Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Word

Bilingualism has seen an explosion of work in recent years. This volume introduces classicists, ancient historians, and other scholars interested in sociolinguistics to bilingualism in the ancient Mediterranean. The fifteen chapters cover theoretical and methodological issues and key aspects of the contact between Latin and Greek and among Latin, Greek, and other languages.
Bilingualism - the field of language contact - has seen an explosion of work in the last years of the 20th century, yet relatively little of this has focused on written texts. This volume aims to introduce classicists, ancient historians, and other scholars interested in socio-linguistic research to the evidence of bilingualism in the ancient Mediterranean world. Language contact intruded into virtually every aspect of ancient life, and topics which have been fashionable in socio-linguistics for some time have now begun to attract the attention of scholars working in Graeco-Roman studies. The 15 original essays in this collection cover theoretical and methodological issues and key aspects of the contact between Latin and Greek and among Latin, Greek, and other languages. The collection is held together by a wide-ranging introduction which discusses the many important topics recurring in the volume in the light of current work in classics and socio-linguistics.