. Thus, in nouns, the Ancient Greek third declension, which showed an unequal number of syllables in the different cases, was adjusted to the regular first and second declension by forming a new nominative form out of the oblique case forms: Ancient Greek ho patér (ό πατήρ) > Modern Greek o patéras (ό πατέρας), in analogy to the accusative form ton patéra (τόν πατήρα). Feminine nouns ending in -ís/-ás formed the nominative according to the accusative -ída/-áda, as in elpís (έλπίς) > elpída (έλπίδα 'hope') and in Ellás (Έλλάς) > Elláda (Έλλάδα 'Greece').
Only a few nouns remained unaffected by this simplification, such as to fos (το φῶς), genitive tou fotós (τοῦ φωτός).
The Ancient Greek formation of the comparative
of adjectives ending in -ion and -ōn (-ιον, -ων), which was partly irregular, was gradually substituted by the formation using the suffix
-ter and regular endings of the adjective: meízōn (µείζων) > mizóteros (µειζότερος 'the bigger‘).
The enclitic genitive forms of the first and second person personal pronoun
, as well as the genitive forms of the third person demonstrative pronoun developed into unstressed enclitic possessive pronouns that were attached to nouns: mou (µου), sou (σου), tou (του), tis (της), mas (µας), sas (σας), ton (των).
Besides the particles
na and thená (see below) the negation particle den (δέν 'not') was derived from the Ancient Greek word oudén (oύδέν 'nothing').
Irregularities in verb inflection were also reduced through analogy. Thus, the contracted
verbs ending in -aō, -eō etc., which earlier showed a complex set of vowel alternations, adopted the endings of the regular forms: agapâ (ἀγαπᾷ) > agapái (ἀγαπάει '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 -mi (-μι) disappeared in favour of regular forms ending in -o: chōnnymi (χώννυμι) > chóno (χώνω 'push'). The auxiliary eimí (εἰμί '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:
In most cases, the numerous stem
variants that appeared in the Ancient Greek system of aspect
inflection was reduced to only two basic stem forms, sometimes only one. Thus, in Ancient Greek the stem of the verb lambánein (λαμβάνειν, “to take”) appears in the variants lamb-, lab-, lēps-, lēph- and lēm-. In Medieval Greek, it is reduced to the forms lamv- (imperfective/present system) and lav- (perfective/aorist system).
One of the numerous forms that disappeared was the dative
. It was replaced in the 10th century by the genitive
and the prepositional construction of eis (εἰς 'in, to') + accusative
. In addition, the dual, nearly all the participles and the imperative forms of the 3rd person were lost. The optative was replaced by the construction of subordinate clauses with the conjunctions óti (ὅτι 'that') and ína (ἵνα 'so that'). ἵνα first became iná (ἱνά) and later na (να). By the end of the Byzantine era, the construction thélo na (θέλω να 'I want that...') + subordinate clause developed into thena (θενά). Eventually, thena (θενά) became the Modern Greek future particle tha (θα), which replaced the old future forms. Ancient formations like the genitivus absolutus
, the aci
and nearly all common participle constructions were gradually substituted by the newly emerged gerund
and constructions of subordinate clauses.
The most noticeable grammatical change in comparison to ancient Greek is the almost complete omission of the infinitive
, which has been replaced by subordinate clauses
with the particle
na (ѵα). Arabic influences have been assumed as a possible explanation for this phenomenon, as a sentence structure such as I can that I go was common in standard ancient Arabic. Possibly transmitted through Greek, this phenomenon can also be found in the adjacent languages and dialect
s of the Balkans. Bulgarian
and Romanian
for example, are in many respects typologically similar to medieval and present day Greek
, although genealogically
they are not closely related (Balkanology is the study of the Balkan languages).
, Medieval Greek borrowed numerous words from Latin
, among them mainly titles and other terms of the imperial court’s life like Αὔγουστος (Ávgoustos “Augustus”), πρίγκιψ (prinkips, Lat. princeps “Prince”), μάγιστρος (mágistros “Master”), κοιαίστωρ (kyéstor, lat. quaestor “Quaestor”), ὀφφικιάλος (offikiálos, Lat. officialis “official”). In addition, Latin words from everyday life entered the Greek language, for example ὁσπίτιον (ospítion, lat. hospitium “hostel”, therefore “house”, σπίτι - spiti in Modern Greek
), σέλλα (sélla “saddle”), ταβέρνα (tavérna “tavern”), κανδήλιον (kandílion, lat. candela “candle”), φούρνος (foúrnos, lat. furnus “oven”) and φλάσκα (fláska, lat. flasco “wine bottle”).
Other influences on Medieval Greek arose from contact with neighboring languages and the languages of Venetian, Frankish and Arab conquerors. Some of the loanword
s from these languages have been permanently retained in Greek or in its dialects:
, 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 B.C. 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.
and Methodius
, found entrance into the Slavic languages
via the religious sector, in particular to the Old Church Slavonic
and over its subsequent varieties, the different Church Slavonic manuscripts(?), also into the language of the countries with an orthodox population, thus primarily into Bulgarian
, Russian
, Ukrainian
and Serbian
. For this reason, Greek loanwords and neologisms in these languages often correspond to the Byzantine phonology, while they found their way into the languages of Western Europe over Latin mediation in the sound shape of the classical Greek (cf. German Automobil vs. Russian автомобиль avtomobil and the differences in Serbo-Croatian).
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 or English through the Gothic language
. These include the word church (from κυριακὴ [οἰκία], kyriakí ykía 'House of the Lord') via Germanic *kirike, and the German word for Pentecost
, Pfingsten (from πεντηκοστή, pentikostí‚ 'the fiftieth [day after Easter]').
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.
and Medieval Greek texts were copied repeatedly; studying these texts was part of Byzantine education. Several collections of transcriptions tried to record the entire body of Greek literature since antiquity. As there had already been extensive exchange with Italian academics since the 14th century, many scholars and a large number of manuscripts found their way to Italy after the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. Renaissance Italian and Greek humanists
set up important collections in Rome, Florence and Venice. The conveyance of Greek by Greek contemporaries also brought about the itacistic
tradition of Greek studies in Italy.
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.
It was not until the nineteenth century that the publication of and research on Medieval Greek sources began to increase rapidly, which was particularly inspired by Philhellenism
. Furthermore, the first texts in vernacular Greek were edited. The branch of Byzantinology gradually split from Classical Philology and became an independent field of research. The Bavarian scholar Karl Krumbacher (1856–1909) carried out research in the newly founded state of Greece, and is considered the founder of Medieval and Modern Greek Philology. From 1897 onwards, he held the academic chair of Medieval and Modern Greek at the University of Munich. In the same century Russian Byzantinology evolved from a former connection between the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire.
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
.
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
between the beginning of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
around 600 and the Ottoman conquest of the city of Constantinople
Fall of Constantinople
The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire, which occurred after a siege by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, against the defending army commanded by Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI...
in 1453. The latter date marked the end of the Middle Ages in Southeast Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
. This former stage of language is thus described as Byzantine Greek. The study of the Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine Studies, or Byzantinology, 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 monarchy
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
was moved to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, 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. It is only after the Eastern Roman-Byzantine culture was subjected to such massive change in the 7th century that a turning point in language development can be assumed. Medieval Greek is the link between the ancient and modern forms of the language because on the one hand, its literature is still strongly influenced by Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, while on the other hand, many linguistic features of Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
were already taking shape in the spoken language.
History and development
With the transfer of the Roman imperial court to Byzantium (Constantinople) between 324 and 330, the political centre of the Roman EmpireRoman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
was moved into an area where Greek was the dominant language. At first, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
remained the language of both the court and the army and it was used for official documents, but its influence soon waned. From the beginning of the 6th century, amendments to the law were mostly written in Greek.
Furthermore, parts of the Roman Corpus Iuris Civilis were gradually translated into Greek. Under the rule of Emperor Heraclius
Heraclius
Heraclius was Byzantine Emperor from 610 to 641.He was responsible for introducing Greek as the empire's official language. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, successfully led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas.Heraclius'...
(610-641 AD), who also assumed the Greek title Basileus
Basileus
Basileus is a Greek term and title that has signified various types of monarchs in history. It is perhaps best known in English as a title used by the Byzantine Emperors, but also has a longer history of use for persons of authority and sovereigns in ancient Greece, as well as for the kings of...
(βασιλεύς, "monarch") in 629, Greek became the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire. This was in spite of the fact that the inhabitants of the empire still considered themselves Romaioi ("Romans") long after the fall of the Western Roman Empire
Western Roman Empire
The Western Roman Empire was the western half of the Roman Empire after its division by Diocletian in 285; the other half of the Roman Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire, commonly referred to today as the Byzantine Empire....
.
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. Their presence was centered on the ancient Greek settlements, primarily on the southern Balkan Peninsula and in the western part of Asia Minor. The number of those who were able to communicate in Greek may have been far higher. In any case, all cities of the Eastern Roman Empire were strongly influenced by the Greek language.
In the period between 603 and 619, the southern and eastern parts of the empire were occupied by Persian Sassanids and, having been recaptured by Heraclius
Heraclius
Heraclius was Byzantine Emperor from 610 to 641.He was responsible for introducing Greek as the empire's official language. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, successfully led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas.Heraclius'...
in the years 622 to 628, they were conquered by the Arabs in the course of the Muslim conquests a few years later. Alexandria
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
, a center of Greek culture and language, fell to the Arabs in 642. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek was replaced by Arabic as an official language in conquered territories such as Egypt.
Thus, the use of Greek declined early on within this area. From the late 11th century onwards, the sparsely populated interior of Anatolia was invaded by Seljuq
Great Seljuq Empire
The Great Seljuq Empire was a medieval Persianate, Turko-Persian Sunni Muslim empire, originating from the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks. The Seljuq Empire controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf...
Turks, who advanced westwards penetrating into the Greek-speaking areas. With the Ottoman
Ottoman Turks
The Ottoman Turks were the Turkish-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire who formed the base of the state's military and ruling classes. Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks is scarce, but they take their Turkish name, Osmanlı , from the house of Osman I The Ottoman...
conquests of Constantinople in 1453, Athens in 1465, the Peloponnese in 1459/60 and the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, the Greek language lost its status as a national language until the emergence of modern Greece in the year 1832. Language varieties after 1453 are referred to as Modern Greek.
Diglossia
As early as in the Hellenistic periodHellenism
Hellenism may refer to:*Hellenic studies*Hellenistic civilization*Hellenistic period, in Greek antiquity*Hellenistic Greece*Hellenization, the spread of Greek culture over foreign peoples*Hellenistic philosophy in the Hellenistic period and late antiquity...
, there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia
Diglossia
In linguistics, diglossia refers to a situation in which two dialects or languages are used by a single language community. In addition to the community's everyday or vernacular language variety , a second, highly codified variety is used in certain situations such as literature, formal...
between the Attic
Attic Greek
Attic Greek is the prestige dialect of Ancient Greek that was spoken in Attica, which includes Athens. Of the ancient dialects, it is the most similar to later Greek, and is the standard form of the language studied in courses of "Ancient Greek". It is sometimes included in Ionic.- Origin and range...
literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koiné
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
. 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.
They ranged from a moderately archaic style employed for most every-day writing and based mostly on the written Koiné of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
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
Atticism
Atticism was a rhetorical movement that began in the first quarter of the 1st century BC; it may also refer to the wordings and phrasings typical of this movement, in contrast with spoken Greek, which continued to evolve in directions guided by the common usages of Hellenistic Greek.Atticism was...
in late antiquity. At the same time, the spoken vernacular language developed on the basis of earlier spoken Koiné, and reached a stage that in many ways resembles present-day Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
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 chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s as well as classicist, contemporary works of historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
, theological documents and saints' lives
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
. 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
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman 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 in literature in the following examples: John Malalas’ Chronography from the 6th century, the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor
Theophanes the Confessor
Saint Theophanes Confessor was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy, who became a monk and chronicler. He is venerated on March 12 in the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox Church .-Biography:Theophanes was born in Constantinople of wealthy and noble iconodule parents: Isaac,...
(9th century) and the works of Constantine VII
Constantine VII
Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos or Porphyrogenitus, "the Purple-born" was the fourth Emperor of the Macedonian dynasty of the Byzantine Empire, reigning from 913 to 959...
(mid-10th century). These are influenced by the vernacular language of their time in choice of words and idiom, but largely follow the models of written Koine in their morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
and syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
.
The spoken form of Greek was called glossa dēmodēs (γλῶσσα δημώδης, "vernacular Greek"), haploellinikē (ἁπλοελληνική, "basic Greek"), kathomilimenē (καθωμιλημένη, ‘spoken’) or Romaiikē (Ῥωμαϊική, "Roman language"). Before the 13th century, examples of texts written in vernacular Greek, are very rare. They are restricted to isolated passages of popular acclamatio
Acclamatio
In Ancient Roman tradition, acclamatio was the public expression of approbation or disapprobation, pleasure or displeasure, etc, by loud acclamations...
ns, 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
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
are documented.
The Digenes Akritas, a collection of heroic sagas from the 12th century that was later collated in a verse epic, was the first literary work completely written in the vernacular. The Greek vernacular verse epic appeared in the 12th century, around the time of the French romance novel, almost as a backlash to the Attic renaissance during the dynasty of the Komnenoi in works like Psellos
Michael Psellos
Michael Psellos or Psellus was a Byzantine monk, writer, philosopher, politician and historian...
’s Choreography (in the middle of the 11th century) or the Alexiad, the biography of Emperor Alexios I Komnenos
Alexios I Komnenos
Alexios I Komnenos, Latinized as Alexius I Comnenus , was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118, and although he was not the founder of the Komnenian dynasty, it was during his reign that the Komnenos family came to full power. The title 'Nobilissimus' was given to senior army commanders,...
written by his daughter Anna Komnena about a century later. In fifteen syllable blank verse (versus politicus), the Digenes Akritas deals with both ancient and medieval heroic sagas, but also with stories of animals and plants. The Chronicle of the Morea, a verse chronicle from the 14th century, is unique. It has also been preserved in French, Italian and Aragonese
Aragonese language
Aragonese is a Romance language now spoken in a number of local varieties by between 10,000 and 30,000 people over the valleys of the Aragón River, Sobrarbe and Ribagorza in Aragon, Spain...
versions, and covers the history of French feudalism on the Peloponnese
Peloponnese
The Peloponnese, Peloponnesos or Peloponnesus , is a large peninsula , located in a region of southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth...
.
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
Greek language question
The Greek language question was a dispute discussing the question whether the language of the Greek people or a cultivated imitation of Ancient Greek should be the official language of the Greek nation. It was a highly controversial topic in the 19th and 20th centuries and was finally resolved...
was decided in favor of the vernacular in 1976.
Dialects
Despite the fact that vernacular Greek was widespread in the Eastern Mediterranean area, it is remarkable that it did not split up into various new languages, as Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
did, but remained in a relatively unified area. The Greek spoken at the southern coast of the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
, called Pontic Greek, which did not undergo the many developments of vernacular Greek, is an exception to this. Dialects based on Koine Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....
emerged at around the turn of the first millennium.
In Griko, a language spoken in the southern Italian exclaves, and in Tsakonian, which is spoken on the Peloponnese, dialects of older origin continue to be used today. In the course of the resettlement of its speakers to present-day Greece that began in 1923, some of the younger dialects, such as Cappadocian
Cappadocian Greek language
Cappadocian , also known as Cappadocian Greek or Asia Minor Greek, is a mixed language formerly spoken in Cappadocia . In the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, Cappadocian speakers were forced to emigrate to Greece, where they were resettled in various locations,...
, vanished. Cypriot Greek
Cypriot Greek
The Cypriot dialect of Modern Greek, known as Kypriaka , Cypriot Greek is spoken by 750,000 people in Cyprus and diaspora Greek Cypriots.Cypriot Greek is distinct enough that it can be classified as a distinct dialect of the Standard Greek....
was already in a literary form in the late Middle Ages, being used in the chronicles of Leontios Makhairas and Voustronios.
Phonetics and phonology
It is assumed that most of the developments leading to the phonologyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
of Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
had either already taken place in Medieval Greek, or were continuing to develop during this period. Above all, these developments included the establishment of dynamic stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
, which had already replaced the tonal system of Ancient Greek during the Hellenistic period
Hellenistic period
The Hellenistic period or Hellenistic era describes the time which followed the conquests of Alexander the Great. It was so named by the historian J. G. Droysen. During this time, Greek cultural influence and power was at its zenith in Europe and Asia...
. In addition, the vowel system was gradually reduced to five phonemes without any differentiation in vowel length. Furthermore, Ancient Greek diphthongs became monophthongs.
Vowels
| Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... |
Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Rounded | |
| Close | i ι Iota Iota is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 10. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh . Letters that arose from this letter include the Roman I and J and the Cyrillic І , Yi , Je , and iotified letters .Iota represents... , ει, η ETA ETA , an acronym for Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country... |
y υ, οι, υι | u ου |
| Open-mid | ɛ ε Epsilon Epsilon is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a close-mid front unrounded vowel . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 5. It was derived from the Phoenician letter He... , αι |
ɔ ο, ω Omega Omega is the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system, it has a value of 800. The word literally means "great O" , as opposed to omicron, which means "little O"... |
|
| Open | a α Alpha Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. Alpha or ALPHA may also refer to:-Science:*Alpha , the highest ranking individuals in a community of social animals... |
The Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...
, an encyclopedia from the late 10th century, gives some indication of the vowel inventory. Following the antistoichic system, it lists terms alphabetically but arranges similarly pronounced letters side by side. In this way, αι is grouped together with ε; ει and η together with ι; o with ω, and οι with υ, indicating that these were groups of homophones.
Until approximately the 10th/11th century, when they all merged into /i/, υ, οι and υι were pronounced as /y/. 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] (éunostos/εὔνοστος > émnostos/ἔμνοστος, cháunos/χαύνος > chamnos/χάμνος, eláuno/ἐλαύνω > lámno/λάμνω), or was dropped (tháuma/θαῦμα > tháma/θάμα). Before [s], it occasionally turned to [p] (anápausi/ἀνάπαυση > anápapsi/ἀνάπαψη).
Words with initial vowels were often affected by apheresis
Apheresis
Apheresis is a medical technology in which the blood of a donor or patient is passed through an apparatus that separates out one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation...
: i iméra (ἡ ἡμέρα) > i méra (ἡ μέρα "the day"), erotó (ἐρωτῶ) > rotó (ρωτῶ "to ask").
A regular phenomenon is synizesis
Synizesis
Synizesis is a sound change in which two originally syllabic vowels are pronounced as a single syllable without change in writing. In Latin and Greek, this was often to preserve meter, but similar changes occur naturally in languages....
("merging" of vowels). In many words with the combinations /éa/, /éo/, /ía/ and /ío/, the stress shifted to the second vowel, and the first became a glide [j]. Thus: Roméos (Ῥωμαῖος) > Romiós (Ῥωμιός "Roman"), ennéa (ἐννέα) > enniá (ἐννιά "nine"), píos (ποῖος > piós (ποιός) – "which"; ta pedía (τα παιδία) > ta pediá (τα παιδιά "the children"). In many cases, the vowel o disappeared in the endings -ion/-ιον and -ios/-ιος (sakkíon/σακκίον > sakkín/σακκίν, chartíon/χαρτίον > chartín/χαρτίν, kýrios/κύριος > kýris/κύρις).
Consonants
The shift in the consonantConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
system from voiced
VOICED
Virtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design is a virtual organization that promotes innovation in engineering design. This project is the collaborative work of researchers at five universities across the United States, and is funded by the National Science Foundation...
plosives /b/ (β), /d/ (δ), /g/ (γ) and aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
plosives /pʰ/ (φ), /tʰ/ (θ), /kʰ/ (χ) to corresponding fricatives (/v, ð, ɣ/ and /f, θ, x/, respectively) was already completed during Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
. The velar sounds /k, x, ɣ/ (κ, χ, γ) were realised as palatal allophone
Allophone
In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds used to pronounce a single phoneme. For example, and are allophones for the phoneme in the English language...
s ([c, ç, j]) before front vowels. The fricative /h/, which had been present in Classical Greek, had been lost early on, although it is still reflected in spelling through the rough breathing, a diacritic mark added to vowels.
Changes in the phonological system mainly affect consonant clusters that show sandhi
Sandhi
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
processes. In clusters of two plosives or two fricatives, there is a tendency for dissimilation
Dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonant or vowel sounds in a word become less similar...
such that the first consonant becomes a fricative and/or the second becomes a plosive. Thus:
- /kt/ > /xt/ (nýkta/νύκτα > nýchta/νύχτα)
- /pt/ > /ft/ (eptá/ἑπτά > eftá/ἑφτά)
- /fθ/ > /ft/ (fthónos/φθόνος > ftónos/φτόνος)
- /xθ/ > /xt/ (chthes/χθές > chtes/χτές)
The nasals /m/ and /n/ occasionally disappear in front of voiceless fricatives, for example nýmfi/νύμφη > nýfi/νύφη, ánthos/ἄνθος > áthos/ἄθος.
Later, Greek developed a new set of voiced plosives /b/, /d/ and /g/ through voicing
Voicing
Voicing may refer to:* Voice , a property of speech sounds * Consonant voicing and devoicing, a phonological change* Voicing , a representation of a chord* Voice acting...
of voiceless plosives after nasals. It is not known when exactly this development took place but apparently it began during the Byzantine period. The graphemes μπ, ντ and γκ for b, d and g can already be found in transcriptions from neighboring languages in Byzantine sources, like in ντερβίσης (dervísis), from Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
derviş ("dervish
Dervish
A Dervish or Darvesh is someone treading a Sufi Muslim ascetic path or "Tariqah", known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars in Christianity or Hindu/Buddhist/Jain sadhus.-Etymology:The Persian word darvīsh is of ancient origin and descends from a Proto-Iranian...
").
Grammar
Many decisive changes between Ancient and Modern Greek were completed by c. 1100 AD. There is a striking reduction of inflectionInflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
al categories inherited from Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
, especially in the verb system, and a complementary tendency of developing new analytical formations and periphrastic constructions.
In morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, the inflectional paradigms of declension
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
, conjugation and comparison were regularised through analogy. Thus, in nouns, the Ancient Greek third declension, which showed an unequal number of syllables in the different cases, was adjusted to the regular first and second declension by forming a new nominative form out of the oblique case forms: Ancient Greek ho patér (ό πατήρ) > Modern Greek o patéras (ό πατέρας), in analogy to the accusative form ton patéra (τόν πατήρα). Feminine nouns ending in -ís/-ás formed the nominative according to the accusative -ída/-áda, as in elpís (έλπίς) > elpída (έλπίδα 'hope') and in Ellás (Έλλάς) > Elláda (Έλλάδα 'Greece').
Only a few nouns remained unaffected by this simplification, such as to fos (το φῶς), genitive tou fotós (τοῦ φωτός).
The Ancient Greek formation of the comparative
Comparative
In grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than,...
of adjectives ending in -ion and -ōn (-ιον, -ων), which was partly irregular, was gradually substituted by the formation using the suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-ter and regular endings of the adjective: meízōn (µείζων) > mizóteros (µειζότερος 'the bigger‘).
The enclitic genitive forms of the first and second person personal pronoun
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
, as well as the genitive forms of the third person demonstrative pronoun developed into unstressed enclitic possessive pronouns that were attached to nouns: mou (µου), sou (σου), tou (του), tis (της), mas (µας), sas (σας), ton (των).
Besides the particles
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
na and thená (see below) the negation particle den (δέν 'not') was derived from the Ancient Greek word oudén (oύδέν 'nothing').
Irregularities in verb inflection were also reduced through analogy. Thus, the contracted
Contraction (grammar)
A contraction is a shortened version of the written and spoken forms of a word, syllable, or word group, created by omission of internal letters....
verbs ending in -aō, -eō etc., which earlier showed a complex set of vowel alternations, adopted the endings of the regular forms: agapâ (ἀγαπᾷ) > agapái (ἀγαπάει 'he loves'). The use of the past tense prefix, known as augment
Augment (linguistics)
In linguistics, the augment is a syllable added to the beginning of the word in certain Indo-European languages, most notably Greek, Armenian, and the Indo-Iranian languages such as Sanskrit, to form the past tenses.-Indo-European languages:...
, was gradually limited to regular forms in which the augment was required to carry word stress. Reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
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 -mi (-μι) disappeared in favour of regular forms ending in -o: chōnnymi (χώννυμι) > chóno (χώνω 'push'). The auxiliary eimí (εἰμί '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:
| |Medieval | Regular passive ending | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present | |||||
| 1st person sing. | eimi | εἰμί | íme | εἴμαι | -me |
| 2nd person sing. | ei | εἴ | íse | εἶσαι | -se |
| 3rd person sing. | estin | ἐστίν | éni>íne | ἔνι, ἔναι, εἶναι | -te |
| Imperfect | |||||
| 1st person sing. | ē | ἦ | ímin | ἤμην | -min |
| 2nd person sing. | ēstha | ἦσθα | ísy | ἦσοι | -sy |
| 3rd person sing. | ēn | ἦν | íto | ἦτο | -to |
In most cases, the numerous stem
Word stem
In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word. The term is used with slightly different meanings.In one usage, a stem is a form to which affixes can be attached. Thus, in this usage, the English word friendships contains the stem friend, to which the derivational suffix -ship is attached to form a new...
variants that appeared in the Ancient Greek system of aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
inflection was reduced to only two basic stem forms, sometimes only one. Thus, in Ancient Greek the stem of the verb lambánein (λαμβάνειν, “to take”) appears in the variants lamb-, lab-, lēps-, lēph- and lēm-. In Medieval Greek, it is reduced to the forms lamv- (imperfective/present system) and lav- (perfective/aorist system).
One of the numerous forms that disappeared was the dative
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
. It was replaced in the 10th century by the genitive
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
and the prepositional construction of eis (εἰς 'in, to') + accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
. In addition, the dual, nearly all the participles and the imperative forms of the 3rd person were lost. The optative was replaced by the construction of subordinate clauses with the conjunctions óti (ὅτι 'that') and ína (ἵνα 'so that'). ἵνα first became iná (ἱνά) and later na (να). By the end of the Byzantine era, the construction thélo na (θέλω να 'I want that...') + subordinate clause developed into thena (θενά). Eventually, thena (θενά) became the Modern Greek future particle tha (θα), which replaced the old future forms. Ancient formations like the genitivus absolutus
Genitive absolute
In Ancient Greek grammar, the genitive absolute is a grammatical construction consisting of a participle and often a noun which are both in the genitive case, very similar to the ablative absolute in Latin...
, the aci
Accusative and infinitive
In grammar, accusative and infinitive is the name for a syntactic construction of Latin and Greek, also found in various forms in other languages such as English and Spanish. In this construction, the subject of a subordinate clause is put in the accusative case and the verb appears in the...
and nearly all common participle constructions were gradually substituted by the newly emerged gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
and constructions of subordinate clauses.
The most noticeable grammatical change in comparison to ancient Greek is the almost complete omission of the infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
, which has been replaced by subordinate clauses
Dependent clause
In linguistics, a dependent clause is a clause that augments an independent clause with additional information, but which cannot stand alone as a sentence. Dependent clauses modify the independent clause of a sentence or serve as a component of it...
with the particle
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
na (ѵα). Arabic influences have been assumed as a possible explanation for this phenomenon, as a sentence structure such as I can that I go was common in standard ancient Arabic. Possibly transmitted through Greek, this phenomenon can also be found in the adjacent languages and dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of the Balkans. Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
and Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
for example, are in many respects typologically similar to medieval and present day Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, although genealogically
Genetic relationship (linguistics)
In linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between languages that are members of the same language family. The term genealogical relationship is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the unrelated use of the term in biological genetics...
they are not closely related (Balkanology is the study of the Balkan languages).
Intralinguistic innovations
Lexicographic changes in Medieval Greek influenced by Christianity can be found for instance in words like ángelos (ἄγγελος messenger > heavenly messenger > angel) or agápi (ἀγάπη love > altruistic love, which is strictly differentiated from érōs (ἔρως), physical love). In everyday usage, some old Greek stems were replaced, for example, the expression for "wine" where the word krasíon (κρασίον mixture) replaced the old Greek ínos (οἶνος). The word ópson ὄψον (meaning "something you eat with bread") combined with the suffix -arion (-αριον), which was borrowed from the Latin -arium, became "fish" (opsárion, ὀψάριον), which after apheresis and synizesis became, via psárin, the new Greek psári (ψάρι) and eliminated the Old Greek ichthys (ἰχθύς), which became an acrostic for Jesus Christ and a symbol for Christianity.Loanwords from other languages
Especially at the beginning of the Byzantine EmpireByzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
, Medieval Greek borrowed numerous words from Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, among them mainly titles and other terms of the imperial court’s life like Αὔγουστος (Ávgoustos “Augustus”), πρίγκιψ (prinkips, Lat. princeps “Prince”), μάγιστρος (mágistros “Master”), κοιαίστωρ (kyéstor, lat. quaestor “Quaestor”), ὀφφικιάλος (offikiálos, Lat. officialis “official”). In addition, Latin words from everyday life entered the Greek language, for example ὁσπίτιον (ospítion, lat. hospitium “hostel”, therefore “house”, σπίτι - spiti in Modern Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
), σέλλα (sélla “saddle”), ταβέρνα (tavérna “tavern”), κανδήλιον (kandílion, lat. candela “candle”), φούρνος (foúrnos, lat. furnus “oven”) and φλάσκα (fláska, lat. flasco “wine bottle”).
Other influences on Medieval Greek arose from contact with neighboring languages and the languages of Venetian, Frankish and Arab conquerors. Some of the loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s from these languages have been permanently retained in Greek or in its dialects:
- káltsa (κάλτσα) from Ital. calza "stocking"
- dama (ντάμα) from Fr. dame "dame"
- gouna (γούνα) from Slav. guna "fur"
- louloúdi (λουλούδι) from Alban. lule "flower"
- pazári (παζάρι) from Turk. pazar (itself derived from Persian), "market, bazaarBazaarA bazaar , Cypriot Greek: pantopoula) is a permanent merchandising area, marketplace, or street of shops where goods and services are exchanged or sold. The term is sometimes also used to refer to the "network of merchants, bankers and craftsmen" who work that area...
" - chatzi- (χατζι-) from Arab. hajjiHajjiHajji or El-Hajj, is an honorific title given to a Muslim person who has successfully completed the Hajj to Mecca, and is often used to refer to an elder, since it can take time to accumulate the wealth to fund the travel. The title is placed before a person's name...
"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
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. XC for "Christos") and ligatures. 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. Several letters of the uncial (є for E, C for Σ, Ѡ for Ω) were also used as majuscules especially in a sacral context. The sigma was adopted in this form as a C by the Cyrillic script. 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
With the introduction of paper, Greek minuscule script, which probably emerged from the cursive writing in SyriaSyria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, 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 B.C. 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
Iota subscript
Iota subscript in Greek polytonic orthography is a way of writing the letter iota as a small vertical stroke beneath a vowel. It was used in the so-called "long diphthongs" in Ancient Greek, that is, diphthongs the first part of which is a long vowel: and...
and word-final sigma
Sigma
Sigma is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, and carries the 'S' sound. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 200. When used at the end of a word, and the word is not all upper case, the final form is used, e.g...
(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 Orthodox Church, Middle Greek has, especially with the conversion of the Slavs by the brothers CyrilSaints Cyril and Methodius
Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavs, for which they...
and Methodius
Saints Cyril and Methodius
Saints Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine Greek brothers born in Thessaloniki in the 9th century. They became missionaries of Christianity among the Slavic peoples of Bulgaria, Great Moravia and Pannonia. Through their work they influenced the cultural development of all Slavs, for which they...
, found entrance into the Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
via the religious sector, in particular to the Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
and over its subsequent varieties, the different Church Slavonic manuscripts(?), also into the language of the countries with an orthodox population, thus primarily into Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
and Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
. For this reason, Greek loanwords and neologisms in these languages often correspond to the Byzantine phonology, while they found their way into the languages of Western Europe over Latin mediation in the sound shape of the classical Greek (cf. German Automobil vs. Russian автомобиль avtomobil and the differences in Serbo-Croatian).
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 or English through the Gothic language
Gothic language
Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizable Text corpus...
. These include the word church (from κυριακὴ [οἰκία], kyriakí ykía 'House of the Lord') via Germanic *kirike, and the German word for Pentecost
Pentecost
Pentecost is a prominent feast in the calendar of Ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and also later in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection of Jesus...
, Pfingsten (from πεντηκοστή, pentikostí‚ 'the fiftieth [day after Easter]').
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
Spyridon Lambros
Spyridon Lambros or Lampros was a Greek history professor and, briefly, Prime Minister of Greece.He was born in Corfu in 1851 and was educated in London, Paris and Vienna studying history....
(1851–1919), later Prime Minister of Greece, founded Greek Byzantinology
Byzantine studies
Byzantine studies is an interdisciplinary branch of the humanities that addresses the history, culture, costumes, religion, art, such as literature and music, science, economy, and politics of the Byzantine Empire. The discipline's founder in Germany is considered to be the philologist Hieronymus...
, which was continued by his and Krumbacher’s students.
Research
In the Byzantine Empire, AncientAncient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and Medieval Greek texts were copied repeatedly; studying these texts was part of Byzantine education. Several collections of transcriptions tried to record the entire body of Greek literature since antiquity. As there had already been extensive exchange with Italian academics since the 14th century, many scholars and a large number of manuscripts found their way to Italy after the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire. Renaissance Italian and Greek humanists
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
set up important collections in Rome, Florence and Venice. The conveyance of Greek by Greek contemporaries also brought about the itacistic
Iotacism
Iotacism is the process by which a number of vowels and diphthongs in Ancient Greek converged in pronunciation so that they all sound like iota in Modern Greek....
tradition of Greek studies in Italy.
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
Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange
Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange or Ducange was a distinguished philologist and historian of the Middle Ages and Byzantium....
(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.
It was not until the nineteenth century that the publication of and research on Medieval Greek sources began to increase rapidly, which was particularly inspired by Philhellenism
Philhellenism
Philhellenism was an intellectual fashion prominent at the turn of the 19th century, that led Europeans like Lord Byron or Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire...
. Furthermore, the first texts in vernacular Greek were edited. The branch of Byzantinology gradually split from Classical Philology and became an independent field of research. The Bavarian scholar Karl Krumbacher (1856–1909) carried out research in the newly founded state of Greece, and is considered the founder of Medieval and Modern Greek Philology. From 1897 onwards, he held the academic chair of Medieval and Modern Greek at the University of Munich. In the same century Russian Byzantinology evolved from a former connection between the Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire.
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
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
.
See also
- Acritic songsAcritic songsThe Acritic songs are the heroic or epic poetry that emerged in the Byzantine Empire probably in the 9th century. The songs celebrated the exploits of the Akrites, the frontier guards defending the eastern borders of the Byzantine Empire. The historical background was the almost...
- Bridge of ArtaBridge of ArtaThe Bridge of Arta is a stone bridge that crosses the Arachthos river near the city of Arta in Greece. The bridge became famous from the eponymous legendary folk ballad, which is at the core about human sacrifice...
- Byzantine literatureByzantine literatureByzantine literature may be defined as the Greek literature of the Middle Ages, whether written in the territory of the Byzantine Empire or outside its borders...
- Chatalar InscriptionChatalar InscriptionThe Chatalar Inscription is a medieval Greek inscribed text upon a column in the village of Chatalar by the Bulgarian Khan Omurtag . It was unearthed in 1899 by the archaeologists Fyodor Uspensky, M...
- Frankokratia
- Medieval GreeceMedieval GreeceGreece during the Middle Ages:*Byzantine Greece *Northern Greece under the First Bulgarian Empire *various High Medieval Crusader states :**Latin Empire**Kingdom of Thessalonica**Duchy of Athens...
- Omurtag's Tarnovo InscriptionOmurtag's Tarnovo InscriptionThe Omurtag's Tarnovo Inscription is an inscription in Greek language, engraved on a column of dark syenite found in the SS. Forty Martyrs Church in Tarnovo...
- Ptochoprodromus
- The Dead Brother's SongThe Dead Brother's SongThe Dead Brother's Song is a Greek poem, considered to be the oldest surviving dimotikó song of the Greek music.-History:The song was composed in Asia Minor in the 9th century, during the time of the Byzantine Empire....
- TimarionTimarionThe Timarion is a Byzantine pseudo-Lucianic satirical dialogue probably composed in the twelfth century , though possibly later...